Tensions at NATO summit are what 'you might hear in a playground,' says historian Margaret MacMillan

Guests: Margaret MacMillan

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TRUMP: I heard that President Macron said that NATO was [unintelligible]. I think that's very insulting to a lot of different forces, including [unintelligible] who does a very good job of running NATO.

MACRON: My statements created some reactions and shake a little bit a lot of people. I do stand by.

TRUMP: Would you like some nice ISIS fighters? I can give them to you. You can take them,. You can take everyone you want.

MACRON: Let's be serious. You're number one problem are not the foreign fighters. It is the ISIS fighters in the region. And you have more and more of these fighters due to the situation today.

TRUMP: This is why he's a great politician, because that was one of the greatest non answers I ever had.

DC: Oof! That is awkward. Donald Trump and Emmanuel Macron supposed to be allies, but at the NATO summit yesterday, the presidents of the U.S. and France, very publicly, they're at odds over the future of NATO and the U.S. withdrawal from Syria. That relationship is just one of many tricky ones as NATO leaders continue their summit in London. The 70 year old alliance is facing pressure within its own ranks and from rivals like Russia and China. If there's anyone who can help us sort through this convoluted mass, it's certainly Margaret MacMillan. She's got unique insight into what history can teach us about NATO's future. Margaret is a history professor at the University of Toronto and professor emerita at the University of Oxford. And we've reached her today in Oxford, England. Hello.

MARGARET MACMILLAN: Hello. Good morning.

DC: Good morning. We saw a pretty tense meeting. You've just heard some of it there between Emmanuel Macron and Donald Trump yesterday. Is it unusual to see such public recriminations between what are supposed to be allies?

MARGARET MACMILLAN: Yes. At this level, I don't think I've ever seen quite the same sort of thing. And what struck me about what President Trump was saying was it was rather childish. It was sort of you said I said, you know, that sort of thing you might hear in a playground. Goodness knows there have been tensions within NATO and many other alliances before. But they usually tend to express it in slightly different language. And I think there's usually a willingness to try and sort it out.

DC: This came at the same summit, the same time that Emmanuel Macron had has called NATO brain dead. Why do you think he did that?

MARGARET MACMILLAN: I think he's trying to position himself as the leader in Europe. Angela Merkel is clearly fading and it's not at all clear who her successor will be or how much power that successor is going to have. I mean German politics is seeming to splinter at the moment. Britain is in still in the throes of the Brexit crisis. And I think it's not going to be focussing much or able to focus much on what's going on in Europe for the time being. And so I think Macron sees himself very much as a leader of a Europe which needs to stand up to the United States and needs to challenge the United States for the direction of NATO.

DC: Why call NATO brain-dead in that kind of pursuit, then?

MARGARET MACMILLAN: Well, I think he was being provocative, and I think he overdid it. I think it was foolish. But I think he's saying something very important that NATO needs to think seriously about what its mission is, what its role in the world is. In a sense, it's been searching ever since the end of the Cold War because it was very much a Cold War institution and it's tried to redefine itself. But I'm not sure it's done so all that successfully. And I think Macron is rightly trying to make NATO focus on what its purposes, what it's meant to be doing, what it should be aiming for.

DC: Let's say I mean, let's go back to the beginning, because NATO, of course, formed in the aftermath of the Second World War, and it was there to guard the security of Europe against the Soviet Union, against the Soviet threat. With the fall of the Berlin Wall in 89, all of that shifted. And there's been this identity crisis for years since. But if we go back to the beginning, how difficult was it initially to bring the Americans into the alliance?

MARGARET MACMILLAN: It was not easy at all because the natural American position was one of remaining detached from Europe. And there had been and there still is a very strong isolationist strand in American thinking about the rest of the world. I mean, you know, Americans say there's some reason why do we need the rest of the world? We have a huge continent as home. We can look after ourselves. We don't need to get involved. And certainly right after the end of the Second World War, in which the Americans, of course, were crucial, a lot of Americans said, look, we've done it. We've saved Europe from a tyrant. We can now go home. We've won the war in the Pacific. We don't need to remain involved. What really changed American thinking, I think, was the actions of the Soviet Union, which made it quite clear that it was going to establish dominance over the countries around its borders in the centre of Europe. And one by one, [unintelligible], through or subverted democratically elected governments and installed communist puppet regimes. And I think the Americans began to realize that if they didn't get involved, the rest of Western Europe, which was pretty much devastated by the Second World War, would not be able to stand up to further Soviet threats and Soviet incursions. And so what the Americans faced was a continent they had just fought and spent a lot of lives and of course, resources in trying to save from one tyrant was in danger of falling under another tyrant, Stalin.

DC: And so, of course, over seven decades, the Americans not only get in, but get in big, being the huge defence spenders being very involved in NATO operations. And now you sit there and you wonder under this presidency if the Americans will stay in NATO.

MARGARET MACMILLAN: Well, I think there's a real question about it. And I find it rather ironic that President Trump was reproving President Macron for saying something rude about NATO when he himself has said many things about NATO; not being useful. The United States might pull out. They're not pulling their weight, all this sort of thing. I think for the United States, NATO has always been something of a burden. I mean, they have provided most of the military or a large part of the military muscle and resources for NATO. And I suppose for Americans, as always, a question of what do they get out of it and should they continue to do it? But does the United States really want to see a fractured Europe in which Russia has greater influence, in which China has increasing influence as it already does? Is that really in the long term, in the interest of the United States?

DC: All sorts of pressures on NATO now, some of them external, but quite a few of them internal. We're talking to you from the UK. What effect could Brexit have on the future of NATO?

MARGARET MACMILLAN: Well, I think Brexit will have an impact. I mean, what the conservatives are saying, they would said it before and they're saying it now in the election campaign, is getting out of the European Union is not going to make any difference to Britain's security and defence arrangements with the rest of Europe. But I think it is going to make a difference, because I think the other European countries are going to wonder about the commitment of the British. Are they going to worry about whether Britain's interests are going to really be in supporting NATO? And so I think there's no way. But that Brexit, if it happens and it looks likely to happen, it's bound to affect what is going on in the security relationship.

DC: So you have got this testiness. You've got the questions about how committed the Americans are. You've got all sorts of convulsions in Europe. You've got Brexit. What happens if NATO fails? What does it mean for us?

MARGARET MACMILLAN: Well, I think it means the end of an institution which has actually served to provide stability, and of which Canada, of course, has been apart. I mean, Canada played a crucial role in the formation of NATO. For Canadians, it was very important. Foreign minister, Lester Pearson, for example, but also for our prime minister, Louis St. Laurent. It was very important that Canada be part of a larger grouping. I mean, we are a small power who occupy a very big piece of real estate. And so we have real problems in thinking about how to defend ourselves. And we've always, I think, seen ourselves as being part of a larger grouping. And so for us, NATO was important at the beginning. We played a very important role in helping to broker the original treaty, the NATO treaty, and bringing we played a very important role in bringing the United States and Europe closer together. And I think we've always been supporters of NATO. If NATO were to disappear. I think we would be finding ourselves feeling a little bit lonely and looking around for other forms of friendships. And we can rely on the United States up to a point. But the United States will always follow its own interests. And I think we've always look for other partners in a way to counterbalance the United States.

DC: Of course, a great dream of the Soviet Union and followed now by Russia, Putin's Russia, would be the end of NATO, the end of the alliance. What would it mean if NATO were diminished or gone for the Russians?

MARGARET MACMILLAN: Well, for the Russians, that would mean opportunity in a short sighted sort of way. And I think actually for the Russians, having a strong Europe makes sense. I don't believe that the friendship between Russia and China is going to last forever. I think it's already under strain. But in the short term - and Putin, I think is very much someone who thinks in the short term - I think he would see an advantage in the countries right around the Russian borders in the centre of Europe. If I were living in the Baltic states, I would be feeling and I think they are feeling very uneasy today because of Russia's already probing. It's already trying to cause trouble in those little states.

DC: I mean, we don't we don't often talk about it, but there are Canadian warships that are patrolling the Mediterranean, even as we speak, that are there to basically push back against the Russians. And they're part of a much larger NATO force.

MARGARET MACMILLAN: No, Canadians still participate in NATO. We participate less than we used to. We withdrew quite a lot of our troops and eventually all of them following the 1960s. But I think now as Canadians, we've also had troops doing exercises in the Baltic states. And so I think Canadians remain very concerned about what might happen in Europe. But a lot is going to depend on the United States and a lot is going to depend on how much the European powers, France, Germany and Britain in particular, can pull themselves together and begin to work together.

DC: I know you're a historian and not a military strategist, but do you think NATO knows what it exists for now?

MARGARET MACMILLAN: I'm not sure it does, and that's been part of the problem. I mean, NATO came into existence to protect its members in a defensive alliance. I mean, Article 5 is an attack on one is an attack on all of us. And it was always focussed on Europe and then and the Atlantic, the North Atlantic. But now you've had - since the end of the Cold War - you've had NATO getting engaged in Iraq. You've had NATO getting engaged in Libya. You've had native getting engaged in Afghanistan. And I would argue, actually that it has been rather distorting its mission. It's been trying to do too much. It's been trying to find a role globally. And it might be better off concentrating on its original purpose, the Atlantic and the defence of Europe.

DC: Now, that's a curious position in an era when China is emerging as the very least of the major Asian power and likely the next superpower.

MARGARET MACMILLAN: Yet what China is also, I think, very interested in Europe, not I think militarily, but it's certainly interested economically and spreading influence. I mean, the one belt one road initiative is meant to have a terminus in Europe. And China already has heavy investments. It basically owns the Piraeus, the major port in Greece. And it has heavy investments in infrastructure, railways, ports in the rest of Europe. And it's been trying to buy up high tech industries. The Germans actually have now moved to try and stop that. But I think there is a real concern in Europe that China is in acquiring increasing influence. And given the way China's behaved in Asia with its neighbours, it's likely to want to use that influence to put pressure on those countries to follow policies that China would want. I mean, that seems to me a natural thing for China to try and do it.

DC: So it's that a discussion point for NATO or simply for European countries?

MARGARET MACMILLAN: I think it's for Europe and for NATO. I mean, NATO is only part of what makes Europe, the European Union, as part of what makes Europe some of the other organizations a part of what makes Europe. I mean, there are a number of organizations that have helped to bring Europe together. But clearly, NATO's an important part of that because that's a military part of any sort of European common policy, any European unity in taking action.

DC: You know, it seems as if these questions about the future of NATO, which are not new right now, they've been floating around. This is just the latest incarnation of it. But they seem to be coming at a time about a wider questioning of multilateral institutions that includes the United Nations. What do you think is driving that distrust, that disconnection, that dissolution?

MARGARET MACMILLAN: I think it may be a number of things. I think there's a sense that a lot of people have is that the world organizations and their own political organizations haven't served them well, and that has helped to fuel populism. I mean, there are people who feel that they've been marginalized or left out. And it's not just economic. What I think seems to becoming clear is that the people who support populist parties and many of the people who supported Brexit and the continuing to support Brexit in the UK really felt that they weren't being listened to. They felt there was sort of elite snob somewhere doing what they wanted and they were being told just to shut up and do what they were told. It's a question of dignity, I think. But I think what is also happening is that a number of the multilateral institutions are now quite old. I mean, the U.N., NATO, the World Bank, the IMF, the International Monetary Fund, all these organizations were set up at the end of the Second World War. And I think what's happening with the passage of time is we are forgetting why we needed them. We knew why we needed them after 1945, because we could look around the world, people could look around the world and see the devastation that a major state to state conflict had created. And I think we've forgotten just how important it is to have ways of working together multilaterally. And I think that's dangerous because [unintelligible] these organizations are and you know, we can certainly all criticize them, we need them, particularly now when we are facing not just strategic problems, competition between states who are also facing the major challenge of climate change. More than ever, we need to work together.

DC: So when let's bring it back to NATO, how does that alliance seem relevant? How does it make itself seem relevant?

MARGARET MACMILLAN: Well, my own prescription. But I mean, you know, who knows? I mean, there's so many arguments about NATO. My own view is it should go back to focussing on what it does. It should stop trying to do out of Europe, out of North Atlantic ventures, I think. I mean, there are all sorts of arguments for that, but I don't think are good ones. And I think the Europeans and Canada, the partners in NATO, apart from United States, are really going to have to step up and do more. And that's very difficult in peacetime because publics don't see the point in paying for expensive military equipment and expensive militaries. But I think we really need to think seriously. And I think this is where it's a question for our political leadership. Can they explain to the rest of us why some of our tax dollars need to go on this stuff? And I think they've really got to make a start on that.

DC: I know as a historian you're more accustomed to looking backwards, but allow me to put a crystal ball in front of you and say: as these leaders meet now, do you think 10 years from now they will be meeting at something called a NATO summit?

MARGARET MACMILLAN: I think they will. A lot depends on what happens. I mean, a lot depends on how permanent the effect of President Trump and his policies are going to be on American politics. I mean, what. Interesting at the moment, is it in Congress in the U.S. is still very strong support for NATO and whether that will outlast President Trump, whether he has one or two terms, is a big question. I think for the European powers, they really, I think, are beginning to realize what it would mean not to have a NATO, not to have some form of military cooperation, some form of military planning. And so perhaps they will try and come together. I'm going to be an optimist and say that in 10 years, NATO will still be here and maybe, maybe it will have rethought itself and be refocused and really know what it's about.

DC: You know, one thing that's curious, just to shift gears here slightly, is when you look at the photo of all of those leaders in that room, of course, Turkey's president is there. And this comes at a time that Turkey has unilaterally gone in to Syria and created even more commotion in that region. What are the challenges that Turkey's incursion into Syria, its relationship with Russia, what are the challenges that that poses for the alliance? Of course Turkey, being a NATO nation.

MARGARET MACMILLAN: Yes, it's a major challenge for NATO. I mean, if you look at the original NATO treaty, it is about bringing together countries who have common values, who care about democracy, who care about a world in which people cooperate, who actually want to make, according to the treaty, want to make a world free from conflict. I mean, NATO is very much a defensive alliance. It's not about going out and taking over other countries. And I think the behaviour of Turkey is extremely worrying. And the question of NATO is how much can it let Turkey get away with it? Turkey is buying military equipment from Russia, which NATO fears is going to compromise NATO's security. And I think this is a real problem. And how far can Turkey go in doing things like this and how far can it go in in its intervention in the north of Syria? No, I think it's a huge problem for NATO. I think they're going to have to come to terms with it.

DC: But how do you do that? I mean, Turkey keeps pushing the envelope and pushing the envelope and more and more and more. And there has been no apparent censure.

MARGARET MACMILLAN: Yes. Know, I've been wondering about this. I mean, in the Cold War, Turkey was very important for the NATO alliance. And I think people tended to overlook some of some of the less democratic things Turkey was doing because of Turkey's proximity across the Black Sea to the Soviet Union. But I think you could argue now that Russia is much weaker, that Turkey is less important than I think. Perhaps this needs to be brought home to Turkey, that it's not as important as it was that it's causing trouble for NATO. And quite frankly, NATO may reach the point where it says it just doesn't need Turkey and Turkey may need to think about where it is in the world. It doesn't live in a good neighbourhood. I mean, at the moment, it's on friendly terms with Russia. But Turkish Russian relations have gone up and down over the last century and they've often been at odds with each other. It doesn't have a good relationship with Iran. There's a lot of resentment in Middle Eastern countries about what Turkey's been doing. Turkey doesn't have a particularly good relationship with Greece. And so maybe, maybe just Turkey needs to think about where it's going to be if it's kicked out of NATO.

DC: What are the odds of that happening?

MARGARET MACMILLAN: I don't know. I think it'll depend very much on what sort of leadership there. I think Macron has been very critical and he's also very critical of the United States role in suddenly pulling out of Syria. So whether Macron will be able to bring his NATO partners, partners along with him and whether Turkey will be censured and whether it'll be given some sort of ultimatum, I don't know. I mean, it really depends on the internal dynamics. The trouble is, of course, at the moment, the United States, although it's concerned about Turkey buying the Russian equipment and President Trump seems to think he has a good relationship with President Erdogan and he's had him fairly recently into the White House. So very difficult to tell, again, in the United States is going to be so important because it is the big partner in NATO.

DC: So let me finish off with that thought then. What does Donald Trump and his presence and his presidency mean for NATO right now?

MARGARET MACMILLAN: I think nothing much good. I mean, the trouble with Donald Trump is sometimes I think he hits on things that are important to American policy. And I think his confrontation with China probably was overdue in a way. I think I think the Chinese had been pushing the bounds of what was reasonable behaviour in, for example, intellectual property theft. But I think he's erratic and that's very worrying. I mean, if you're trying to develop an alliance, if you're trying to do planning, if you're trying to think of where the future is, if you don't think you can count on the leader of the main power in that relationship, then I think it makes you very uneasy. And I think what I. What strikes me most about President Trump is that his foreign policy is very erratic. And worryingly, I think he has fewer advisers around him whom he's prepared to listen to. And that's concerning. You know, where is the continuity in American foreign and strategic policy? It's certainly not in the president's office.

DC: Margaret MacMillan, thank you very much for sharing these thoughts with us.

MARGARET MACMILLAN: Well, thank you for a very nice conversation.

DC: Margaret MacMillan is a professor of history at University of Toronto and professor emerita of international history at the University of Oxford. You may well know her from her books, including Paris 1919 and the Uses and Abuses of History. We reached Margaret MacMillan in Oxford, England. CBC News is coming up next and then the ongoing saga of Ms. Meng and the two Michaels.

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What I'm saying is these two Canadians are there because of Canadian government action. I think they made a mistake and I think they were played by the United States on this.

DC: Former Deputy Prime Minister John Manley with a bold idea of how to free two Canadians detained in China. I'm David Common, and you're listening to The Current.

Is a Canada-China prisoner swap a good idea?

Guests: Stephanie Carvin

DC: Hello, I'm David Common, and you're listening to The Current.

[Music: Theme]

DC: Still to come, Becoming Eve, one woman's journey from Hasidic rabbi to transgender activist. But first, a hot take involving a Cold War tradition.

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VOICE 1: We have our objective. Go ahead, [unintelligible]. Go ahead, sir. You can go.

VOICE 2: We exchange now or we go home.

VOICE 3: We're waiting for another man.

VOICE 4: Yes. I want him.

VOICE 5: Doesn't matter what he wants, sir. I'm in charge. And you are free to go. Please go. Walk across.

DC: You may. You've seen that film. It's a scene from 2015. Bridge of Spies, starring Tom Hanks. That movie tells the story of a U.S. Soviet prisoner swap in 1962 along a bridge between East and West Germany. Now former Deputy Prime Minister John Manley would like to see a similar present day prisoner exchange, this time between Canada and China. The prisoners on Canada's side, Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou Jo currently under house arrest in Vancouver, awaiting extradition to the United States. And on China's side, the two Michaels Canadians, Michael Kovrig, Michael Spavor, who were arrested in China late last year.

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MANLEY: I think it's the only solution to see the two Michaels, who, from my point of view, are innocent Canadians that are caught in a very difficult situation to see freedom and be returned to their families, so we can wait and wait and have judicial proceedings and so on. But I suspect that even if the judicial proceedings go the way Ms. Meng's lawyers, think and hope they will, that that won't free the two Michaels.

DC: John Manley goes further, saying it was Miss Meng's arrest that imperilled the two Canadians in China and that Ottawa should have known this could happen.

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MANLEY: This is my opinion. No. You know, in exercising this action at the request of the United States government, I think that a lot more discretion should have been used. I think the very fact of her prominence as an important corporate executive in China should have alerted Canadians officials to the fact that this was perhaps a perilous course to follow. These two Canadians are there because of Canadian government action. I think they made a mistake and I think they were played by the United States on this.

DC: John Manley, former Canadian deputy prime minister and foreign affairs minister. And it should be noted that he is currently a director and board member with Tellus Communications, which does business with Huawei the Chinese company where Ms. Meng is the chief financial officer. For more on all of this, I'm joined by Stephanie Carvin. She is an assistant professor of international relations at Carleton University and also a former national security analyst and joins us today from our Ottawa studio. Hi, Stephanie.

STEPHANIE CARVIN: Good morning.

DC: So what you make of John Manley's his proposal, his solution to get the release of the two Michaels with a prisoner swap.

STEPHANIE CARVIN: I hesitate to use this word, but I'm going to use it. It's disgraceful. It's nothing short of disgraceful to have a former deputy prime minister, minister of industry, senior Canadian business leader to suggest that somehow it's Canada's fault for upholding the rule of law. You know, this time last year, we saw Mr. Manley suggest that Canada should have used creative incompetence to simply allow Ms. Meng to travel through wherever she was going. I believe it was Mexico through Canada.

DC: Don't enforce the U.S. request for extradition.

STEPHANIE CARVIN: Yes. Basically by accidentally letting her through. I'm pretending somehow we weren't able to do it. And, you know, I think it's actually more reasonable to expect that an a country that aspires to global leadership will not take hostages in order to get its preferential outcome. The idea that somehow we should accept the fact that China takes hostages and that this is a risk and we should conduct Canadian foreign policy according to these kind of illegal actions that could happen is astonishing. And I think it's you know, I don't appreciate Mr. Manely is trying to do here. Although I appreciate, you know, the fact that effectively what he's saying is that this will take a long time to get the two Canadian hostages released. And that is correct. And I do feel very bad for their families.

DC: Well, and let's sort of walk through that, because if you are their families, I know you use the word disgraceful to describe the idea of a prisoner swap that someone so senior in the Canadian establishment would suggest such a thing. But if you are those family members or if you are the two Michaels, let's just think practical. If that's the quickest solution, what's wrong with it?

STEPHANIE CARVIN: I'm not sure it's the only solution, though. You know, we tend in Canada to kind of look at Canada Chinese relations bilaterally when really what we should be doing is taking a multilateral approach. You know, Canada's far from the only country in the world to be in this situation. There's numerous countries increasing numbers of. Countries around the world that have had their individuals or citizens detained for fairly arbitrary reason. There's Chinese Australian writer and activist Yang Henjun. There's a Swedish Chinese author and bookseller who is abducted, actually abducted from Thailand in 2015. And recently we learned that in the past couple of weeks there was a Japanese professor who was researching in China who's been detained since July 2019. All arbitrarily. And so I think, you know, one of the solutions we need to be looking at, and I hope Ottawa is looking at is that, we should be working together with our allies and trying to put pressure. Hostage taking is not a global norm. It's not something that a country that's aspiring to a major leadership position should be taking. And so, you know, I think there's other ways than just kind of a bridge of spies kind of scenario that Mr. Manley is, in fact, suggesting.

DC: You speak about rule of law. And that's something we have consistently heard from the prime minister on Canada being a country of rule of law. But John Manley actually says even within the law, there are options. Let's listen to him quickly here.

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MANLEY: You know, the rule of law in Canada consists of more than just judicial process. It also consists of the statutes and regulations that are passed by parliament and by legislatures in Canada. And the Extradition Act does provide for discretion in the attorney general of Canada. So for the attorney general in this case, to exercise his discretion to allow Ms. Meng to be released would not be in violation of the rule of law, but in fact, it would be an application of the rule of law.

DC: Stephanie Carvin, what do you think an exchange would mean for Canada's extradition act?

STEPHANIE CARVIN: I. Mr. Manley is correct. The fact is that there is a judicial process but at the end of the day, the attorney general must sign off on whether or not someone is actually extradited. So, you know, for us, his claim that it's a purely rule of law scenario, I mean, if you consider the final attorney general's approval to send someone abroad, turning all of whatever court proceedings we have into suddenly a very heavily politicized process, then, sure, he's not necessarily incorrect. But I think we need to look at the bigger picture here in terms of not just like the nuances of Canadian law, but the bigger picture of global norms and the idea that you don't take hostages. What I worry about is, you know, if we do what Mr. Manley is suggesting, it's actually creating a series of incentives here. I mean, what happens? Let's say we could wave a magic wand and suddenly all of our problems with Huawei are solved. And we and we decide to let it M. Meng somehow is freed and the two prisoners come back. Whether or not it's through Mr. Manley's idea, just say it's happened. But the fact is, you know, if suddenly we're legitimating this behaviour, what happens if Huawei is suddenly involved in some kind of criminal investigation in Canada? What happens if suddenly Huawei executives are charged, let's say there's some kind of financial irregularities. Will it happen again? Will, you know, if we tried to press charges or find the company, will suddenly more Canadians be taken hostage? And will Mr. Manley once again suggest that, you know, we should basically give up on trying to enforce the rule of law and to get our hostages back? I mean, the incentive structure here that could follow from this by normalizing this kind of behaviour is really dire. And I'm not sure he's thinking through the kind of long term consequences of what he's suggesting.

DC: Why do you think he's suggesting?

STEPHANIE CARVIN: Well, as you noted at the beginning, he is working for, you know, tell us which does have an interest in off course, working with Huawei. But also he has been for a long time, a senior business leader in Canada. And, you know, Canadian business, to be fair, is upset and concerned about this. They want to expand in China. I mean, that's a whole other episode, though sgain, we can have here, but they want to expand in China. They're worried about Canada's reputation in China as a result of that. And they want this solved. They see this as, you know, inconvenient. But that's what business does. They don't necessarily worry about the longer term implications of what a situation like this can represent. And I think, you know, for so long, we've had a very powerful business lobby in Canada lobbying for these improved business relations for a free trade agreement, in fact, without perhaps thinking through the longer term implications that could arise from some of these dealings.

DC: Can we just talk about the short term realities for a moment, because we have some idea of what Miss Monk's life is like in Canada, although she is detained and unable to leave the country. We know this because she wrote an open letter saying she's been reading books, finishing oil paintings as she reflects on this past year, living in Vancouver, she talks about how well she's being treated by some Canadians. At the same time we know very little about how the two Michaels are being held because they only have consular visits once a month. What do you know about that?

STEPHANIE CARVIN: From everything we have heard, it's a pretty dire situation. I mean, I think the families are trying to keep some of this a little bit private. But we do get glimpses of their life and it is very bad. We know that, for example, Michael Kovrig is being kept in a cell where the lights are kept on 24 hours a day. So, you know, very disorienting. There was a report in The Globe and Mail that his eyeglasses were taken away in June. So he may not even be able to see correctly or do things like reading. We know that prisoners in this situation are interrogated up to six hours per day, seven days a week. There's nothing really else in the cells for them to do. It's a really harsh situation, certainly something that would amount to conditions of torture in any western country. Michael Spavor, there was a reporter from the economist who was on Twitter. He suggests that Michael Spavor was actually in a different situation, that he's in a cold prison cell in Dandong, apparently with 18 other detainees in the same room that sharing one toilet. So that's unpleasant. But apparently, it was suggested that I don't know if this is true, that the way he's getting through is he's kind of learned to cut hair of his fellow prisoners. And so he's kind of making friends that way. But either way, both of those situations seem incredibly unpleasant. It's totally inappropriate for China to be doing this. And yeah, it's just it's a very frustrating situation, I'm sure. And my heart goes out to the families.

DC: You are using stronger language than the government itself is using. Global affairs Canada sent us a statement saying, amongst other things, when it comes to China, our government's absolute priority is the welfare of Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor or who have, they say, been arbitrarily detained. There's also been some talk about what more Canada might do to try to pressure China, and Canada's hand might be a bit limited. One of the things that has been talked about is sanctions. John Manley spoke about that, doesn't see alternatives and certainly not sanctions. Let's listen to him here.

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MANLEY: China looks at Canada the way Canada may look at some small Caribbean island. On the really big issues, we don't matter that much. So I don't think that we've got tools at our disposal, either economic or military. All we have is diplomacy.

DC: Is that all we have, Stephanie Carvin?

STEPHANIE CARVIN: To a large extent. I mean, I disagree with the first part of that sentence, but I agree that at the best the situation here would be diplomatic. But I would be much diplomacy isn't just sitting down and asking for things nicely. Diplomacy can be a rallying your allies, getting them to speak out. Certainly that was something the Canadian government was very good at. In December of last year, when all this was happening, we saw the EU, the United States, other countries speak out in favour of releasing to the point where basically China said, would you please knock this off? We don't want to hear any more about this.

DC: Yes but here we are a year later, and they're still in jail and they're still in jail.

STEPHANIE CARVIN: Yes, and I think this will be a lengthy process. I don't really think we can get around that. But the idea that, you know, I mean, I'm not sure sanctions are the right solution simply because, you know, I think we do want to avoid escalation. I don't think we should back down in the least. And I think what would Mr. Manley, is suggesting, is a bad idea. I've already made clear. But I mean, I don't think we should necessarily escalate either. And the idea that we should- I'm not entirely sure what it's going to actually accomplish. Canada is an important country. It is a G7 country. I think China has been made a lot of strategic errors when it comes to this situation. But the idea that Canadian sanctions would somehow make a difference by themselves is probably incorrect. I think if we were to take such an approach once again, we need to be working and turning to our allies and saying, you know, China is wrong for you to take hostages. It's wrong for you to arbitrarily detain our citizens. And until you can demonstrate that this is something that you are not willing to do, we're going to start seriously looking at sanctions and perhaps applying them, because this is the one remedy we have. And China won't like that.

DC: We're not at that point right now. We heard Donald Trump speaking out essentially in favour of of Canada's position, saying that he's going to talk to the Chinese leader about this. But while we wait for that, while we continue to wait, while the two Michaels continue to wait in what sound like terrible circumstances, how much longer do you think this is going to go on?

STEPHANIE CARVIN: Well, the bad news is the Meng trials could - if you factor in all the appeals and all the legal processes - it could take up to a decade.

DC: Really?

STEPHANIE CARVIN: Yes, it could take up to a decade depending how things go just because of the length of these procedures. Again, every right to appeal this could go up to the Supreme Court, for example. So we could be looking at a very, very long time. And I do worry about that. I mean the essential idea that this will take a long time is not incorrect and that these Michaels that are there, the two Michaels, it is not even clear that people can survive in conditions like that for so long. And I do think that needs to be taken seriously. But the idea that we should just simply capitulate to Beijing is not, I think, the solution. I think I want to see global affairs clarify a start using language, start explaining if only to Canadians what it's basically beliefs on this situation are, what it's doing and what it expects that we need to. Canadians, I think, want more answers because we've been in a situation before with Kevin and Julia Garrett, who are two missionaries that were basically taken hostage in retaliation for Canada arresting a Chinese spy. They were really only released after the spy. It basically gave up his rights and decided to face extradition.

DC: Stephanie, we're going to have to leave it there. But, you know, that is a well-documented thing. And I appreciate your points here.

STEPHANIE CARVIN: Thank you very much.

STEPHANIE CARVIN: Thanks very much. Stephanie Carvin, an assistant professor of international race relations at Carleton University, also a former national security analyst, joining us from our Ottawa studio. Now, we did reach out to the Chinese embassy in Canada asking for a statement, but we did not receive a reply. December 1st, which was this past Sunday, marked one year since Meng Wenzhou was first arrested and she marked the occasion by writing an open letter. We were talking about it. Now here is an excerpt read by the Current's producer, Samira Mohyeddin.

SAMIRA MOHYEDDIN: With winter approaching, I can see the dense forests begin to slowly churn the hills around me to a deep crimson. The beauty of nature is clear to anyone who looks. It was never my intention to be stuck here so long, but I suddenly find that a whole year has snuck by. When I was in Shenzhen time used to pass by very quickly. Every day my schedule was fully packed and I was constantly rushing from place to place and from meeting to meeting. Right now, time seems to pass slowly. It is so slow that I have enough time to read a book from cover to cover. I can take the time to discuss my new show with my colleagues or to carefully complete an oil painting. For the past year my heart has been warmed by your support and encouragement. I'm no longer afraid of the rough road ahead. While my personal freedoms have been limited, my soul still seeks to be free.

[Music]

Campobello mail checks

Guest: Dale Calder

DC: Interesting bit of trivia for you; at the entrance to Passamaquoddy Bay, an inlet in the Bay of Fundy there's a little island called Campobello. It's in Canada. But because of a weird quirk of geography, it's only year round connection to the mainland is through the United States. And for the approximately 900 people who live and work on the island, that means their mail has to travel through the U.S. to get to them. In recent months, many people have had their private, personal packaged searched. Dale Calder is a retired Canada border services superintendent. He's lived on Campobello Island all his life and we reached him at his home in Wilsons Beach. Hello.

DALE CALDER: Good morning, David.

DC: So Dale sort of walked me through that. U.S. border guards have been opening your mail.

DALE CALDER: My mail and a lot of other people like us. I think, I haven't done an accurate count, but I think I probably had about a half a dozen of my packages open.

DC: I mean, are we talking letters? We're talking a small packages.

DALE CALDER: Just packages. But I understand there have also been correspondence opened, and that's a big concern. It's privacy, people's financial records and medical records and what are they doing with that sort of thing after they open it?

DC: Now, of course, you've lived here on the island your whole life. You're going to hear from people who are in the same position. What are they thinking about this?

DALE CALDER: Well, generally speaking, I think most people are certainly upset about this. There seems to be also some people that don't mind. But like I haven't had anything seised or taken, as far as I know. But I understand there have been things that have been confiscated and there is no paperwork involved at all, even though the man who drives the truck bringing the mail through, he doesn't have any idea what they might have taken. He's not allowed to be in the area when they searched the vehicle and the packages that they let go, they tape them back up with a special green tape. It has their logo on it or whatever. But I understand there have been things that did not make it through.

DC: So the oddity here is that that is mail that is coming from Canada and going to Canada but simply because of this geography, it has to travel through the U.S.. And I know there's been some speculation that perhaps this sudden uptick in searches is because of the legalization of marijuana. What do you think?

DALE CALDER: Well, I think that was one of the excuses that they used in the beginning. Cannabis, New Brunswick no longer will ship marijuana to Campobello because of that. So, I mean, that isn't an issue anymore, at least not with the legal marijuana. I suppose it could still be illegal coming. But [unintelligible].

DC: This is, of course, mail that's bringing the spotlight to you right now. But there's all sorts of other challenges when you live on a Canadian island that's only accessible to the United States. Like, where do you get your groceries?

DALE CALDER: Well, it's just we have one small grocery store here and a couple of convenience stores. But of course, the selection is quite limited. In order to get groceries from the Canadian mainland. I have to have a passport and I have to cross the international border four times to do it. There isn't a clothing store or a footwear store or an appliance store or any of that here on Campobello . So you do any of that I require a passport and four border crossings to get to the Canadian mainland.

DC: Is there a better way?

DALE CALDER: Yes. A year round. Permanent, linked to the Canadian mainland with car ferry service.

DC: Okay, so there is that now, but only in the summer. Right.

DALE CALDER: Only in the summer. Privately owned for profit. It's not a government run ferry service at all. About a year and a half ago, there was a committee formed here of local people concerned about getting a car ferry and they've got a government grant and hired an independent firm to do a survey. And the results of the survey were that 85 percent of the people of Campobello would like to have a permanent link to the Canadian mainland. You would think that would be an absolute no starter that any government agency or politicians would fully understand that that's perfectly reasonable, that you'd want to have a way to get to your own country without going through a foreign country. We don't seem to be able to get the interest of politicians.

DC: We've only got just got a few seconds here. But with all of these challenges, what keeps you on the island?

DALE CALDER: Well, I love it. It's my home. I don't want to leave, but a lot of people are leaving the population for most of my lifetime was up between 1300 and 1500, and the last census has us at over 900. I think we're now down close to 800. Young families are leaving constantly because they can't find employment here.

DC: Well, I'm glad we're talking about this, Dale, and I appreciate your thoughts on it.

DALE CALDER: Thank you.

DC: Dale Calder is a retired Canada border services superintendent. We reached him at his home. Wilson's Beach on Campo Bello Island in New Brunswick. We also got a response from U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which said that in order to safeguard the American people, they, quote, "possess broad search authority to ensure the safety and admissibility of all goods entering the United States", end quote. We also heard from Canada Post. Here's some of what they told us, "The only available and safe option beyond seasonal ferry service is to temporarily pass through the state of Maine and that U.S. Customs and Border Protection have the right to stop and search any vehicle at their discretion and detain or seize any item they deem to be inadmissible". Coming up in our next half hour:

SOUNDCLIP

If my family could be so wrong about who I am, what makes me think they're not wrong about God and about Judaism and about everything else?

DC: Abby Stein grew up in an ultra-orthodox Hasidic community. And when she started to question her gender, it also meant questioning her religion. That's coming up next. I'm David Common and you're listening to The Current.

Abby Stein went from being an ultra-Orthodox rabbi to a transgender activist. Her new book tells her story

Guest: Abby Stein

DC: I'm David Common, and you're listening to The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

[Music starts]

Danny told me about the founder of the Hasidic movement who lived with poor people in Poland during the 1700s. They called him the Baal Shem Tov, the master of the good word. He had studied Kabbalah, the secret books of Jewish mysticism. He preached a popular idea that God is everywhere, that he should be worshipped in joy, singing and dancing, but to be a good Jew didn't depend on how much you knew, but on how much you felt.

[Music]

DC: From the 1981 movie The Chosen, that is a clip about the Baal Shem Tov. And if you're familiar with Hasidic Judaism, then you'll likely know that name. A revered teacher, the founder of the Hasidic community. Growing up, Abby Stein, knew she was a direct descendant of the Baal Shem Tov. And for years, her family hoped she'd be a leader, too, and become a great rabbi. Well, Abby Stein did go on to lead, just not the way her family expected. Her new book is called Becoming Eve: my Journey From Ultra Orthodox Rabbi to Transgender Woman. And this is her conversation with the Current's Laura Lynch.

LAURA LYNCH: How would you describe Hasidic Judaism?

ABBY STEIN: I think what needs to be said first is to separate Hasidic Judaism as it was founded by my ancestor, we're talking about Baal Shem Tov, Israel Ben-Eliezer who already passed away in the years 1760 and Hasidic Judaism today. I sometimes joke and I hope no Christians take that the wrong way. But I sometimes joke that Hasidic Judaism today has as much with Hasidic Judaism of the Baal Shem as Christianity has with Judaism. Where you know, it had some relationships that has some similar tacks, it has some leftovers but it's not the same thing. Hasidic Judaism in the past, it was a spiritual movement, a populist movement that was supposed to be about bringing joy to people, about focussing on every individual finding their place. Today, Hasidic Judaism is an ultra-orthodox community, which it wasn't originally. It's extremely isolated. I grew up speaking only Yiddish and some Hebrew, growing up in New York City, didn't speak any English. We had no access to the outside world. Any pop culture, whatever that was, pop culture or music or movies or media or newspaper, magazines. None of that even exist. What I mean by they don't exist, they wouldn't forbid. I sometimes joke that the forbidden band that I wasn't allowed to listen to as a child was a band that an ultra-orthodox band of boys that was singing in English. And that was the forbidden band. I don't know what was - maybe you know better than me - what was the big pop culture band or singer like Britney Spears or whatever it was in in the 90s. But we didn't even know that they existed. That's how sheltered they are.

LL: Your parents thought you were their first male child. And tell me what that meant to them to have the first female child.

ABBY STEIN: And before I can tell you what it means to have the first male child, I think every Hasidic family wants to have a boy, specifically a dad wants to have a boy. And I'm talking like my dad, for example, right now - wasn't when I was born - but right now, he is a rabbi of his own synagogue. And he was a rabbinic like he was teaching rabbinic law even when I was growing up. But now he has his own zone synagogue and usually a son would take him over.

LL: Like taking over the family business in.

ABBY STEIN: Yes, a bit more intense. It's like taking over the monarchy. Depending on how big the sector's in, how big did the monarchy it is that they rule. But in some communities, this constantly split. It's happening and people will think, oh, they probably some like theological debate between two sectors splitting up. And usually it's just a war of inheritance. That's two brothers and both want to be king. And instead of going to war physically, though, sometimes they do it some clips because the two were to actually physically not killing but fighting with each other. It's simply that to kids want to be. But for my dad, he wanted to have a boy and he had five kids that were all daughters. My mom had five daughters, I had five older sisters. So dad was even more intensified. And I think every Hasidic dad wants to have a boy. But when you have five girls, one after the other, my dad would say himself, he almost gave up on having boys. It was like, I'm just going to have girls my entire life. And he would tell me that my whole life. It was constantly there. And I wasn't the only. I mean, in the end, I have four brothers and they're the real boys, I guess. But for me, growing up with that it was just there the whole time. And it was almost like weighing on me and I identified as a girl since I remember myself.

LL: That's what I was going to ask you. How old were you when you realized you were a girl?

ABBY STEIN: That's the wrong question. I was about three years old when I realized that everyone else thinks that I'm a boy. Like I don't remember the moment of thinking I'm a girl it was always. And then I just had different ways of trying to deal with it. And I do have a very creative imagination, which was really good. It was really kind of weighing on me. As far as I can tell, the Hasidic community is the most gender segregated community in North America. I'm yet to see anywhere a society that’s more segregated about gender and that didn't help either, obviously, feeling what I was feeling. And then I had different ways of dealing with it. When I was around six and I described that in the book as well, I was collecting newspaper clippings of organ transplants. You know, heart, lung, kidney, our hands and legs, which I know experimental and settlement that is done. But I still found articles about that. And my idea was that I will collect them all. I would go to a doctor and have him do a full body transplant. I think I described in the book as well. And when I realized that that isn't possible, I had to move on to find different ways of trying to deal with my identity. But it was always there.

LL: Now, when you were nine years old, you wrote a prayer. I wonder if you would mind reading that

ABBY STEIN: Sure. I was always told that God can help with anything. Well, maybe it was time to turn to God. After all, I figured since I was apparently the only girl in the world who was told I was the boy. Only there, but [unintelligible], the creator, could help me. I wrote a prayer: 'Wholly created. I'm going to sleep now and I look like a boy. I am begging you when I wake up in the morning. I want to be a girl. I know that you can do anything and nothing is too hard for you. So please. I am a girl. Why can't I look like a beautiful little girl? If you do that, I promise that I will be a good girl. I will dress in the most modest clothes. I will listen to everything Mommy and Tati ask, and I will keep all the commandments girls have to keep in the best way possible. When I get older, I will be the best wife. I will help my husband study Torah all day and all night. I will cook the best foods for him and my kids and I will have the nicest, Sabbath table. And I will have as many babies as I can. God, you have enough boys. You do not need me to be a boy. I promise if I wake up as a girl, I will make up for it by having many boys who will be the most studied and pious boys. I want to give birth to girls when I am older. But if you listen to me now, I am ready to make an exchange. Let me be a girl and I will be happy to have a big family. But just boys. Oh, God, help me'. Then there's another part of the finishing of the prayer that I will let people read in the book. I think what's important to point out before we talk about this prayer more. It is very obvious that to some extent I think I'm buying into the stereotypes, but it also says a lot about what the ideas, what a nine year old in the Hasidic community gets the idea of what it means to be a woman. Now that I don't believe that that is what actually means to be a woman, which is to dress modest and to help your husband and to have a lot of babies. But that is the image that is the message that I got of what it means to be a woman.

LL: I'm curious how writing that prayer helped you.

ABBY STEIN: At the time, it wasn't necessarily about helping me as much as finding a way to deal with my identity. And there were times that I really believed that it's going to work. And some people, when I say it today, they were like, oh, look it worked. You are a beautiful girl. But I don't know. Which is it's like you can either say, God ignored me or you could say it worked. Whatever you believe in. And that's a separate conversation. But at the time, it wasn't as much of helping as and getting something off my chest as much as a sincere prayer of this is the only way I can think of dealing with it. Because obviously the transplant isn't going to work or I had other fantasy of being reborn or other things that I describe in the book. It was just a way of trying to deal with it. Now, when I think back, yes, I think there was the psychological relief of saying it every night and feeling that I'm doing my job, I'm doing all I can do to help myself. But it was really hard because as I got older through my teenage years, it was very quickly turned into depression a lot of times and I think at that time that was really it was a bit relieving, a relief. But at the time, it was mostly because I really hope that it's going to work. I really hope that it was going to help me.

LL: And you were offering to be a girl, a woman in the Hasidic hierarchy. You were offering to be a girl, a woman, in the Hasidic hierarchy.

ABBY STEIN: In the Hasidic sexism, yes.

LL: Tell me what does that mean to be a girl or a woman.

ABBY STEIN: In that community or today?

LL: In that community.

ABBY STEIN: In that community, I mean, as I said, I did gender norms that extremely set in stone. I remember once and I don't say that easily because I think [unintelligible] careful by saying something like that. But I remember teasing one of my sisters, once. You're such a baby factory, you just get married at 18 and then you have a baby every year. And she was like, yes, that's what I'm here for. Which I think it's one thing for a community to impose that on women, it's a whole other level of messed-up-ness, if that's a word, for a community to brainwash women into believing that that's what they're here for, just to have a lot of babies. And it also means to constantly cook. You cook three meals a day, you cook for Shabbat, you cook for holidays with very little to no help of your husband, depending on who your husband will be. Raising your child, most Hasidic woman, after some point, some will work up to having one or two kids. But after that, you're a stay at home mom with no options whatsoever. Like, not that Hasidic men have too many options, but they have some options of where they can work and so on. Hasidic women don't get options whatsoever. You just- most of them have to stay at home and if you do are lucky to get a job, it's usually- I have my older sister, I think is the only one that still works. And she's a principal of a big school and she is really smart and really good at it. But there aren't many jobs for women at all. Even if you want to, even if you are ready to find a way to get out of the home, it's really hard. It's not just an interesting, and yes, I'm not stupid, I know exotic story about someone growing up in a fundamentalist community. To me, the way I see it is that specifically the sexist norms are merely more proclaimed in this book. Because, stop for a second, I think how many of these ideas exist in the outside world as a whole? Yes, maybe women have more choices, but women almost everywhere still have to work more to have the opportunities that men do. Women are still expected to submit to their husbands, so to speak, for the lack of a better word in one way or another. And all of these ideas that sound so radical and not normal exist in the Hasidic community also exist on a day to day life. Because I think at the end of the day, the book is a lot about simply growing up in New York City or simply growing up in a major metropolis and trying to find ourselves, trying to find myself. And at the end of the day, so much of it. It's similar in the outside world and it's just more proclaimed in a way that could help us realize what is going on.

LL: You went to school.

ABBY STEIN: I went to school. That's a nice way of calling it.

LL: Okay, you were you rebelled against the uncritical thinking that was demanded in the Hasidic teaching. How connected was that rebellion, to your knowledge, that you were really a girl in all of these classes with boys?

ABBY STEIN: To some extent very connected and to some extent not at all. So what I mean by that is and specifically that also evolved like from since age 12, which is many trying to referred when I got kicked out of class for the first time for the sin of asking certain questions. And I just asked the questions, the tone that I was asking the questions then. And then later on and that developed that evolved until I left. And during that time, these questions were on their own, they're independent of my identity. Like when I was questioning the validity of a Talmudic thing about demons, which I'm not going to explain, you can find in the book. I legitimately question it. It wasn't, oh, I'm a girl, therefore I'm questioning it. What did happen, and I think a big reason what triggered these questions was my identity. And to me it was if my family could be- if everyone like my parents, my teachers could be so wrong about something as existential as who I am, maybe what makes me think they're not wrong about God and about Judaism and about everything else that was in one part of it. And it was a part of me also that was trying to make sense and be like maybe my identity struggle that I feel, if not maybe gender, maybe it's religion. And at the end, as I dived into religion, I just ended up a two identity struggles. And it didn't really take away the gender struggle that I had that was still there.

LL: Can you tell me what it was like preparing to have a bar mitzvah knowing you were a girl?

ABBY STEIN: No.

LL: You do write about it in the book.

ABBY STEIN: I can. I do. I can talk about it. I was joking.

LL: I can't tell.

ABBY STEIN: It was triggering. I would tell you that. It was here I have to go and become a man to some extent, the bar mitzvah is becoming a man. And that was a big struggle trying to make sense of it. And I think that is partially also the reason that led down to a road of questioning everything. I think teenage rebellion exists even in the Hasidic community. But I am not aware of many teenage teenagers, boys or girls or everything in between or nothing at all who question the existence of God. I did. I remember standing up in like in high school after a whole day of studying. And when it came to studying, I was great. I loved studying. And then there were all these students who were probably not studying much and like, you know, fooling around. But when it came to prayer, none of them seemed to have an issue with standing up and who am I praying to. And for me at that time, it was like the same people telling me that I'm a boy and I never doubted they're wrong about that. I am a girl. The same people telling me to pray to this thing called God. But what makes me think they're right about that. And in the Hasidic community, they talk a lot about fate, but they don't actually talk about the essence of it. They just talk about blind faith. I've never had a teacher telling me, explaining to me why there is a God, why I'm supposed to believe that the world is 5760 years old, when all the evidence show that that's not accurate. They just never discuss it.

LL: I'm and I'm racing ahead a little bit here. But even with all of your certainty that you were a girl and your questioning of your world, you prepare to get married. And I'm wondering what it was like.

ABBY STEIN: I think one thing that has to be made clear. People ask me a lot if you knew who you are, why did you get married? I think you have to forget everything you know about people getting married. Forget about even everything you might know about people getting married and arranged marriages, because that's now how it works. It's not, oh, you're turning 16 and your parents are like, okay, hey, what do you want to do? You want to go to college? You want to go to work? Or do want to get married? It's the way I say it is. You're born, you breathe, you eat. If you're a boy, then at age three you get your usherin and you get your first haircut and you get the side curls. At age 12 or 13, you have a bar mitzvah. At 16 to 18 you get engaged and get married. It's what you do. And in all honesty, at the time I wanted it. It felt there was a part of me that felt maybe if I lived with a woman, they will I know help me or take away some of the things that I feel or to some away explore it more. I know it will give me some freedom to some extent, which it definitely did, living on my own and having some freedom. It's not a choice. It's not like, oh, hey, do you want to get me? There's none of that. So I think that was a very strong part of what people need to keep in mind. So obviously, I struggle with and I think the biggest kind of train of thought that I had throughout the process, wherever it was meeting my ex wife, we met for a few minutes and then we were engaged. My parents did all the arrangements and everything. And then we didn't see each other for another more than a year until we got married, which is again the norm and for the Hasidic community. But all the time and like at the wedding, and I remember standing and I think I described that in that book as well, standing at the wedding and thinking I'm on the wrong side of the wall, the divide between man and woman, which is both a physical and literal and a metaphorical wall. And that was always there throughout that whole process.

LL: What was it like to be married then?

ABBY STEIN: Part of it was great. Part of it- I mean, there was nothing- it didn't make anything [unintelligible] I would say.

LL: You cared for your wife.

ABBY STEIN: We got along really well. Yes. She said more than once that I'm doing certain feminine things which I liked. It was interesting for me to live with a woman for the first time who wasn't my sister, who wasn't related to my blood. I mean, yes, we're like fourth cousins, but I mean, like, not immediately related. And we got along well. We actually never fought. I also I never left. She was literally forced by her parents to leave the house. The part that got really hard for me was my son's birth. And starting from when we started expecting my son. The way I put it in the book and in other places, it's like gender was punching me in the face. And it was everything from how do I know how to raise a child when I'm not me, when I don't know what I'm doing? I have to forget about raising a child and in such isolated community, but just raising the child, which ended up being a boy. And I mean, even today when people ask me, your child, a son or girl, I'm like for now, he's a boy. He seems very content with it. That's great. And I think it's very important to keep that open mind. But I didn't know and I was afraid specifically before he was born. I've never been online before. I've never read the word transgender. I didn't know anything about that. And I'm like, maybe it's genetic, which I know it isn't. But what if it is? At least at the time I was thinking that. And how could I do that? And I think a lot of parents have this feeling before, specifically before a first child of like you're going to fail as a parent. And when you feel like you is not you. Which to me, to me is not me, if that makes sense. It just makes it so much harder.

LL: Are you in touch with your son?

ABBY STEIN: You can ask him when he's 18.

LL: Why? Why do I have to wait until he's 18.

ABBY STEIN: His life is private. I appreciate the question. Don't get me wrong. And I think it's important. And people ask it a lot and I get it. I would say as much as I would say he is a really big part of my life in every way. It's literally on my screen saver and see him every day on my phone and stuff like that. But my relationship with him, where he lives, how he lives, anything about his life today is not for me to tell. And I always say when he turns 80 and he can be a lawyer, a doctor, a rabbi, a model, a priest, I don't know. I don't care. I cared for him to be happy. But until then, I don't think it's for me to tell.

LL: But I want to go back to the epilogue that you describe in the book, because it's after you've left the community and you're starting, you're transitioning. And you tell your father. Tell me what that was like to tell him.

ABBY STEIN: So in all honesty, I don't know how much it comes out in the book. I wasn't even sure that I was going to tell him. So I started physical transition in September 2015. And then a bit before that, specifically after that, I was slowly coming out to more and more friends and I was getting to a point where I was getting really annoyed of having to come out to people individually. So I was like, I'm just going to write a long like blog posts and send to all my friends and moving on. And then I was speaking with this rabbi who was a progressive rabbi of a community called Roman Move in New York City that I go to right now. And he had a kind of relation with my dad leading up to that point. He was like, when are you going to talk to your dad? And I'm like, I don't know if I want to talk to him. I think I'm just going to do that. I don't know how to talk to him. And then he was like, you know what? I will help you talk to him. So he invited my dad to come down to this rabbi's house in the upper west side of Manhattan. And we started talking and it took about an hour for him to simply grasp the idea. And I think I didn't know trans people like this growing up until then online for the first time at age 20. Neither did my dad. And he didn't know up to that morning, up to that morning when he came down to that apartment. And we used some like capollistic teaching. Then we were able to push him and there's a block quote "text" at the beginning of the [unintelligible], like in the book as well, where it's literally some capollistic quotes from Mystic, Jewish Mystic. These are the 16th century and Hasidic teachings of the 18th century who literally say something like a man can be in a woman's body and a woman can be in a man's body. And we managed to get my dad to agree to that. And he was like, it's possible that trans people exist, but you can't know. You need a holy person with the Holy Spirit, blah, blah, blah, to be able to tell that. So it obviously didn't end the way I would have hoped it would, but it was what it was. I did feel relieved after that. I haven't spoken to my dad since. Or to my mom. He didn't even let me. I wanted to talk to my mom as well. My dad wouldn't let me talk to my mom, which sounds weird that he controls that, but he kind of does. And I mean, however, I like to focus on the positive part, which is that all of my friends that I grew up with stopped talking to me in 2012 and I left the community. By 2015 by the time I came out, I had this amazing new group of friends forever. It was through Footsteps, which is an organization that is helping people were leaving the Hasidic community or through Columbia, where I was studying in university at the time. And where I had so many amazing friends and all of my friends, the ones that I made since 2012, have been amazingly supportive, and that is life saving and life changing in such a beautiful way. And at the same time, I am attached to two of my siblings. It's two out of 12, but I focus on the two not on the 12th. I am also in touch with 10 to 15 of my first cousins, which is out of a few hundred. But I focus on that instead of- and I always like to joke that most people my age only have two siblings if that, and only have ten to 15 first cousins if that. So I focus on the blessings that focus on the silver linings in everything. And I think life is a lot better that way.

LL: Abby Stein is a happy woman?

ABBY STEIN: Definitely. A joyous woman who likes to do a lot of things.

LL: You’re remarkable. your story is remarkable. Thank you so much for coming in and talking to me.

ABBY STEIN: Thank you so much. Thank you for having me. That's amazing.

DC: That was Laura Lynch's conversation with Abby Stein. Abby is a transgender activist who was raised in the Hasidic sect of Judaism. Her new book is called Becoming Eve: my Journey From Ultra-Orthodox Rabbi to Transgender Woman. And that is our program for today. You can stay tuned to Radio One for Q with Tom Power. And don't forget, if you missed any part of this show, you can catch up with CBC listen. It is the new free app that lets you discover the very best in Canadian audio from CBC Radio, CBC podcasts and CBC Music. All right. After all the talk this week about the NATO summit, the premiers meeting the U.N. climate change conference. We thought we'd leave you with audio of one more meeting. One that's meant to make you laugh. It is satire from CBC Baroness von Sketch. They just won best comedy at the prestigious Rose d'Or Awards. We'll leave you with their vision of what would happen if all of those meetings from NATO to the U.N. were run entirely by women. I'm David Coleman. Thanks for listening to The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: Hello. Greetings and welcome. Thank you so much for coming today. This is our first world summit since the revolution where we ascended to power, replacing our male counterparts.

VOICE 2: What's on the agenda?

VOICE 3: Yes. First of all, the economy.

VOICE 4: Well, actually, everything's great here.

VOICE 5: Yep. Us, too.

VOICE 6: Same here. Jill?

VOICE 7: Yep. All good here. No problems.

VOICE 3: Great. Okay. Environment. Is anyone having any environmental problems? Anyone?

VOICE 5: No.

VOICE 1: No.

VOICE 2: No.

VOICE 4: No.

VOICE 6: No.

VOICE 7: None.

VOICE 3: And what about conflict? Social justice? Any war, any hardship conflict in their continent?

VOICE 4: No, we just talk it out these days.

VOICE 3: Yeah. We find it's very helpful to write things down and then sleep on it. See if we feel the same way the next day. That's a great idea.

VOICE 2: Yes, us too. There was some conflict with my California, Old South America. And then we just realized we were angry at ourselves.

VOICE 1: Well, I think that's it. Ladies, everything seems to be in order.

VOICE 3: Yes, Okay. I can't believe that this summit needs to take days.

The Current Transcript for December 4, 2019

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

Tensions at NATO summit are what 'you might hear in a playground,' says historian Margaret MacMillan

Is a Canada-China prisoner swap a good idea?

Campobello mail checks

Abby Stein went from being an ultra-Orthodox rabbi to a transgender activist. Her new book tells her story

Wednesday December 4, 2019 Full Episode Transcript

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