Changing mask mandates and the weight of pandemic fatigue

Guests: Anna Wolak, Igor Grossman

AG: Well, after a few sweet summer weeks of people walking into stores and restaurants not required to cover their faces, B.C. and Manitoba brought back masking rules for indoor public places this week.

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This measure is needed to ensure that these indoor settings are as safe as they can be as we head into the fall and we spend more time indoors. So a provincial health officer order will require masks to be worn by all British Columbians 12 years of age and older in many indoor public settings.

AG: because provincial health officer Dr Bonnie Henry there. And just as they have done throughout the pandemic, the mask mandates are splitting opinions.

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VOICE 1: That is really annoying. Like at least like if you're going to mandate it, keep it mandated, don't give us full freedom and then two weeks later mandat it again, that is annoying. Like the whole flip flopping thing sucks.

VOICE 2: And I was actually suggesting, like, so many people are refusing to wear it again. So it's frustrating. I lost both my parents to it, so I'm like really never stopped wearing mine.

VOICE 3: A very good idea. I don't think we're over this. I'm personally fully vaccinated, but I still wear a mask and I do that or just calm and civility.

AG: Well, that's what a few Vancouverites think about the rule change. Well, for a professional opinion, I'm joined by Dr. Anna Wolak. She is a family physician, clinical assistant professor in the Department of Family Medicine at UBC and part of the grassroots group Masks for Canada. Good morning.

ANNA WOLAK: Good morning.

AG: Let's begin with Dr. Henry's announcement that did that catch you by surprise?

ANNA WOLAK: It did, actually, because just the day before she had announced the vaccine card for British Columbia and she was they were in the middle of an announcement for the back to school plan. So it was a very pleasant surprise to have that thrown in into that announcement.

AG: A pleasant surprise it was.

ANNA WOLAK: They have just announced that there was a massive mandate for schools that was instituted for grades four to 12, nothing for K3 and nothing had been announced for post-secondary at that time. And so when Dr Henry stepped in and had said that there was now a provincial mandate that would cover post-secondary for sure, and everybody else in the community around the vulnerable keep the free population, it was surprising. Nobody expected it, but it was welcome.

AG: So what are you hearing from your patients? How do they feel about masks?

ANNA WOLAK: So since masks had been removed in July and we've seen the numbers rising and during the three or four weeks of summer preceding this, other patients who were already starting to wonder why there wasn't the mask mandate and why it wasn't going to be coming back and why we weren't protecting everybody would masks for school starting. So a lot of patients have already reached out to me. And I've said that it's great that the mask mandate has come back. There are some people who were upset that it's still been covered, keep three. But overall, the the reception I've gotten from my patients has been that it's actually quite welcome that there is a massive mandate.

AG: As you know, Dr. Wolak, not everyone is thrilled about mandatory masks in public spaces. What do you think is the greatest challenge about that for people?

ANNA WOLAK: So one of the hardest things about masks is it's a very visual reminder that things are not normal, that we still have this pandemic ongoing. And I get it, it's 18 months into this. We're tired. We're all exhausted. Everybody who is even advocating for masks, we will admit nobody really likes wearing them. Nobody enjoys putting them on. But we wear them because we have to. And so psychologically, this is something that a lot of people are going to have to deal with because in July, the masks were taken off. It was looking good. We were going to have it even as masks, as a personal choice come first week of September. But now it feels like we've taken a few steps back and it's nobody's fault. It's the fact that we now have a new variant to contend with. The Delta variant has taken hold in Canada, and Delta is just a different beast from the original strain on any of the previous variants. And to be honest, it's not something that was entirely predictable.

AG: When you mentioned that psychologically people have to deal with this. What do you mean?

ANNA WOLAK: Well, it's like I said, with all the feeling in the summer was all we're here for for a three year summer. It's it's looking good. Vaccinations are going up and hopefully will be shed of covid soon. And now we're putting back the masks and making it more prominent. So it's going to be a visual reminder. Hang on, guys. We celebrated too quickly. We now have to take a step back. Our kids are in danger. People are back in danger. And psychologically, that can be quite a quite a big blow.

AG: Do you think we have to get our minds around the fact that really we use the word pandemic, but now we're this is endemic. This is never going away. And at some point, if we play our cards right, it'll be like strep and the flu.

ANNA WOLAK: I think the. He may have jumped the gun from going from pandemic to endemic only because we have that variant and because we've dealt to the previous milestone of 70 percent of eligible people in the population being vaccinated. That's just not something we should be aiming for anymore. We need to be aiming higher and I would say closer to 90 to 95 percent of the entire population, including children, including children. So I don't think we can say yet that we can make masks off now that vaccination rates are going up. And it's great everybody should be getting vaccinated. Who is eligible to be vaccinated? But Delta is just outpacing everybody. So we need to we need to aim higher. And like I said, we need the children vaccinated.

AG: So does Delta, in your estimation, basically mean we're back where we started?

ANNA WOLAK: Not so much back where we started because we do have the vaccines. And one of the things we're seeing is that with people getting sick and even though the numbers are rising, people who are testing positive for sars-cov-2 are not necessarily getting seriously ill with covid or ending or dying or ending up in the ICU if they have been vaccinated. There is that distinction that people are saying it's the pandemic of the unvaccinated because we are trying to encourage people get vaccinated. Yes, we will have to live with this, but you don't have to get seriously ill or die for it. My concern is that we still have a large population of people who cannot be vaccinated, and those are the children born later than 2009. Once we get approval from that, that's when maybe we can get the conversation to shift to pandemic versus pandemic and living with this. But at this point, we still need the masks to protect the vulnerable and to prevent other variants from developing as well.

AG: Well, let's talk about the pandemic for the fully vaccinated as opposed to the non vaccinated. Explain to them, to me how the masks help somebody who is fully vaccinated.

ANNA WOLAK: So masks help somebody who is fully vaccinated. First of all, it can at the source control. As we know, even if you are fully vaccinated, you could still catch and spread and transmit the sars-cov-2 virus. You may not get ill, you may not get seriously ill. You may not get ill at all, but you could still transmit it. So if you have a mask or protect, we're preventing the spread of the, you know, aerosolized droplets that do carry sars-cov-2. And so if we can bring the community transmission down by that source control, then the cases will come down, will free up hospital beds for other non covid injuries and non covid illnesses. And it also puts the vulnerable population like children or immunocompromised or even those who choose not to get vaccinated. It puts them at a lower risk. So as a society, it does help put the protection for the entire society. And if we're bringing down community spread as a whole, it protects everybody, vaccinated or otherwise.

AG: Final question for you. You mentioned that the final step may have to do with when children can be vaccinated, as you know, just a few days before return to school for everybody. What's at stake for kids as they head back to school?

ANNA WOLAK: So for kids, kids are a lot more resilient than we give them credit for. And I truly believe that in-person school is important for kids. We need to get our kids back to in-person school, but we need to do it safely. So vaccinating all the adults around them, around them, vaccinating teenagers in the schools, around them, masks as a source control for those around the vaccinate be the unvaccinated children and masks for the unvaccinated children to protect them from inhaling any of the aerosols and virus. They worry that this may be too much for the kids, that they may think that, no, it's not normal, but like I've seen it with my own children, they can wear masks perfectly. And if they treat it just like, you know, I mean, I have a five year old. She doesn't always like wearing shoes, but I tell her you have to wear shoes to go to school. I'm sorry. You know, and that's what it was like last year. It's like, OK, you have to put on your shoes and you have to put on your mask. And I thought we were very matter of fact about it and didn't make create full drama about it was like, OK, fine, I'll put a mask.

AG: It's like it's Halloween, but every day of the school year basically.

ANNA WOLAK: Exactly. And, you know, some schools have you know, I remember one of my kids' day camps, they had crazy masks and they got to decorate their mask and sort of crazy hair day. So just normalising things. There are ways to normalise things for kids. And being in school mascot on a more regular basis is going to be far better for children's mental health than it is for the back and forth of quarantining and. Going home and, you know, a home court being sent home, OK? And in fact, even like my 10 year old and with vaccinations was asking me and what's confirming with my my husband and myself that you're both double vaccinated. Right. So that means you guys aren't going to die and like a 10 year old should not have to be able to think that way.

AG: Dr. Wolak, really appreciate speaking with you. Thank you very much.

ANNA WOLAK: Thank you for having me.

AG: Dr. Anna Wolak is a family physician, clinical assistant professor in the Department of Family Medicine at UBC. Manitoba did the same as B.C. this week by reinstating mandatory indoor masking. And for some of the Winnipeggers we spoke to. It's not the mask itself that chafes and rubs people the wrong way. Rather, it's the ever changing government rules.

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VOICE 1: I think probably the psychological component of it is that, oh, we're here again. You know, we thought we saw the light at the end of the tunnel. We thought the world was beginning to open back up again. It's exhausting trying to know what the rules are and trying to navigate through them.

VOICE 2: It's shifting sand the whole time. So just make a decision and stick with it.

VOICE 3: I do find restrictions for the masks confusing. Like even when they lifted the the masks, I wore it anyway. You know, it's emotionally draining. But on the other hand, this is this is this is part of our life.

VOICE 4: I know a handful of people that are kind of frustrated about the constant back and forth, whether it be, oh, you can do everything now. Oh, wait two weeks later, got to do this specific restriction or whatever.

VOICE 5: The people in my life, the constant changing is anxiety, fear. Could you go do this for me? Because I'm not I'm not I'm not feeling comfortable. I'm not you know, I, I feel their anxiety. I feel it.

AG: Well, that anxiety and confusion doesn't exactly help hammer home a public health message. That's according to my next guest. Igor Grossman is an associate professor of psychology from the University of Waterloo. He's a social cognitive scientist and the director of the World after covid project, which looks at psychological and societal change due to covid-19. Professor Grossman, good morning.

IGOR GROSSMAN: Good morning. Thank you for having me.

AG: When the people we just heard, we're talking about the mental exhaustion and the stress of changing rules and the frustration in their voices, what do you make of that?

IGOR GROSSMAN: It's just natural the pandemic fatigue is a phenomenon that has been observed in many countries and is inversely related to following public health guidelines.

AG: So in what sense do these changing mask mandates contribute to that that anxiety?

IGOR GROSSMAN: Well, as already, Dr. Wolak mentioned earlier, to some extent, the masks do remind people that we are not over and that certainly dampens their optimism about when they will be able to resume what they remember as normal before the pandemic. And at the same time, there's also certain cultural factors for us in Canada, where we so much rely on our faces for communication and for sort of paying attention to each other. And we've been deprived of that for so long now. We had it back for a little bit. And going back to this deprivation is just not feeling good.

AG: Deprivation, one way of putting it out that one woman there talked about this feeling of, OK, we're here again. How do you think, Professor Grossman, that people are processing this feeling that we're not not only are we not out of the woods, but we might be back in the thick of them again?

IGOR GROSSMAN: Depends on the person, but I presume for many people, including myself, this is obviously not a positive message. Even when you are imagining that the pandemic is a marathon, as many of us do, it is still hard to think what may be ahead, especially as we're entering different variants of the virus.

AG: I know one person this morning talked about the changes, you know, and why give us the freedom and take it away? Is there a better way of looking at what we're living through them than flipflops? I mean, what what could we make these changes easier to cope with in your estimation?

IGOR GROSSMAN: That is hard for me to say, I think recognising the uncertainty, especially the uncertainty around the disease that is constantly growing, almost like a living organism and evolving itself depending on our behaviour. And that is a hard pill to swallow because we want to we seek certainty in the moments of uncertainty and thus recognising that the world actually becoming even more uncertain is not something that we can easily do. But there are certain strategies that people throughout history have cultivated for recognising that, you know, the world is changing and the world is not always static as things that you may be taking for granted are not the things you should be taking for granted, that maybe to some extent relying on those strategies could be helpful for some people, for others would be very threatening.

AG: Do you have any specific strategies in mind when you say that?

IGOR GROSSMAN: I would be hesitant to generalise, because I think many of these things, either folk with them or not fully my skill validated validated strategies, but for instance, things like that, to take a step back and try to consider how the humanity as a whole may be coping with that. Taking some kind of a mental distance from the experience could be useful. It has been implemented in many sort of mindfulness therapies. But again, it may not work for everybody and you should not be expecting the fact right away.

AG: I guess also there's a political intersection in all this. As you know, looking from different province to province, politics has entered a politicised issue. Do you think Canadians trust our politicians and public health leaders when they tell us, hey, this is the right decision, you should follow this?

IGOR GROSSMAN: No, they don't. It depends on the position, of course, and it depends on your political leanings whom you would be interested in trusting or not. There's this phenomenon in psychology called motivated cognition, where you seek evidence that confirms your beliefs and discount evidence that doesn't confirms your beliefs. This also applies to how you treat political messages. In some of my research, as well as research of many of my colleagues, we find that the attitudes of trust towards politicians, that the basement where you would be rather taking a random person from the streets to be on the council to figure out how to deal with covid rather than a politician. And that is a problem.

AG: And yet the politicians I've noticed from province to province, they put their public health officers front and centre and say, we're following the best scientific advice. What about those health officials? Is there is there a better way for them to deliver the rule changes to us?

IGOR GROSSMAN: That they're in a difficult situation because on the one hand, they are communicating to some extent what the provincial governments want them to communicate. On the other hand, they want also to communicate the public health guidelines and be to some extent also doctors. As a doctor, as a scientist, you may want to take a very different approach than a politician. A politician, for instance, would want to communicate things with a certain with certainty and be consistent and be very clear. As a scientist, you want to communicate down certainty because in science and you know, the science around covid is ever evolving. You're working with testable and falsifiable claims. And so if you state that something is true and certain, that means that you're not working in the realm of science, but in the realm of dogma, religion. So it's very hard. It's a fine line for public health officials who work with politicians because they first need to cater towards this kind of consistent message. And at the same time, they need to bring in the science forward and help people recognise the inherent uncertainty in the scientific process of discovering new evidence and that the virus is evolving itself.

AG: Final question for you mentioned science. You led a research project called The World after covid that put together the expert opinions of people from all over the world. What are the biggest psychological impacts on people of this ever changing, long lasting pandemic? And the fatigue? We only got about 30 seconds.

IGOR GROSSMAN: Probably the most first of all, this are all expectations and hopes and worries, and the hope is that this will help us to rethink our societies, to be more equal, to be fairer. And and the worry is that we will have more social conflict between different political groups and different countries. Mm hmm.

AG: Professor Grossman, thank you very much.

IGOR GROSSMAN: Thank you for having me.

AG: Igor Grossman is an associate professor of psychology at the University of Waterloo, where he directs the Wisdom and Culture Lab at the CBC News is next and then.

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If I knew one day would become like this, I never work for someone for NATO I bought seven more people from my family, I put them in danger.

AG: Consider those words: if I had known it would come to this, I never would have worked for NATO. The voice of one man still in Afghanistan, the last Canadian evacuation flight has left Kabul. The people left behind are running out of options. Veteran foreign correspondent Melissa Fung will join me to talk about what happens next. That's in six minutes. I'm Anthony Germain and you're listening to The Current.

Mellissa Fung says Afghan women taught her resilience, now they need help; Canadians turn to canning to save fruits of summer pandemic gardens

Guests: Mellissa Fung, Johwanna Aleyne, Ana Stoica-Constantin

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AG: Hello, I'm Anthony Germein, and you're listening to The Current.

[Music: Theme]

AG: Still to come, all that work in your summer garden is bearing fruits and vegetables, it's time to get pickling. We will revisit the canning craze of the covid locked down days. But first, to Kabul Hill, where no more Canadian planes are leaving.

[Music: Theme]

AG: This month, the world watched as the Taliban took cities in Afghanistan one by one, we watched them enter Kabul and saw the country come under control of the same people the Americans went there to fight nearly 20 years ago. Now, Canada will do nothing more than watch. After the last evacuation flight left Hamid Karzai airport yesterday, thousands of Afghans who desperately want to leave are still there, and many of them have ties to this country.

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We wish we could have stayed longer and rescued everyone who was so desperate to leave. Like so many of you in the media and like so many others, you know, I have received emails from people I worked with during my tours in Afghanistan were desperate to get out or get their families out. Their pleads and the photos of the families in terrible situations that are that accompany many of them are heart wrenching. They tear at our souls.

AG: That was Canada's acting chief of defence staff, General Wayne Eyre, announcing the end of the military mission yesterday morning and shortly after the last Canadian plane took off, two suicide attacks, targeted the thousands of people waiting to leave through the Kabul airport. And the explosions killed more than 100 people.

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So I just told him after one minute there was an explosion and my brother [unintelligible] that there was more than six people killed. No kidding. The dead body was killing over there. And the rest of it was still going to be killed, maybe in has hospital, maybe on the way, maybe something. But there was two suicide attack. The first one far away and the second one was very close to my family.

AG: That's a former interpreter we're calling Abdul, describing the chaos his family experienced at the Kabul airport. Well, for weeks, Mellissa Fung has been trying to help vulnerable people escape Afghanistan. She was in the country last month making a documentary investigating the killings of Afghan women and girls for the news outlet, Al Jazeera. And she joins me now. Mellissa, good morning.

MELLISSA FUNG: Good morning, Anthony. Thanks for having me.

AG: It's good to talk to you. So, first of all, I'd just like to get your thoughts on the scenes from Kabul's airport yesterday, in the past week. What goes through your mind as you see the video and hear the stories?

MELLISSA FUNG: It's really hard to watch and, you know, thankfully, I'm not really watching TV right now because I just haven't really slept in the last two weeks just trying to help people get out, help people who, you know, who have helped me in the past, contacts, friends who are just desperate to get out. And many of them did try to go to the airport and were turned away, and the frustration of not being able to help them, it's been really, really difficult to watch.

AG: And in the lead-up to this difficult situation that we're now in, Melissa, what were you hearing from your friends and contacts that are who are still in Afghanistan?

MELLISSA FUNG: Well, I had gone there last month to do a story on the targeted killings of women, which the U.N. said had increased after Donald Trump signed the peace deal with the Taliban in February of 2020. And, you know, it's we heard about the death of a human rights worker last June. Two journalists were killed in Jalalabad in December. Two judges in Kabul this past January. And then I don't know if you remember, but this past May, the girls school was attacked in the Hazara neighbourhood of Kabul, killing more than 70 girls and 80 people in total. And that was a school that I had visited a few years ago to do another story on the obstacles that still stood in the way for girls going to school. And so that was the story I had gone there to do. And even in July, you know, we could see that the Taliban were gaining ground. They had been in Herat, they were coming south. We were hearing that they were going to Kandahar, which is a place very familiar, of course, with Canadians. And the women I was talking to, you know, just kept saying this is not going to be good for us. I think I hate to say it. I never wanted to leave my country, but I have to start looking for ways out. And so I don't, well, I don't think that that women I've been talking to are surprised that, you know, they now have to find a way out. I think everybody is surprised at how quickly we find ourselves in this situation.

AG: Mellissa, what's your sense of, you know, the degree of hope that there is for the people who are still stuck there? I mean, thousands of people, including thousands who want to come to Canada.

MELLISSA FUNG: You know, one of the families I'm trying to help, I got a text from her last night after the horrible bombing at the airport, and that text was just, you know, should I still even have hope? You know, and I don't know how to answer that, because I've been trying so hard to get her on that plane, that last plane to Canada and it was- it was just really hard to see that plane take off and all these people, all these other people being left behind. And even, you know, a friend of mine who was helping with the Canadian evacuation sent me a text and he said, I will never forget the faces of those people we left behind, it just it will haunt me for the rest of my life. And I think now we have to try to do everything we can, you know, to ensure that there is safe passage for those people who are left there and who can leave the country who do have visas to rejoin their families in Canada and elsewhere. We have to make sure that, you know, we engage with the Taliban in some way and they need to engage with us, too. And so there may be ways that we can keep that channel open, keep an air bridge open so that the people who are desperate to leave don't lose hope,

AG: Which might help manage or prevent a massive refugee crisis right?

MELLISSA FUNG: Exactly. It's already starting because. The refugee crisis is already starting I was going to say, because that the land borders are jammed, you know, we saw pictures from Spin Buldak yesterday, people trying to clammer into to Pakistan. And that's a situation almost worse than what it was at Kabul airport, just that there were no journalists in that part of the country to tell it, so I think we're just at the start of a huge humanitarian crisis.

AG: Now, obviously, you happen to plan your documentary at a very difficult time for the country. Were you surprised by how quickly it fell apart and how quickly the Taliban took control of the capital?

MELLISSA FUNG: Yes, I was when I was there in July, people had talked, you know, about maybe a couple, you know, having been six months, maybe three months at worst, and so it was quite shocking on the 15th when, you know, started getting the text messages from my friends saying, oh, my gosh, the Taliban are in my neighbourhood. I think nobody expected would happen this quickly.

AG: Mellissa, I'd like to play a clip from your documentary, Afghanistan No Justice for Women, where you investigated the killings that you mentioned of Afghan women since that signed peace deal with the Taliban in 2020.

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I think we're going to have a very dark life. Again, the most important thing that I'm really worried about is not going to do university. The enemies they attack the school. They attacked the mosque. They attacked the car. They attacked the road. Yeah, that the university. There is not any safe place.

AG: Mellissa, what's at stake for women under Taliban rule?

MELLISSA FUNG: Women have not forgotten, Anthony, what it was like between 1996 and 2001. You know, they were not allowed to go to school. They were not allowed to work. They had to wear full hijab. They could not leave their home without a male companion. If they committed anything that the Taliban considered a moral crime, they would be taken out and publicly whipped. Sometimes, you know, they would be beheaded. That's the fear. And women in the last 20 years, no matter what you think of the war and the international effort, have really come into their own. You know, we educated a generation of women and those women are now at work. They've become judges, journalists, lawyers. They've been allowed to have dreams the same way we do, freedoms to travel, to just go out and hang out with friends and that's what they fear is being lost right now. In some of the places that the Taliban already controlled before they took the whole country, you know, videos had emerged of similar beatings that had taken place back in the 90s, women being publicly beaten, girls were stopped from going to school, so it's already starting. The Taliban say that they changed and, you know, they've evolved and they continue to protect women's rights to work and be educated. But women do not, afghan women don't trust the Taliban at all, and that's why so many of them are so desperate to leave.

AG: Mellissa, a lot of people listening to our conversation now. They certainly know who you are. You've got a personal story of captivity back in 2008 when you were kidnapped while on assignment near Kabul and finally released. How does that experience inform your work as somebody who returned to the region to tell these kinds of stories about Afghan women?

MELLISSA FUNG: Oh. You know, when my kidnappers released me, they said, never come back and I couldn't not come back. I wasn't going to let them intimidate me, you know, because Afghan women inspire me so much, they've been through so much and they continue to persist and persevere and push forward. And so those stories, their successes, their setbacks, those stories were important to me because that was the story I had gone to tell when my kidnapping happened. And so I needed to persist as well, and so I kept going back just to make sure that, you know, they were still making progress. And if they weren't, you know, what was standing in their way. And to see what's happened now, it's really emotional for me because over the years, I've gotten to know so many women who have done so many amazing things. And it's hard for me to know what to say to them now when they ask me, should I still have hope? I don't know what to say to them. So it is personal for me because I have a lot of relationships I've built over the last 15 years in that country. And every time I've gone back, I get a little closer to it. And so so watching the events unfold as they have over the last couple of weeks has been really, really devastating. And so just trying to channel my energy into trying to help people leave.

AG: Mellissa, pleasure speaking with you about such a difficult story. Thank you very much.

MELLISSA FUNG: Thanks, Anthony.

AG: Mellissa Fung is a Canadian journalist working with Al Jazeera. I'm Anthony Germain, and you are listening to The Current.

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This is Mario Carluccio, I am at my mom's South Ottowa home. This is the home I was born in and the garden, the backyard garden is where we grow a lot of stuff tomatoes, beans, peppers, radicchio, lettuce, you name it. Today, I snipped all sorts of grapes from the vine that my dad planted here, probably close to the time that he built the house in the early 70s. And we're going to make jam with the grapes. We're also making pickled eggplants. And so this is day two of a three day process. And it's a technique where you've pickle and then preserve the eggplant in foil. This is something I watched my family do growing up. At first you watch and, you know, you kind of internalise the processes and the ritual. And now my mom, while she's she's still the leader, we look to her for guidance. And a lot of these things were pretty special to know that my mom and dad learnt from, you know, the people that came before them. And I'm learning from them and now trying to pass down these practises to my kids and hoping that, you know, they internalise what we internalised. And I don't think it took the pandemic for us to appreciate these rituals. But it surely has affirmed that this is something that is special and it sustains us now the way to sustain people for hundreds of years.

AG: That's CBC Ottawa digital journalist Mario Carlucci. His family has been canning for decades but for others, it became a new pandemic hobby. Ana Stoica-Constantin is one of the Canadians who embraced canning, after she ditched Toronto and headed north, at the peak of the pandemic. Johwanna Alleyne has been canning for years. She teaches canning courses and is the owner of Mojo Jojo Pickles. Matt Galloway spoke to them last September - and as canning season is upon us again, here is their conversation.

MG: Johwanna, it's interesting listening to Mario. He's talking about how this is a family tradition that you grew up watching your family do this for decades and then you figure out how to do it yourself. Is that how you got into the canning world?

JOHWANNA ALLEYNE: No, I am a retired dark room techniques, and that's how I got into the science of canning.

MG: A dark room technician.

JOHWANNA ALLEYNE: Darkroom technician. So [unintelligible], acid, timer. I'm really good with those things, but I've always been food led and I was on a board for Slow Food here in Evanston. And one of the process that Slow Food celebrates is canning, mainly slow, artisanal single making things. So I started doing the canning bees for Slow Food. And I loved it. I think at the end of my dark room career, we were doing everything digitally. And I really miss making real things that you can hand to a person and share.

MG: What about for you, Ana? How did this end up something that you end up doing in the midst of a pandemic?

ANA STOICA-CONSTANTIN: Actually, a little bit of both of the stories we've heard so far. You know, my family's originally from Romania. So when they immigrated to Canada in the 80s, they brought with them all of this pickling tradition and canning traditions. So I grew up watching my grandparents make barrel folds of pickled, whole pickled cabbages, so that we could make cabbage rolls every Christmas. And, you know, roasting eggplants and peppers and canning them every fall. So that's what I grew up with. But as I got older, it kind of shifted a little bit for me. You know, I have a background in the sciences. For me, it turned into a world of exploration and experimentation. And I started playing around with all of the flavours that I liked and flavours that I found in Ontario, things of like the peaches and the stone fruit and the apples that come out every year. And just discovering new things. I mean, even here in Parry Sound, I'm discovering flavours that I hadn't been exposed to before. And it's just this whole world that's opened up and there's so much potential in it. It's just super exciting to me.

MG: We've seen people we've been talking about your victory gardens and pandemic planting. Are you canning things, Ana, that you've grown yourself in the midst of? As we say, these unprecedented times.

ANA STOICA-CONSTANTIN: A little bit. Yes, actually, I'm very lucky here that when I moved up here, it was with my fiancée and he built me a bit of a garden up here. And I could plant tomatoes and peppers and beans and zucchini and things like that and could really play around with bigger finding out the fruit and the vegetables that I really liked. So we've been pretty lucky. The summer's been pretty good. So I have been able to can some of those things and play around with those. But I can't really grow enough of a bountiful harvest to really put up everything. But so I've been getting things from grocery stores and farmer's markets and things like that as well.

MG: Johwanna. You're the expert in this. Are you seeing that people are getting into canning and preserving, putting food up for the first time?

JOHWANNA ALLEYNE: Oh, completely. I didn't know that pickles were an essential service, but it seems [unintelligible] Everybody needs a fresh food. I think we've all appreciated just going down a little bit. And fresh real food and good flavour and the comfort of good flavours become really important. So, yes, everybody's cooking.

MG: And that means that the supplies are really hard to come by. Right. I mean, there are these stories of mason jars being sold out on PEI, but this is spreading across the country now beyond that. Johwanna, what do you need to be able to do to start doing this? Because it's an art. But there's a science to it as well.

JOHWANNA ALLEYNE: There is truly a science to it. And I tell beginners to really get a good recipe. I can't stress that enough. People, they were saying, but you've watched people do it, but you've never done it yourself. Right. But starting spot and I think a really good recipe is a good spot. And with your canning jars, Bernardin is the Canadian manufacturers, the big Canadian manufacturer of catting drugs, they have a website that has really well tested recipes. So you can really count on. And a secret is that your mother's secret Jojo recipe is probably the Bernadin recipe anyway. So it is a great resource.

MG: What do you have to get right? I mean, if it's a science, there are things that can go wrong. So you need to make sure that there are certain elements that are included in what you're putting up, right?

JOHWANNA ALLEYNE: Yes. With pickling, the amount of acid that the jar, the amount of water overall that's in the jar is really important. And how you fill your drawer and the processing time, which is really the backbone of a canning recipe.

MG: If you don't get this right and the acid, it can be measured in the P.H. levels, if you don't get this right, what can happen?

JOHWANNA ALLEYNE: Well, the botulism is one of the big fears in a jar.

MG: That would be bad.

JOHWANNA ALLEYNE: That's not good. But one of the things is spoilage. Like on a jam jar just at the top of it, you'll see mold and fungus growing, black spots. Peaches and nectarines will get a little air bubbles if you don't pack the dry properly and then you'll see it spoil there quietly. Or if you're really a novice canner, you haven't submerged that jar in the water, sometimes you can see exactly where in the jar the water went to the line above it is spoilt.

MG: Have you had any disasters?

JOHWANNA ALLEYNE: Oh, yes. Oh, yes. We make thousands and thousands of jobs a year. But there was a year where we ran into a process resistant bacteria in pickled carrots. And they would be absolutely fine. When I go into my car and when I take them to market, they would be cloudy. And when we opened it, orange foam.

MG: Oh.

JOHWANNA ALLEYNE: Which just copiously spilt from every jar.

MG: Not what you want. Ana, what have you been making? Tell us what your other favourite recipes that you have.

ANA STOICA-CONSTANTIN: Oh, definitely. You know, a couple years ago I was experimenting with hops off is not that I particularly love them, but I had just on a whim purchased some hot pepper plants and grew them and so I decided to turn into hot sauces. So I made a Ontario peach and habanero hot sause one year, which turned out really well. And this year I'm really playing around with some of the flavours that I'm finding up here in northern Ontario, you know, really new to me. But things like chokecherries and hawthorn berries and making jellies out of those. And so that's really new to me. But just something that I've been playing around with up here and, you know, pickling ramps in the spring foraged sustainably and appropriately, I might add. That's an important thing for us here in Ontario. But, yes, just playing around with those kinds of new flavours and definitely making mistakes along the way. I mean, there's definitely places where I've put in too much acid out of fear of botulism and just had jams that have been incredibly tart and sour or putting far too much salt in a brine for my pickles. But, you know, you kind of learn as you go and make those changes moving forward.

MG: Johanna, just before we let you go, if there's somebody who they have this enormous garden or a small garden, that they have too much stuff to eat right now. Maybe it's tomatoes, maybe it's cucumbers and they want to put some of this up. What's the first step if somebody is going to be getting into this world for the first time?

JOHWANNA ALLEYNE: I see that you don't have to take the whole weekend and you don't have to do all 100 pounds. Start with single jars. Make one or two jars. Something that you can be really proud of, a precious. Start there. You'll catch on pretty quick. That jar is going to disappear really fast.

MG: Ana, for you. What's your advice for getting into this in the first half?

ANA STOICA-CONSTANTIN: You know, I say start with flavours. You like flavours you know you love and start, you know, as as Johwanna mentioned, start small. Just make a little bit. Get a little basket of peaches, a basket of cucumbers, something that you know you'll like. Something you know you'll eat, and start there.

MG: And when we're in the depths of winter and perhaps as the pandemic continues, you'll be thankful that you actually took those steps.

ANA STOICA-CONSTANTIN: Absolutely.

MG: It's great to talk to you both. Good luck and thank you.

ANA STOICA-CONSTANTIN: Thank you.

AG: Ana Stoica-Constantin is a canner in Parry Sound, Ontario. Johwanna Alleyne is the owner of Mojo Jojo Pickles in Edmonton. Matt Galloway spoke with them last September. Coming up after your regional update. Episode four of the CBC Podcast Recall: How To Start a Revolution takes a look at the movements around the world that inspired the FLQ. Including America's Black Panthers. I'm Anthony Germain and you're listening to The Current.

Episode 4 of CBC podcast Recall: How to Start a Revolution

Guests:

[clip] [/clip]

AG: I'm Anthony Germain and you're listening to The Current. It's time to continue the CBC original podcast Recall: How to start a revolution. The FLQ's campaign for liberation did not emerge in a vacuum. In today's episode, we hear how radical Québec separatists were inspired by, and in turn inspired, decolonization movements around the world.

SOUNDCLIP

Sound Clip: [News reporter 1] A bomb exploded today in a federal government building in downtown Montreal.

Sound Clip: [News reporter 2] Would you say that this is a communist‑backed subversive group or would you say it's French separatist terrorism?

Sound Clip: [man speaks French]

[cheers and applause]

Sound Clip: [News reporter 3] The damaging of a section of track apparently with dynamite has been blamed on the so‑called Suicide Commandos.

Sound Clip: [News reporter 4] That they intend to murder in cold blood two innocent men unless their demands are met.

Sound Clip: [Woman] Your letters have moved me to hope that we will soon be together again. I do hope the FLQ will continue to allow you to write to me.

Geoff Turner: I'm Geoff Turner and this is Recall: How to Start a Revolution. Chapter Four: The Whole Wide World.

Sound Clip: [newsreel] It was like something out of a cheap, paperback thriller, a plot to blow up national landmarks. The Statue of Liberty was one of the targets of four extremists, say the New York police, who rounded up the suspects through the work of an undercover policeman. Damage to national symbols was meant to mar Uncle Sam's image. And a second target was that shrine of liberty in Philadelphia. With dynamite obtained in Canada...

Geoff Turner: This is a Universal news reel from February 16, 1965. It's not fiction.

Sound Clip: [newsreel] The plot involved three negro extremists, and a white Canadian girl.

Geoff Turner: And that white, Canadian girl? She was a tv and radio host from Quebec.

Sound Clip: [newsreel] Michelle Duclos of Montreal, who is affiliated with a group seeking independence for the province of Quebec.

Geoff Turner: How Michelle Duclos came to be involved in this intrigue says so much about the web of global connections among activists at the time. Just the summer before a friend of the Duclos had traveled to Cuba at the invitation of Fidel Castro. And while that friend was there, she met an American Black rights activist named Robert Collier. She told Collier all about the FLQ and its fight for independence in Quebec. Keep in mind that Collier would have been in violation of a State Department travel ban just by being in Cuba. And the State Department would have been really miffed if they'd heard about Collier's travel itinerary. It included a seminar at the North Vietnamese Embassy, where an army major gave a talk on the use of explosives and guerrilla warfare. So Collier came home with all sorts of international inspiration. He'd eventually go on to co‑found the New York chapter of the Black Panthers.

Geoff Turner: But first, he flew back to the States and before even leaving the airport, announced the founding of his own revolutionary group, the Black Liberation Front. A few months later Collier traveled to Montreal, and that's where the plan was hatched. The idea was to use explosives to sever the head and the torch‑bearing arm of the Statue of Liberty...or the ‘Damned Old Bitch’, as Collier preferred to call it. And this is where Michelle Duclos comes into the picture. Her support for the independence of Quebec was public knowledge. She'd been involved with the separatist political party, the RIN. And she was close enough to separatist radicals to get her hands on dynamite. Her job was to get the stuff and bring it to New York. True to her word, Duclos left Montreal in a 1961 Rambler. She was carrying 30 sticks of dynamite and three blasting caps. Unfortunately, for Duclos and the Black Liberation Front, their scheme was not such a well‑kept secret. Duclos had apparently fallen in love with one of the American activists, a guy named Ray Woodall.

Sound Clip: [newsreel] The happy ending to the plot was written by a rookie policeman, who had been on the force only eight months when he infiltrated the extremist group. His work led police to a quiet New York residential area, where the dynamite had been hidden. The woman member of the gang buried the explosive in a vacant lot, police say. And the undercover man, Raymond Wood, tipped his fellow policemen.

Geoff Turner: It turns out that Ray Woodall was actually Raymond Wood, an undercover cop. Thanks to coordination among the NYPD, the FBI, and the RCMP, Michelle Duclos had been tailed, starting in Montreal.

Sound Clip: [newsreel] With the extreme care of experts, the police successfully trucked the dynamite in their special vehicle to a vault at an army fort where it will be held for evidence, evidence against...

Geoff Turner: There were arrests. At that time Duclos was only affiliated with the RIN, publicly at least. But the guys who helped her obtain the dynamite were connected to the FLQ. They planned to make the Statue of Liberty bombing the founding act of their new cell. Instead, they wound up in jail. Michelle Duclos for her part pleaded guilty to illegally transporting dynamite into the US. She got five years. That was soon commuted to five years probation on the condition that she leave the country. Duclos would spend a few years as a TV host in Lebanon before returning to Quebec, where she climbed the ranks of the civil service. She seldom spoke of her part in the bombing plot.

Sound Clip: [Michelle Duclos speaking in French]

Geoff Turner: But in this 1968 interview, she tells Radio Canada that she's not a terrorist. She just wanted to make some noise.

Sound Clip: [Michelle Duclos speaking in French]

Geoff Turner: And besides, she says, terrorists kill people. They're violent. She never imagined that bombing a statue could kill or hurt someone, which seems more than a little naive. But somehow in this one‑failed plot, you get a snapshot of a global moment in radical politics, a picture that includes the Cuban Revolution, the US Black Power Movement, Vietnam's National Liberation Front, the Algerian Liberation Front, and of course, the FLQ. Now bear in mind, between 1947 and 1964 more than 30 countries in Africa alone gained independence from their colonial rulers. Many of these were negotiated in relatively‑peaceful transitions, but some like Algeria, were protracted, bloody struggles.

Sound Clip: [newsreader] In Algeria a mass protest against the proposed government ends with mob action and the gravest threat to the French Republic since the war.

Geoff Turner: For groups like the FLQ, the victory of independence in Algeria became a symbolic inspiration. This was especially and improbably thanks to a psychiatrist from the French West Indies.

Sound Clip: [Frantz Fanon speaking in French]

Geoff Turner: Frantz was deeply involved with the FLN, the leading anti‑colonial group during the Algerian war. His 1961 book, "The Wretched of the Earth," looked at the psychology of colonization. It also advocated violence in the name of decolonization. It was immediately and massively influential. And it became the philosophical foundation for nationalist groups around the developing world. The foreword was written by Jean‑Paul Sartre, which didn't hurt its popularity either. The founder of the FLQ was certainly a fan. Georges Schoeters kept posters of Fidel Castro and Che Guevara on his walls, alongside Cuban and Algerian flags. And when he was arrested and brought before the court for his role in bombings, he insisted he swear on a copy of the "Wretched of the Earth" instead of the bible. And if Frantz Fanon provided the ideological argument for revolutionary violence, a 1966 film was the practical teaching aid for guerrilla warfare.

Geoff Turner: “The Battle of Algiers” was a gritty, verite version of the war. It had the look and feel of a news reel. Aspiring revolutionaries took inspiration and lessons from the film.

Sound Clip: [man from “The Battle of Algiers” speaks in alternate language]

Geoff Turner: And all of this fed a spirit among activists that there was something going on, a movement that crossed borders and cultures and race.

Sound Clip: [Philippe Fils‑Aime] OK. My name is Philippe Fils‑Aime. I am a Haitian internationalist militant, as one may say.

Geoff Turner: Philippe Fils‑Aime was born in Haiti. He was still a kid when Francois 'Papa Doc' Duvalier came to power. It wasn't long before the Fils‑Aime family was looking to escape the dictator's brutal regime. Just as Philippe was about to turn 18, they fled to the US. And the US might have been an improvement for the young man, until he got his draft notice. He was expected to go fight for his new country in Vietnam. Instead, he split for Montreal and landed in the middle of an ideological melting pot. And though radical movements differed in the particulars, Philippe Fils‑Aime found himself at the intersection where minds met. He was a quick study. And he didn't like what he was learning.

Sound clip: [Philippe Fils‑Aime] This was an anti‑colonial, anti‑racist, anti‑imperialist. We perceive America like an empire. Britain is an empire. France is an empire. No, we started to see the connection between all these things, the relationship between their being so fat and and wealthy and us being so fucking poor.

Geoff Turner: So Fils‑Aime fell in with others who were working, as he puts it, for the betterment of the world. He saw opportunity in the Black diaspora that was shaking off colonial rule. And he wanted to bring the voices of that diaspora to Montreal to talk.

Sound Clip: [Philippe Fils‑Aime] It corresponded with, with the rise of the new more active leadership in all of these movements. Like, I was 19. I am myself surprised to see how I was devoted to this thing, like, and I had to learn real quick and fast.

Geoff Turner: That thing was the Congress of Black Writers. It took place over four days in October of 1968, at the McGill University campus in Montreal. It was dedicated to the memory of Martin Luther King Jr and Malcolm X.

Sound Clip: [Philippe Fils‑Aime] A lot of stories started there. The revolution in Grenada started there. The struggles in Jamaica started there or were took the perspective from there. So this congress is really important in terms of the development of the struggle.

Geoff Turner: To this day it's considered to be one of the most important gatherings of Black radicals of the era and for good reason.

Sound Clip: [Philippe Fils‑Aime] When we organized this Congress of Black Writers, we had the chance of meeting a lot of different people from different organizations all over the world.

Geoff Turner: Including the Black Panthers. Stokely Carmichael was a Trinidad‑born American civil rights leader who had developed the philosophy behind the Black Power movement. He'd marched with King. He campaigned for voting rights for Black people, protested against Vietnam. He was close with Muhammad Ali and an honorary prime minister for the Black Panthers.

Sound Clip: [Philippe Fils‑Aime] Stokely was a heavyweight. Yes. Yes. And he could recognize a heavyweight when he...

Geoff Turner: It wasn't only Black radicals who turned up.

Sound Clip: [Philippe Fils‑Aime] And somehow I was in charge of facilitating the communications between the, these movements in the Quebecois. And I remember that Mario Bachand when he met with Stokley Carmichael...

Geoff Turner: On the surface at least, this was an odd meeting. Mario Bachand had been a member in the first wave of FLQ activity, but he was put out of action just as he was getting started when he was jailed for his role in the Westmount mailbox bombing. That's the one that had put a military bomb expert in hospital for life.

Sound Clip: [Mario Bachand] [speaking French]

Geoff Turner: After his release, Bachand stayed politically active and became known as an organizer. And Fils‑Aime knew him by reputation to be well‑respected within certain FLQ ranks, including intellectual leaders like Pierre Vallieres, whose book had caused such a stir. You'll remember that Vallieres compared the plight of French Canadians with that of Black Americans. You can imagine how that might have gone down with someone like Stokely Carmichael. Fils‑Aime expected Carmichael to bring the Quebecois down a notch or two. He was in for a surprise.

Sound Clip: [Philippe Fils‑Aime] That was a very, very hot meeting, at the end of which Stokely made this remark. He said, this guy is either a fucking spy or he is the next fucking John Brown of North America. That's what he said of Mario Bachand.

Geoff Turner: The John Brown he refers to was a white abolitionist and insurrectionist, but Philippe Fils‑Aime had a comparison of his own.

Sound Clip: [Philippe Fils‑Aime] For me, Mario Bachand was the next, the next, I don’t know, the next Trotsky, the next Fidel Castro of this country.

Geoff Turner: The FLQ had made an impression and found allies. And it wasn't long before its members would come calling on those new allies.

Geoff Turner: In March 1969, the leader of yet another new cell of the FLQ was arrested in connection with a series of bombings. And when word got out, two other members of the cell Pierre Charette and Alain Allard hatched a plan to escape before the cops could pick them up as well. They batted around the idea of hiding out in the Laurentides region, just north of Montreal, but then they settled on something else or someone else, rather. Stokely Carmichael, he'd given Mario Bachand an address in New York City when the two met at the Congress of Black Writers. That address made its way to Charette and Allard. They picked up some cash and boarded a night train south out of Montreal.

Geoff Turner: It's early morning when the two arrive at the house in Harlem. They knock on the door. They're not sure what to expect. You have to remember that Harlem was not only the center of Black culture in New York, it was a launch pad for the civil rights movement. On any given day you'd find politicians, religious leaders, and Black liberation activists rallying the community from the street corner or from the pulpit.

Sound Clip: [men and women protesting]

Sound Clip: [Malcolm X] I know you're against racism too. We're all against racism. The only difference between you and me, is you want to fight racism and racist non‑violently and lovingly. And I'll fight them the way they fight me. There should be no peace on Earth for anybody until there's peace also for us.

[applause]

Geoff Turner: Malcolm X was there, so was Adam Clayton Powell Jr, Stokely Carmichael. They were fighting for better schools, jobs, housing, better policing.

Sound Clip: [Man] We cannot take the law into our hands…

Geoff Turner: But in 1964, there was still only one Black cop in Harlem for every six white cops. And when an unarmed 15‑year‑old black kid was shot and killed by a white off‑duty officer, the relationship between civil rights activists and the NYPD, which was already strained, well, it just crumbled into protests and riots.

Sound Clip: [siren]

Geoff Turner: Add to that the unwillingness of white landlords to rent to Black tenants. It meant that Harlemites faced some of the highest rents in the city for cramped, decaying housing. By the late '60s, those who could afford it were packing up for neighborhoods in Queens, Brooklyn, the Bronx, where they'd have access to all the things they'd been fighting for in Harlem. Those who stayed behind were some of the poorest people in the city. Crumbling tenements were abandoned and boarded up. Unemployment rates soared, so did crime. Harlem felt not only desolate in places, but dangerous.

Geoff Turner: So here come these two skinny white kids who speak very little English, fresh off a train and on the run, standing on a stoop in Harlem, asking for help from Stokely Carmichael. Carmichael does invite them in. And confirms their story with a lawyer in Montreal. And then he reaches a simple conclusion, he can't hide them. I mean, for one, look at them. How do you not notice two white French Canadians in Harlem in 1969? And Carmichael knows he's already under police surveillance for his own radical activities. So there were limits to the solidarity that Carmichael and the Black Panthers would offer. But what Carmichael could do was send the pair to a white ally in another part of the city.

Geoff Turner: Sam Melville was an American activist with revolutionary ambitions, but by late 1968, many in the anti‑war and revolutionary movements had all but given up hope for change. It had been a year of massive civil unrest. The assassination of Martin Luther King Jr touched off violent protests. And that August, demonstrators at the Democratic National Convention were met with brutality from Chicago police. Sam Melville was looking for inspiration to keep going. Then these two members of the FLQ turn up. And they know how to make bombs. So Melville takes care of them in exchange for lessons on how to start a revolution. It's a happy time for Charette and Allard, but in May Melville's collective of radicals is infiltrated by the FBI and the two have to move on. This time they decide to flee to Cuba. They do a couple of weeks of planning. Melville finds them a gun. His lover, Jane Apert, finds them a flight. The Americans are nervous, but they're excited too. They're part of something bigger.

Geoff Turner: On May 5th, Charette and Allard leave Greenwich Village and head for LaGuardia Airport. Apert and Melville are there to see them off. They buy two first‑class tickets to Miami on National Airlines flight 91. Charette is carrying the .38 caliber handgun from Melville. Allard has a pocketknife. They clear security, and they take their seats. Once in the air Charette pulls out his gun and demands to see the pilot. Allard stays behind with the knife to keep an eye on the passengers. They're both sweating profusely. They're very nervous. They promise they won't hurt anyone if they're dropped at the Jose‑Marte airport in Havana. The pilot doesn't see either man as a violent threat, but Havana is a short detour from Miami and he agrees. The airport isn't equipped to handle the Boeing 727, so it takes some time for Cuban soldiers to actually board the plane and escort Charette and Allard out.

Geoff Turner: From there, it's pretty straightforward. The two identify themselves as members of the Revolutionary Quebec Liberation Front. They ask for asylum. Each is given a smallpox shot. And then they're bundled into a car and taken to the capitol. A couple of first‑class tickets paid for in cash, a gun, and a knife was all it took to start a new life, but maybe even the weapons were overkill. Charette would later meet someone in Cuba who got there with only a pair of nail clippers. Back in New York, Jane Aprit and Sam Melville were listening to the radio. According to Apert, they were ecstatic. "Those little bastards," Melville said. "They did it." Later that year, Sam Melville would earn the nickname 'The Mad Bomber'. It was for a series of bombs he set in federal and commercial buildings around New York, action that would inspire other radical groups, including the Weather Underground, a movement born out of protest against the war in Vietnam and American imperialism. When he was caught, he was sent to Attica Prison.

Sound Clip: [reporter] Several hundred demonstrators shouting Attica means fight back, marched into midtown Manhattan, one of two rallies in New York today, to denounce the use of police force at the prison. An effigy...

Geoff Turner: Melville died in 1971, killed in the Attica Prison riots that he helped to organize. Alain Allard is no longer alive, but we did reach out to Pierre Charette. He wouldn't agree to an on‑the‑record interview with us, but we did meet with him. And he confirmed the details of this wild tale for us. The idea of hijacking a plane with a pistol, a pen knife, and a lot of nerve. It might seem far‑fetched in the post‑9/11 world but you need to understand something about air travel in 1969. If you fly at all, you're accustomed to the pat downs, the swabs, the x‑rays, the metal detectors. But things used to be a lot more laid back, loose. Brendan Koerner is the author of 'The Skies Belong to Us: Love and Terror in the Golden Age of Hijacking.'

Sound Clip: [Brendan Koerner] So you have to keep in mind there was no security at this time in airports. You could basically walk from the curb to the top of the boarding stairs with no ID, not showing anyone a ticket, no one checks your carry‑on luggage or your person.

Sound Clip: [News reporter 1] Time and patience are running out among the passengers still held hostage aboard the hijacked jets.

Sound Clip: [Man] We then refuel the aircraft fully. He wanted to go to Havana, Cuba.

Sound Clip: [News reporter 2] The Popular Front commandos have confirmed their threat to blow up both jets and passengers unless Palestinian guerrillas held in Europe and Israel.

Sound Clip: [Brendan Koerner] And so the airlines are facing these hijackings, and they run the calculus and say, well, we can spend millions and millions of dollars implementing security or we can put up with like 20 to 30 hijackings a year. And so they basically mandated for their flight personnel that comply with everything the hijacker wants.

Geoff Turner: Between 1961 and 1973, there were 159 hijackings. And the period of to 1968‑1973 was really wild. There were stretches where a plane a week was being hijacked and diverted. As crazy as that was, the airlines couldn't believe that passengers would tolerate the inconvenience of security screening.

Sound Clip: [Brendan Koerner] But they argued that air travel would be destroyed, that basically no one would be able to get on the plane...

Geoff Turner: So it wasn't until 1973 that the industry started to implement metal detectors and security screening, like we're familiar with today. In the meantime, would‑be revolutionaries, criminals, and weirdos were commandeering passenger jets to Cuba. Although that didn't always turn out to be such a great move.

Sound Clip: [Brendan Koerner] Generally there were two fates that awaited the hijackers who went down there. Upon landing they would be interrogated by the secret police. The majority they decided were kind of harmless, so they would kind of put them up in this dormitory in South Havana. And they would basically just live there and eek out in existence. And a lot of them ended up being fed up with the spartan lifestyle and the difficulties of what they had to face and ended up begging to come back. A small number of these hijackers, however, were determined by the secret police to be dangerous. And they were actually imprisoned in these horrible gulags where they were forced to harvest sugarcane. There's some real horror stories about violence and torture that took place in those gulags. So yeah, very few of them found the utopia they were looking for.

Geoff Turner: Pierre Charette and Alain Allard certainly didn't. As relatively comfortable as their life was in Cuba, their handlers settled them into a hotel, the Vedada, where they met with other exiles, mostly from other Latin‑American countries. They found earlier FLQ members there as well, including Mario Bachand. And they wouldn't be the last to arrive. A Canadian ambassador from that period remembers FLQ members asking Castro for weapons training, anything to pass the time and build on their revolutionary skills. But Castro was having none of it. Canada was now under the leadership of Pierre Elliot Trudeau, who was somewhat supportive of Castro. Charette felt more sympathy from the Algerian government in Cuba, the North Koreans too. They would even feed the pair and invite them over to the embassy for movie nights. Not long after he returned to Canada, Pierre Charette spoke to Radio Canada about his experience in Cuba.

Sound Clip: [Pierre Charette] [speaking in French]

Geoff Turner: In Cuba he saw individual rights sacrificed in the name of the collective good. And that wasn't something he could support, he says. Even as he saw living conditions improve for Cubans. FLQ members would eventually all drift out of Cuba, one after another, some for Algeria, others for France. Pierre Charette would be one of the last to make at home in 1979 after 10 years of exile. It was a bitter parting. He wanted out badly but the Cuban government denied him an exit visa. He wound up sleeping in the doorway of the Canadian embassy in Havana, until the Canadian government finally intervened to bring him home.

Geoff Turner: On his return to Canada Charette did a bit of time, but in the end, the government pardoned him for his role in the FLQ bombing campaign of 1968. 14 years after they hijacked that plane, the US tried to extradite Charette and Allard for air piracy, but get this, hijacking a plane wasn't illegal in Canada in 1969. So the Supreme Court of Canada dismissed the case, but the Americans haven't let it go. I don't know if you're aware of this, but police all over North America use this hashtag on Twitter. They call it 'Wanted Wednesday.' It's a chance to share info and mug shots of suspects and convicted criminals on the loose. Well, somehow in the course of our research, we came across one of those 'Wanted Wednesday' posts. It was from the FBI's New York Twitter account from back in 2016.

Geoff Turner: It looks like a classic wanted poster. There are two pictures. The first is of a young man in his early 20s with long hair and a beard. The second, the same young man, but looking decidedly more clean cut. And above those pictures the words, "Wanted: Jean‑Pierre Charette, should be considered armed and dangerous. If you have any information concerning this person, please contact your local FBI office or the nearest American embassy or consulate." Charette is in his 70s now living a quiet life in Montreal. He's warm and forthcoming. He has a mischievous laugh. Having spent time in his home, I can attest that he is armed with an impressive collection of classical music CDs.

Geoff Turner: While Pierre Charette was meeting with revolutionaries in Cuba, Philippe Fils‑Aime was back in Montreal thinking about revolution through the lens of his own unique life experience in Haiti, in the US, and in Canada. Philippe Fils‑Aime has asked me to meet him in the cafe at the Quebec National Library. This is the storehouse of the province's history and culture. It's a bustling modern building. Fils‑Aime carries himself with an easy confidence, but there's gravitas to him as well. It's easy to picture him at 19 stoking the fires of revolution. Fils‑Aime says that in Montreal he found solidarity, but a complicated solidarity.

Sound Clip: [Philippe Fils‑Aime] We supported in principle, the idea that if the Quebec people wants its independence, they should be allowed to be independent. In this sense, there was a solidarity.

Geoff Turner: Protest all you like, he says. And we'll join you on those picket lines, but the Quebecois, they weren't living under a dictatorship, under the threat of death.

Sound Clip: [Philippe Fils‑Aime] This question of use of terrorism, that is not necessary here. As a Haitian my position was always, look man, like, we'll use violence to overthrow Duvalier, but that is a specific situation. If you use violence here, this will not help because you only must use these violent methods when there is no hope of other form of political fight.

[Geoff Turner] So you must have then believed that in effect that democratic pathways hadn't been fully explored.

[Philippe Fils‑Aime] Well, I still believe that in retrospective. This is what we believe in these times, and it was difficult to tell them that. But we did ‑ like, the Cubans even told them that. Like, look, man, that's not the way to do it. Don't start with the position that because there is a revolution come to true violence that you have to jump on that weapon. That's the last resort.

Geoff Turner: And if you are going to resort to violence, well, you better be sure you've got the people on your side, he says.

Sound Clip: [Philippe Fils‑Aime] Of course, that's easily said. I think that in some ways their contact work with the West Indian Movement, with the Haitian Movement, and some of the Afro‑American Movements was beneficial for them in the sense that they did not go all out in some anarchist type or uncalled for violence.

[Geoff Turner] You used the analogy earlier of the revolutionaries who shake the tree and the revolutionaries who get to pick up the fruit on the ground. Do you feel as though the Quebec Society has been able to pick up fruit from the tree shakers of that time?

[Philippe Fils‑Aime] You bet, they have. This is a very ingenious people, man, just think of that. They managed to get...

Geoff Turner: Fils‑Aime says the ingeniousness of Quebec politics is in how the province has leveraged its position in Confederation. He points out that at one time there was Pierre Trudeau a Quebecker as Prime Minister and Rene Levesque as Premier. He says it was like having two sons competing to bring the best goodies home to mother.

Sound Clip: [Philippe Fils‑Aime] So they negotiate their way through very nicely.

Geoff Turner: Fils‑Aime says, when he first arrived in Montreal, he came as a Haitian with a very specific revolutionary dream.

Sound Clip: [Philippe Fils‑Aime] With a vision, a romantic vision of going back and getting rid of 'Papa Doc.' Then I started to think in terms of the whole West Indiana archipelago. Then I started to think of Africa, of Latin America.

Geoff Turner: And he didn't stop there, which is why at the age of 81 he's still introducing himself as an international militant.

Sound Clip: [Philippe Fils‑Aime] Now, with time, I realized that I can think of the whole planet. That means that I would feel very much at ease promoting a world revolution because it's part of it, like, the question started that what is to become of us West Indian and Blacks? And then it ended as, hey, what is becoming of this world?

Geoff Turner: Groups like the Black Panthers and the Quebec Liberation Front grew from an ideal, a belief that people have the power to throw off the shackles of colonialism and oppression and make a better world, that there's a more just way to order society and that revolution can make it happen. The movements inspired and nourished one another through words and solidarity and sometimes weapons, but there were powerful obstacles in the way. In the US the FBI would infiltrate Black Power groups and derail the movement. Algerian rebels would win independence only to see the country slide into a new form of authoritarian rule. And in Quebec, as the decade wore on, the FLQ seemed no closer to its revolutionary goals. Years of bombing had landed members in jail and in a couple of cases in the grave. And while the trial of Pierre Vallieres had won public sympathy for the FLQ cause, it didn't translate into broad revolutionary action.

AG: We've been listening to the hit CBC podcast Recall: How to start a revolution. Next week, we continue with the story of one man who difused FLQ bombs - and the story of one man who planted them:

SOUNDCLIP

The one man who was responsible for the most bombs, well, he's been like a ghost in this story. His name is Pierre-Paul Jafois, and he's hardly spoken publicly about his brief career as a terrorist over the years. Jafois was more than once approached by reporters, but politely declined. So as badly as I wanted to hear his story, I didn't have much hope that he would want anything to do with us. But you got to try, right? In February, my producer, Francis, reached out to him. It was a Hail Mary. The conversation lasted for several minutes

[French speech]

And by early March, we were sitting at his kitchen table in Thabang, just outside Montreal.

AG: We'll bring you that episode - The Bomber - next week. That's our program for today. Stay tuned to Radio One for q. Ishkōdé is the name of the new record label started by Shoshona Kish of Digging Roots, and Amanda Rheaume. The word means fire in Anishinaabemowin. The two musicians join guest-host Falen Johnson to talk about their creation of the label to fill a void in the music scene, and how their partnership with Universal Music will work to amplify other Indigenous artists. I'm Anthony Germain. Thanks for listening to The Current.

The Current Transcript for August 27, 2021

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Prologue

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Mellissa Fung says Afghan women taught her resilience, now they need help; Canadians turn to canning to save fruits of summer pandemic gardens

Episode 4 of CBC podcast Recall: How to Start a Revolution

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