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The Current Transcript for August 19, 2016

Host: Connie Walker

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Listen to the full episode

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

Alright, we’re live from the Olympic pool here in Montreal. The final women’s event, 4x100-metre relay.

[Starting pistol fired]

There they go, East Germany in the lead.

[Crowd cheering]

CW: Yes, we’re starting today in an Olympic pool. But not in Rio—we’re taking you back to 1976 in Montreal. Canada’s women swimmers were gold medal favourites but it was East Germany that was dominant in the pool. We know now their success was thanks to a state-sponsored doping program. Today, we’re asking whether all these years later an injustice should be corrected by awarding new gold medals to the runners-up. We’ll hear from a former Olympian and more on that idea first up. Then— what’s it like to look up and encounter a million snow geese? For John Aitchison, it’s just another day at the office.

SOUNDCLIP

[Geese squawking]

It was so overwhelming an experience. I remember thinking I wish this would stop and then I immediately thought I wish this would go on forever.

CW: The acclaimed photographer and doc maker on capturing nature and preserving it too, in half an hour. I’m Connie Walker and this is the summer edition of The Current.

Should the IOC redistribute medals to swimmers who lost to doping East Germans in 1976?

Guests: Anne Jardin Alexander, Brent Rutemiller

SOUNDCLIP

[Crowd cheering]

ANNOUNCER 1: Smith is still in a bronze medal contention and it’s going to be Thümer, I think, touching ahead of Babashoff. Thümer from East Germany gets it in a time of 4:09.89. That’s a world record, Bruce.

ANNOUNCER 2: That’s quite a time. Excellent swim.

CW: It’s been 40 years since the East German women’s swim team won gold after gold at the 1976 Montreal Olympics. But memories of those races are still fresh and bitter for those other women who were in the pool at the Games. Especially the Canadian swimmers, who were gold medal favourites in Montreal but they were shut out, even as rumours swirled at the time that something wasn’t quite right about the East German women’s sudden rise to dominance. Years later after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the suspicions were confirmed. The East German state had sponsored a massive doping program monitored by the Stasi, secret police. Nevertheless, all those tarnished gold medals still belong to the German athletes and some in the swimming world are campaigning to finally give the swimmers who lost out their due. Anne Jardin Alexander remembers those races against the East German women well. The former Canadian Olympic swimmer won two bronze medals in Montreal in 1976. And she joins me now from Markham, Ontario. Good morning.

ANNE JARDIN ALEXANDER: Good morning.

CW: Anne, take us back to 1976. You were 16 years old. How excited were you when you marched into the Olympic stadium with the Canadian team?

ANNE JARDIN ALEXANDER: It was quite a remarkable day. In actual fact, I didn’t get to walk into the stadium because I was swimming four times the next day. So I had to rest my legs, as you’ve probably heard many swimmers and athletes have had. But to walk into the swimming pool on the first day of swimming, which was the second day of the Olympics, nothing can replace that feeling of looking into the stands and seeing the number of people that were there to support us and all the other Canadian and other swimmers from around the world.

CW: What kind of expectations did your team have—or did you have of yourself? And what did you think that you were going to be able to accomplish at those Games?

ANNE JARDIN ALEXANDER: We knew that we were favoured in a number of the events. And looking at the times that we’re coming into the swim meet, we were very competitive. We knew that we were expected—being the host nation—to win. To win. And I use the win, to win events so we could have gold for our wonderful country of Canada. And we really believed that we could do it. Our coaches said nothing was holding us back. We were in great form and we were ready to compete.

CW: Tell me about the first time you encountered the East German swimmers. It was in the locker room, am I right?

ANNE JARDIN ALEXANDER: [chuckles] Yes, I’ve told this story a number of times. And actually, I’ve heard Cheryl Gibson say a very similar story. It was the first evening of the swimming at the Olympics, so the first day of the competition. And I was in the change room before I was to swim my semi-final of the 100-metre freestyle. And I was pulling up this little tiny bathing suit and I heard men’s voices in the change room and I said oh my gosh, I can’t believe—I’m so nervous right now. I’m 16 years old. There’s guys in the change room. I’ve got to see what’s going on here. So I put on my robe and I put my head around the corner of the lockers and I could not believe what I saw. But I heard and saw the three East German women that I was about to swim against and I kind of went oh my gosh. Because that was the first time that we’ve ever been in the same locker room because they’ve been quite protected from the general swimmers. So to see that and witness that, I kind of went oh, pull it together now. And I was very, very nervous after seeing that.

CW: What did you think, I mean, when you encountered them?

ANNE JARDIN ALEXANDER: I thought that doesn’t sound very natural. But at the same time, life was different then. I was 16 years old and we didn’t have the media that we have now and the social media and the Internet and all of that to say and figure out why they looked the way they looked and how they sounded. So I just thought okay, well, I’ve just got a big job to do because my gosh, look how big and powerful they are.

CW: Did you at all suspect that they could have been doping? I mean, was that even within the realm of possibility in your mind?

ANNE JARDIN ALEXANDER: I had heard whispers of it but at the same time, our coaches always said to put everything aside and concentrate on what you can do. It’s not about what your competitors can do, necessarily, so keep your head down and work. And it was a different world because we didn’t have the same people informing us of things. We were very naïve back then, about competition and cleanliness and all of that stuff. So I really didn’t think too much about it other than I’ve got a big job ahead of me.

CW: So obviously they were very successful, but in your mind, how did the East German team change the swimming competition in ’76?

ANNE JARDIN ALEXANDER: Oh, I could speak—for me, I could speak for my teammates, my friends, personally, the whole bit—not only for the colour of medals that we did but for the whole acknowledgement that our women’s swim team did a pretty amazing job. Although we did not win gold, we did an amazing job and I don’t think we were truly acknowledged with that. If we were to go as we say, take back and change the medals to different colours, that would in the record books make us look like we were very successful but when we left, we kind of said wow, we didn’t do it and we were made to feel that we weren’t quite what was expected of us.

CW: Shirley Babashoff was an American swimmer who, back in 1976, voiced her suspicions that something fishy was going on with the East German team. And for that, she was vilified. She earned the nickname “Surly Shirley” and she was branded a sore loser. Let’s take a listen to what she says now, 40 years after those Olympics.

SOUNDCLIP

I think most people look at a silver medal as being something you won, and unfortunately in ’76, a silver medal got to be the losing. You were the loser. And it was a really rough time. People would come up to me and say like oh, you got another silver, the East Germans beat you again. Wait a minute, what’s going on here? This is so unusual. This tiny, little, depressed country now has the best women—only women swimmers in the whole world. It didn’t—no one thought anything of that.

CW: Back in 1976 when Shirley made those comments, what did you think of them at the time?

ANNE JARDIN ALEXANDER: I have to be honest: I was fully in support of what she was saying. Because she—I swam against her a number of times and she was an incredible swimmer, an incredible athlete, an incredible talent and I remember… And actually, I’ve just seen a video of her recently, of the last race which was the 4x100 freestyle relay where the Americans and East Germans were neck in neck and I was their anchor on our relay so I got to witness it. And Shirley actually touched the East German to win the final gold medal of those Olympics for the women. And after the race was over, I gave her a big hug and I’ve seen it on video and I’m kind of going yeah, that’s what it’s all about, is swimming to the best and actually you know what, beating those East Germans was an amazing feeling for them and I was really, really happy for her.

CW: She said in that clip though, that winning silver felt like losing.

ANNE JARDIN ALEXANDER: [chuckles] Hundred per cent.

CW: Yeah. I mean, do you identify with that?

ANNE JARDIN ALEXANDER: Absolutely. And it’s taken me a long time to realize how important, how special bronze medals are. Because we tend to, you know, celebrate the winning ones as opposed to the people that do a great job and earn a medal of any colour. It’s really, really hard to not win when the rest of the country wants you to win and you sometimes come up short. And to win any medal of any colour is quite an amazing performance.

CW: One of your teammates in 1976, Wendy Hogg, said that after the Olympics, despite winning medals, she said that she went through a depression and she was haunted by the fact that they did not do well enough. What goes through your mind when the Summer Olympics roll around and you look at your medals again?

ANNE JARDIN ALEXANDER: [exhales] What goes through my mind? [inhales] Well, for me, it was difficult because in 1976, I was 16 years old. It was my first Olympics. As you’ve probably heard many times covering the Rio Olympics right now, is like everyone’s saying yeah, it’s their first Olympics. This is something to build on. So to be able to win bronze medals and to place in the top 16 in the world is quite amazing when I think back. But at the time, I was kind of like yeah—I wouldn’t use the word “depressed” about it, but—disappointed. But to think that we were all working towards—that’s another subject—that we were working towards four years later when we were all going to be at our real peak, for Moscow in 1980, and then we boycotted. So that was like a real, real punch after that. After having what we would call non-success in ’76 and not being able to compete at all in 1980.

CW: Shirley Babashoff believes that the International Olympic Committee should redistribute the medals won by the East German swimmers linked to the doping program and recognize athletes like you who lost out. What do you think of that?

ANNE JARDIN ALEXANDER: I think that would be very—it would be a very good idea. At the same time, you really can’t rewrite history books. Yes, it would be nice to have a silver medal certainly, and I would love for my friends and teammates to receive medals for people that came fourth, fifth or sixth. And Canada would have had a sweep in one of the events. They would have come gold, silver and bronze. That would be tremendous for the acknowledgement of it all. I would love that but it doesn’t—maybe it would rectify a bit of it, of how I’m feeling, but it doesn’t really change standing up on a block and doing your best at that particular time, knowing that there were three East Germans in every final virtually, taking up spaces of people who came ninth, 10^th or 11^th that didn’t get a chance to compete again for that gold, silver or bronze medal.

CW: Well, thank you very much Anne, for joining us today. We really appreciate having you on.

ANNE JARDIN ALEXANDER: Oh, thank you so much.

CW: Anne Jardin Alexander won two bronze medals in the 1976 Montreal Olympics and we reached her today in Markham, Ontario. Well, the doping scandal of 1976 may be in the history books but the injustice still stings for many, including my next guest. Brent Rutemiller is the publisher of Swimming World Magazine and he is in Phoenix, Arizona. Good morning.

BRENT RUTEMILLER: Good morning.

CW: Brent, some people might ask why we should still care so much about a doping scandal from 40 years ago when there are still ongoing scandals—fresh ones—to this day. How do you answer that question?

BRENT RUTEMILLER: Well, first of all, I don’t think that there’s any kind of time limitation on correcting a wrong. But I think that there will continue to be violations until—well, there will continue to be violations—but if there is really no penalty, if the IOC or FINA, the governing body for swimming, does not recognize and does not penalize the wrongs of the past, then it really does allow for things such as what’s going on in Russia now. There’s been no penalty. And I think—to answer your question specifically—this is a tremendous stain on the sport and it can be rectified or acknowledged, but right now, the IOC won’t acknowledge it. They have a memo that they send out saying that it’s done, we’re not going to revisit that. And that’s just wrong.

CW: Tell us a bit about the East German doping program for our listeners who aren’t familiar. How did it work?

BRENT RUTEMILLER: Wow. It was a systemic doping program that started in 1973 and continued to 1989. We did not—once the Berlin Wall came down and we got a hold of the Stasi’s files, we found out that thousands of athletes, school-aged athletes, young kids, were systematically doped. They ended up recognizing this after the Berlin Wall fell. There was a settlement, a 2.2 million, to offset all the health issues that stemmed from this doping machine.

CW: What were—I mean some of the athletes didn’t even know that they were being—that they were part of this doping program, right? I mean, how did taking these drugs affect the health of these athletes?

BRENT RUTEMILLER: Oh. Well, obviously, this was the early steroid era and massive changes in body types, mostly all the women, and that would be body hair, facial acne, change in voice, tremendous strength. And they noticed changes. The women would miss their menstrual cycles. And they would notice changes, but anybody who rebelled or did not continue with it were penalized and the families were penalized.

CW: But they also had serious effects on—especially these women—after, even after they stopped competing. Am I right?

BRENT RUTEMILLER: Yeah, yeah. And later on, miscarriages. Some of the women went through sex changes, became men. Depression. There was just a whole host of after effects and that’s really one of the messages that needs to constantly be told to people. When you have drugs, there are side effects, long-term side effects.

CW: And we know that the German government actually compensated 167 athletes for some of these side effects from this doping program. What would you like to see the International Olympic Committee do about all of those gold medals, all of the medals that were won by the East German swimmers in 1976?

BRENT RUTEMILLER: Well, we’ve been a big proponent of trying to have a duplicate medal. We feel that the East German women were victims too. And it took us a long time to come to that conclusion but we feel that the East German women should keep their medals. But there should be a point where everyone comes together and it’s a catharsis, it’s a celebration of forgiveness and change and where the East Germans are there with the other athletes and then there’s duplicate medals given. I just think it’d just be a wonderful show of humanity and bring more attention to this, that we finally recognize this and we’re going to move on. So our big thing is we want the IOC to recognize that there were victims on both sides and we want asterisks by all of those records. We don’t want to remove the records but we want asterisks to say these records were obtained during—they were assisted through performance-aiding drugs.

CW: So, we contacted the International Olympic Committee to ask about revisiting the East German medals and they sent us this one line response: “The IOC will not act retroactively because of the statutes of limitations.” What do you think of that response?

BRENT RUTEMILLER: Well, I’ve seen that same response multiple times and I know exactly what it says and it is one line. There is precedence. They have an eight-year rule that they try to stick to. But there’s precedence there. They’ve done it a number of times. Lance Armstrong was one of them, Marion Jones was another one, where once there was proof and admission of guilt that they did go back. So I think they’re hiding behind that. I think they’re afraid that if they acknowledge this, there’s political ramifications and I think that they’re going to open up other people saying well, how do you know that these other people weren’t doping, that are now getting medals? So, it’s a weak excuse.

CW: What does it say that 40 years after the Montreal Olympics, doping scandals, including state-sponsored scandals, are still plaguing the Olympic Games?

BRENT RUTEMILLER: I think it says that we haven’t done it right. We haven’t acknowledged it. We haven’t educated people enough. And it also says the IOC just won’t take on the toughest issue that surrounds our sport.

CW: How realistic do you think it is that someday, doping will stop being a part of the Games?

BRENT RUTEMILLER: I don’t think it will ever stop. I think it’s human nature to find ways to push the limits and test and continue to do those boundaries. But they have to put resources into it and they have to stay up with technology. But you also need to—those who violate it need to be pointed out and they needed to be showed that we can catch you. But when people are caught and they’re only fined for 18 months and they’re not given lifetime bans, it’s just not a strong enough signal.

CW: Okay, we only have a few seconds left, but if someday the athletes who did lose out to the East Germans in ’76 do get upgraded to new medals, how do you think that ceremony should take place?

BRENT RUTEMILLER: I think it should take place for the swimmers at a world championship. I think there is an opportunity in 2017 in Budapest and there will be an opportunity in 2019 in Korea, South Korea. I think that would be a wonderful moment and I do think it will happen someday.

CW: Alright. Well, thank you very much for joining us, Brent.

BRENT RUTEMILLER: Oh, you’re welcome very much.

CW: Brent Rutemiller is the publisher of Swimming World Magazine. He was in Phoenix, Arizona. So what do you think? We’d like to hear from you. Should the International Olympic Committee issue new medals to athletes who lost to the East German Olympians in 1976? Send us your thoughts on Twitter @thecurrentcbc, comment on our Facebook page or email us by clicking on the contact link at www.cbc.ca/thecurrent. The news is next, then John Aitchison is just one of the great nature documentary makers of our time whose credits include the BBC series, Frozen Planet. He reflects on a career spent filming the glories of nature, in our next half hour. I’m Connie Walker and you’re listening to the summer edition of The Current.

[Music: Sting]

ENCORE: 'We have an obligation to care for nature,' says wildlife filmmaker

Guests: John Aitchison

CONNIE WALKER: Hello, I'm Connie Walker and you’re listening to the summer edition of The Current.

[Music: Theme]

CW: Coming right up, nature: the great metaphor.

SOUNDCLIP

[Large group of geese squawking in distance]

I’m in a hide looking out over a frozen lake in the Midwest, in Missouri. I just had to use my tea from a flask to thaw out the ground so that the tripod wouldn’t fall over. But despite it being so cold, it is actually spring and the birds have started to migrate north. And the ones that I'm hoping to film landing on this lake, just starting to come in over ahead, are snow geese. They’re in beautiful long V-shaped skeins. Maybe 200 birds in a skein, just waving slightly as the line of birds fly forth.

CW: That’s John Aitchison describing the graceful migration of snow geese. And inside that freezing hide, it’s just another day at the office for the wildlife filmmaker. He has travelled to some of the most remote parts of the world to document wildlife – from lynx in the Yukon to Emperor penguins in Antarctica — all in the hope of showing people they should care about what happens to creatures in nature. And he’s sharing his encounters in a book called The Shark and the Albatross. John Aitchison spoke with Anna Maria Tremonti in May from Glasgow, Scotland.

AMT: It's so interesting listening to that tape. First, I thought it was background noise. I realized that those were the birds.

JOHN AITCHISON: Yes. That's the geese, the snow geese. They're in such big numbers. In fact, we filmed more than a million on one day when they stopped at one lake on their way north and the background sound of them talking to each other was almost like the sea. It didn’t sound like birds at all. And when they took off, the sound was extraordinary. I’ve never heard anything like it. It was like an explosion or a football crowd or a jet engine. It was that sort of almost white noise, but extraordinarily loud.

AMT: And when you're filming something like that what are you thinking?

JOHN AITCHISON: Actually, it was almost like having your brain jammed. It was so overwhelming an experience that I almost wasn't thinking at all. I remember thinking I wish this would stop. And then I immediately thought I wish this would go on forever because it was amongst the most amazing things I've ever seen, I think. It was very moving, actually, seeing so many birds because much of the world is depleted and we don't get much of a glimpse of what the past was like. And in the past, nature was everywhere and very abundant and that was, for me anyway, a glimpse of what the past in North America used to be, where birds or other animals as well were so numerous that you would see from one horizon to another just covered in bison or passenger pigeons or birds like snow geese.

AMT: And I haven't seen that footage. I'm guessing it is out there now. But what did it look like? Could you see the sky at all?

JOHN AITCHISON: No, no, not looking towards the flock. It was actually filmed for a series called The Hunt, which is being shown in this country, but hasn't yet been shown in North America, so it's coming to you quite soon. It’ll be on this year. It was almost like static on a television screen, actually. It was black and white dots, because the birds are mostly white, but some of them are darker. And when they were flapping their wings, the black wing tips flicker and it just looked like a like a random pattern. It was almost unnatural history-like, in a sense, almost like they were tiling the sky. And the thing I didn't expect was as they took off the air that they displaced, all those wings, pushed sideways out from under the flock and we got bombarded by a gale, really, blowing all sorts of stuff off the ice and the water, splashed with water and leaves and feathers and the smell of birds as well. It was amazing.

AMT: Fascinating. So tell me what you do. How do you go about capturing wildlife on film?

JOHN AITCHISON: It depends on the subject, actually. So, sometimes I film from boats, sometimes from the land, sometimes in hides, concealed. It's mostly that, I suppose, because my type of filming is what's called long lens topside. So, I don't go underwater and I tend to use telephoto lenses. So I mostly have to hide from the animals that I'm filming. And that was another thing about the geese that was a pleasure because we didn't have to hide from them. But very often I'll be crouched in a small canvas blind, maybe a metre on each side and a metre and a half high, maybe for 18 hours watching an eider duck on a nest or—the next job I’m doing I’m supposed to be filming saiga antelope calves, which are just born and they stay static hidden in the grass for about 12 hours and then their moms come and collect them, so we have to get there in the dark, find the calves, put up the hide, and then I'll stay in the hide for that long until the mom turns up, film what happens, and then next morning do it again somewhere else.

AMT: Did you have to train yourself to have that kind of patience?

JOHN AITCHISON: No, no. Actually, it comes quite easily. Which might sound strange, but what I find is that waiting for something like that isn't boring. It's interesting because there's always the prospect that something will happen and it'll be either the thing you want to happen or something else will happen, even if that doesn't happen. So if you’re interested in natural history and you’re concealed somewhere, it's wonderful. It's like being invisible and nature just carries on around you. So I’m very lucky. I get to go to extraordinary places–nature reserves–the best places in the world, really, for wildlife and then sit and see what happens.

AMT: Tell us about another place that you go, Yellowstone Park. You were observing wolves.

JOHN AITCHISON: Yes. Yellowstone is an extraordinary place. It’s a very large national park. It's been protected for a hundred years. And wolves were reintroduced to it, some decades ago, having been removed completely by hunting much longer ago. So, for a long time that there’d been no wolves and the elk numbers had increased [unintelligible] a lot of overgrazing and even things like beavers had gone because with the elk there, they were displacing moose, which were part of the ecosystem that affects beavers and beavers were a casualty, if you like, of there being no wolves. So, the decision was made to bring wolves back to the park and some were reintroduced from Canada. And it was at almost their highest point, really, of their recovery that we filmed them, one winter. And I was astonished by them, really. They're so intelligent.

AMT: And you got to see them, actually, hunt the prey then?

JOHN AITCHISON: Yes. I saw them catch a bull elk in the distance but it was too dark to film that. And when it was light enough to film them, I saw them drive an elk or follow one, chase him into a river. He ran into a small river to escape them and because the water was up to his belly, the wolves couldn't get at him very easily and he kept them at bay. But he couldn't stay in the river indefinitely because it was so cold and it was fascinating. This was one of the most interesting things, really, because the alpha female just watched. She didn't get involved. She just sat down and watched. The younger wolves couldn't resist trying to catch him in the water. And then gradually lost interest and they'd lie down. And eventually there was just one left and the elk tiptoed away and that one chased him and the others joined in. He came back to the river. And he did it three times, which is brilliant for the filming. And eventually, they all got bored and he left and ran off into the forest and only then the alpha female came and sniffed around the whole area, worked out where he’d gone, and I think was picking up information about how tired he was and how stressed he was by now, because he was very cold. And then she followed him into the forest knowing that she could keep him from coming back to the river again. I don't know what the outcome was but it was a real insight into how their minds work and how they, an intelligent animal like that, can plan, really. How they hunt.

AMT: What's it like to watch such a dramatic scene?

JOHN AITCHISON: Well, of course, as a filmmaker, it's gold dust, isn’t it? You want something like that to happen. I'm quite a soft-hearted filmmaker and very often I’m on the side of the prey, as I was saying, and I didn't mind that the elk escaped, really. But in the end, of course, the wolves have to eat too. And we make associations, don’t we? I think when something like that happens you see you start to, I think, see aspects of nature that are applicable to your own life. And that's how I feel about it. Anyway, I think I draw lessons from the natural events I see and apply them more widely. And I'm sure a lot of us do that. I think nature’s a great instructor and a great metaphor for us.

AMT: And so what lessons did you take from that series of scenes?

JOHN AITCHISON: In that instance, I think I was very impressed by teamwork, because we were working as a team to do that. There wasn't just me there, of course, it hardly ever is. And the wolves there were doing that as a team as well. An individual wolf wouldn’t have had a chance. It would have done something very differently and not really succeeded. Another thing we filmed was Adélie penguins taking their first swim and it was quite similar in some ways. They young Adélies go into the water but they don't know how to swim and they come out at funny angles. And they keep their heads up to start with because they're frightened of the water and then they get the idea that they can stick their heads in. And they can see underwater and then they take a dive, but they don't know how to stay the right way up. They come out of the water upside down and splash around and some get frightened and go back. Eventually, quite quickly, 15 minutes maybe, they’re off and they're swimming and they’re diving and they’re penguins. But they have to learn how to do it.

AMT: You spent time with different types of penguins, but in the end, it's the emperor penguins who impress you the most.

JOHN AITCHISON: Yes. They're the ultimate bird, really. In many ways, they’re the ultimate bird in where they live, which is—I discovered almost exactly opposite where I live in Scotland–down south of New Zealand on the Antarctic continent. They don't ever set foot on land unless something goes wrong for them and they come up on a beach somewhere funny. But their lives are lived either in liquid water or on frozen water. And even their eggs are laid and then kept warm on their feet on the ice. There are lots of superlatives about them. The males don’t eat for a hundred days. They nest in the Antarctic winter when it can get us cold as minus 70 Centigrade. So, they really are extreme birds. And it turns out they're very, very nice. They’re very friendly birds too, which, of course, is a pleasure if you go and film something and you discover that it likes you. They trusted us. They came—

AMT: They followed you around, didn’t they? [laughs]

JOHN AITCHISON: Yeah, they did. They did. And they were especially fond of the divers’ air bottles. That was the thing that they really, really liked, because they were very penguin-like in shape, I think. They’d all cluster around the air bottles.

AMT: They followed you around and you followed them around.

JOHN AITCHISON: Yes.

AMT: Tell us what it's like when they come out of the water.

JOHN AITCHISON: We had to go to the edge of the ice to film them coming out of the water. We were camping on the ice, so we were never on the land. But we had to travel to very thin ice where the first liquid water was. In fact, it was a series of holes. They didn’t go in over the edge of the ice. They went in through these quite small holes, which look like ponds, really, sort of kitchen table sized. And it was very dangerous because the ice there was only a few inches thick and it might break up, especially if there was a wind from inland blowing out to sea. We didn't want to be on three kilometres of ice that was blowing out sea because it would start to break quite quickly. So in order to find a way there, we had to get through pressure ridges, which are like walls of slabs of ice all stacked up. And so did the penguins. And we reasoned that they would know the easiest way because they can’t climb very easily, not having hands. They can only use the beaks and their feet to climb over things. On the other side, they have to fall down on their bellies and slide down head first, so they go for the lowest places. And then with our skidoos and all the equipment, we had to chip away at the ice and make a smooth bit through there so we could go through. And we realized we succeeded when instead of following the penguins, we looked around and the penguins were following us because we'd made the smoothest path. But they were brilliant. They were such great company.

AMT: It sounds wonderful. And it's interesting. You don't only go to the wilderness. You often end up in the cities. Tell us about the peregrines of New York.

JOHN AITCHISON: Well, this is, I think, one of the most surprising things, in fact. And it's—I was filming for a series that will be on in this country later this year called Planet Earth Two, which you'll see in Canada as well, I hope, later on. And it was a program just about wildlife in cities and it turns out, of course, that there is quite a lot of wildlife in cities if you look carefully. The peregrines are an amazing success story for conservation and, of course, for peregrines, because they were declining very fast in North America when, in the sixties, there was an agricultural chemical called DDT used on fields and orchards and so on. And as top predators, peregrines were eating birds which had eaten insects which were poisoned by this chemical. And the peregrines were accumulating this chemical and it was cracking their eggs when they were incubating, so they disappeared. There were no peregrines nesting east of the Mississippi River at all in the 1960s, the late sixties. Anyway, a few people decided they’d do something about this and they set up something called the Peregrine Fund and captive-bred the birds. DDT was banned in the meantime. And they released the young peregrines when they could fly and they did spectacularly well in cities, especially New York City where there are now, I think, 18 pairs this year—there were 17 when we were filming them—nesting on buildings because the buildings are quite like cliffs, which is where they’d nest in the wild. And they eat pigeons, which are what they would eat in the wild as well, which are another bird that’s come into the towns.

AMT: And so what was it like to watch them in this urban area?

JOHN AITCHISON: It was just spectacular, because the skyline anyway is an amazing backdrop. If you've got midtown Manhattan as your backdrop for anything, it's going to look good. And then the peregrines were—one pair we filmed were using the Chrysler Building as a hunting perch. So at our eye level, more or less, they were flying around. We were on an adjacent building. They were flying around using the updrafts from the buildings and perching on the radio aerials on the Chrysler Building and then using that as a place to stoop down on pigeons from when they saw the pigeons flying underneath them. So we’d go to the edge and crane over and see them bombing down these artificial canyons chasing the pigeons, which know they're coming. They're very canny [unintelligible] and they've got a peregrine on their tail. And then the peregrine would come back up, rising up past us, reflected in these mirrored glass buildings. It was just amazing. And because I think in that ultimate urban place where there are millions and millions of people, if you could just look up and see a wild spirit like that in that place, I don't know, it lifts your spirit. You feel so much the better for knowing that nature is there, I think. And in fact, there was a man we were working with who works with the city who bands the birds every year, the young birds, and he was saying after 9/11, he’d gone down to where the Twin Towers had fallen as a volunteer to help move the rubble by hand. There were great gangs of people moving rubble away by hand. And he looked up through all the smoke and the dust in the destruction and he saw a peregrine fly over, which was one of the ones that nests near Wall Street. And he said it just gave him such a sense of hope that there was—renewal was possible, that rebirth was possible after that horrible event and all that destruction.

AMT: Do you feel that way when you finish a shoot?

JOHN AITCHISON: Yeah. It depends what I've been filming, but absolutely. I think it's reviving and restoring and rejuvenating to have contact with nature. And I guess so many of us live urban lives now, so much of the time, that that's a rarer thing than it ever has been in the past. And I think it's our loss. You know, we should do our best to bring children up with some contact with nature because it's there as a touchstone for you, I think. If you've difficult times in your life and all you can see is concrete, then where else do you go, really? You've got to have something that can separate you from manmade concerns. At least that's how I feel and it’s why I find nature is uplifting because I can lift myself out of my own life and live in, by proxy, in some other life, which is in some ways much better, I think. It's a way of transporting yourself mentally. That's a very important thing.

AMT: Hmm. And it's not simple. It takes a lot of effort. What is it about it that makes you want to keep going back?

JOHN AITCHISON: There are many things, actually. There's an aesthetic thing, from my point of view, which is to do with beauty, because I think that we underrate beauty. It moves people in a way that any amount of rational argument doesn't. And facts are fascinating. I'm fascinated by the stories behind why animals do what they do, but I think the thing that really moves people, and they say it after the programs. They say how affected they were by the beauty of what they saw. It makes people care and caring, I think, is the most important thing of all because I care about conservation. I care about conserving what we have, much of which is being lost at an increasing rate. And we have to do this. It's not really optional. It may seem optional now, but once it's gone, it's gone. And then it will be clear to us that it wasn't really optional. We just made a mistake. We don't want to make that mistake. We should be doing something about it now.

AMT: And so as you wander the earth in cold and hot and wait for days for an encounter that will happen on its terms, what do you want us to learn from what you do?

JOHN AITCHISON: What I hope is that by making films—there are two things, really. Films and photography are a kind of memory of what exists. So, they’re very real. They really do make you believe you've seen the thing yourself. And in a sense, we're accumulating these memories as a collective memory. So, now I think we can't say that we didn't know. It would be impossible, I think, now for something like the passenger pigeon to go extinct and people say, oh, I didn't realize that was happening. So there's that. And I think the other thing is that I really do think that we have an obligation to care for nature. It matters to us in a material way, but also much is to us because it's there and we've grown up with it and we need it and it has a right to exist in its own right. And that's, I think, something which comes from knowledge but also about really believing that thing matters and caring for it directly. And those things can be done in films. The practical applications of conservation are done by people on the ground, but the inspiration can come from films and I hope that the films that I've been involved with, and hopefully will be involved with, will do that. I hope they’ll inspire people to care.

AMT: John Aitchison, it's good to talk to you. Thank you.

JOHN AITCHISON: It's been a pleasure. Thank you very much.

CW: John Aitchison is the author of The Shark and the Albatross. He spoke with Anna Maria Tremonti in May. If you head to our website www.cbc.ca/thecurrent, you’ll find some breathtaking pictures of his work. That’s our program for today. Stay tuned to CBC Radio One for a new episode of The Current’s summer series, Ripple Effect with Anna Maria Tremonti. I’m Connie Walker. I invite you to join Robyn Bresnahan, who will be in the host chair next week. Thanks for listening to the summer edition of The Current.

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August 19, 2016 full episode transcript

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