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The Current Transcript for July 24, 2019

Host: David Common

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

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[Music: Theme]

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LEWIS BLACK: [yelling] There's a lot of things to hate about these scooter sharing programs! For starters, people just leave them lying around anywhere for the next person to find them! That's not sharing, that's littering!

DAVID COMMON: Angry comic Lewis Black is no fan of the scooter share but tourists love them. So do many car-less locals. A low-cost electric scooter you can use and then leave anywhere. And that's the part some people don't like, so much so, some cities are considering banning them. The battle of the scooter coming up first. And then.

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PUMBA: It's just a little lion!

TIMON: Pumba, are you nuts?! You're talking about a lion! Lions eat guys like us!

PUMBA: But he's so little!

DC: Oooh, The Lion King remake is opening today! Wise and adventurous animals - a kid's favourite - oh and it's a fascist tale, according to one academic. He is here to explain himself in half an hour. Then on the subject of jungle creatures.

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[Sound: chimpanzee panting and laughing].

DC: Oh it's Friday. We should all be that happy. That is a laughing chimpanzee.

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FRANS DE WAAL: They smile, they have a little laugh. If you tickle a baby chimpanzee they produce laughs and laughing sounds. All these expressions are extremely similar, and I think the emotions are extremely similar.

DC: That primatologist says animals can feel a wide variety of emotions thought to be exclusive to humans. We're going to hear more in an hour. I'm David Common and this is the Summer Edition of The Current.

How should Canada adopt e-scooters? These experts say enforcement and safety are key

Guests: Chris Schafer, Jeremy Elrod and Maddie Harreman-Fernandes

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ELIZABETH WITHEY: Excuse me. Sorry to bother you. I was just wondering what you think about these new e-scooters for rent?

VOICE 1: I don't know. I just like the bikes before. I wanted to kick them over, to be honest. They just seem to be heavy and bulky.

VOICE 2: I just saw one. I thought it was amazing that those are now in Calgary! I feel like it's... we're becoming a little more metropolitan every day.

ELIZABETH WITHEY: Would you rent one?

VOICE 2: Totally!

ELIZABETH WITHEY: Yeah?

VOICE 2: Yeah! [laughs] That'd be so fun!

DC: The CBC's Elizabeth Withey talking to some very honest Calgarians about e-scooters. Over the weekend the electric scooter company Lime launched in Calgary. Now, you've probably seen push scooters before. You know, you stand on like that small platform between two wheels and there's a long steering handle. The ones we're talking about have a small electric motor as well so you have to do is basically get on, push off, and the motor takes off, takes you where you need to go. But there aren't any dedicated docks for these scooters so the way it works is you find them on an app, you unlock their wheels through your phone and then you go where you got to go. And once you get there you can just basically leave the scooter wherever you are. These e-scooters have been cropping up all over the world: in Europe, in the U.S., and now they're appearing in Canada. Waterloo has them, Montreal is launching a pilot project this summer to bring them in, and as we were just saying, last weekend the company Lime brought scooters to Calgary. But there are concerns about the vehicles and they're coming from cities that already have them. In Nashville, Tennessee this week the City Council voted to reduce the number of e-scooters and will impose tighter rules for their use. This after experiencing several issues with them including injuries and a fatality. Just a few days ago after Calgary saw its first e-scooters, someone had already seen a close call.

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VOICE 3: Oh and I've seen them. And a girl just about... in Kensington just about hit a car yesterday. So yeah. [laughs].

ELIZABETH WITHEY: What? So she was going down the sidewalk on the scooter?

VOICE 3: Yeah. Like... there was like a garbage can there and she was trying to go. I don't know if she knows how to use it properly. It was going too fast and she tried to miss the garbage can it hit a car, almost.

ELIZABETH WITHEY: So, disaster was averted. She was OK?

VOICE 3: Yeah I think so. Like, there was definitely a shriek of something, but I think she was fine.

DC: So are the benefits worth the potential risks? I'm joined now by Jeremy Elrod. He's in Nashville City Councillor and he joins us from Nashville. And with me in our Toronto studio is Chris Schafer who is the Senior Director of Strategic Development for Lime, that's the e-scooter company in Canada. Hello to both of you.

CHRIS SCHAFER: Hello. Thanks for having me.

JEREMY ELROD: Good morning.

DC: I'll start with you, Chris. For those who haven't ever been on one of these e-scooters, just give us a sense of what it's like.

CHRIS SCHAFER: Yeah... The way I explain it is it's actually simpler than riding a bicycle. If you think back to when you were a child and you had to have training wheels, and there's a lot of time and effort into learning how to ride a bike. With a scooter [it's] actually very simple. I'd say after a few minutes you're pretty natural on the scooter. People tell me when they ride a scooter it's much easier for them to learn how to do it and there are natural within a few minutes.

DC: I saw them. I was visiting Washington this spring. Now Washington, of course, has big, wide walking paths and big, wide sidewalks because the number of tourists they have there and people were having a great time on them. But as you hear in that tape we were playing, they're not without controversy. So why should Canadian cities embrace the e-scooter?

CHRIS SCHAFER: A number of cities in Canada are talking about climate change, and a lot of cities are passing climate change emergency motions. And so if you look at the electric scooter, it is electric. It's not running on gas. It doesn't contribute to traffic congestion like a personal automobile. And studies try to shift people, mode shift them out of cars into other forms of transportation that aren't a car and rebuild their cities around people rather than the automobile. An electric scooter, I think, plays a role in that transition. That's important for cities.

JEREMY ELROD: Jeremy, I want to bring you in in Tennessee because you've actually gone through the experience in Nashville of having these e-scooters. What are the challenges you faced?

JEREMY ELROD: I think there's so many others talked about... Really the biggest issue I think that we have is this their place in our city on the sidewalks. They're something like the new type of vehicle, and we by our regulations and laws are supposed to be ridden on streets. But people feel more comfortable sometimes riding them on sidewalks, or they park them on sidewalks and a lot of times block... you know just for regular pedestrians but also for our... for folks that are in mobility devices such as a wheelchair and trying to get past them. So we've had those issues in Nashville which is compounded by... We've had about 4000 in a city and with seven companies and so that's why we took some steps this week to reduce the numbers, to reduce the number of companies and revamping what was a pilot project and revamping our regulations.

DC: And so is it true that that reduction in that sort of management of how many scooters that you figure it'll be more manageable?

JEREMY ELROD: Yes that's what we're thinking... You know, one, we're going to see if we can make these work in our city, trying to fit them into our overall transportation system. We're a very car-heavy city so we, at least for me, I think we need to do everything we can to reduce the number of cars on the street and these could be a way to do that. But we need to try to make them work and see if we can... There's a benefit too with some of the hassles that we have, but if we can reduce those hassles: reducing the number of scooters, reduce the number of companies so that they're easier to partner with the city because right now we've had, or at least previously before this, we've had some city blocks where it's... I mean it really does look like the sidewalk or the street is littered with them with all the parking. So we're trying to make it work.

DC: Yeah. Chris your company deals with this in Canada. Detroit, which is just a few hours away from us in the studio here, they've got a program like this as well. One thing I noticed when I've been there is there are, exactly what Jeremy's talking about, often these scooters left all over the place. And then at night someone comes in a pickup truck, moves them back to different locations. But how do you manage people who use them just kind of dumping them all over the place and creating a hazard for pedestrians?

CHRIS SCHAFER: There's a lot of things that life does as a company. So for example, there's... When you download the Lime app, before you can enter your credit card to take your first trip there's a tutorial you have to watch about safe and responsible parking in addition to other elements like how to use an electric scooter safely. There's also things that we do at the end of the trip. For example, a user has to take a photo of where they park the electric scooter before they can end their trip. That allows us some ability to analyze safe and responsible parking. Lime also geo-fences certain parts of cities where we know it's not safe and responsible to park the electric scooter. We have a local operations team on the ground in cities in which we operate. They deploy the electric scooters, they rebalance throughout the day, but they're also addressing some of the challenges that come with dockless technology. So we take all of those things very seriously.

DC: Jeremy, in Nashville who is it who's the typical user?

JEREMY ELROD: That's something we're trying to figure out through our pilot project is we... [inaudible] I believe it is a lot of others across the country. There's a lot of data sharing requirements between the companies and the city. And we believe about half of the miles travelled or about half the trips, or someone that's here that lives here in Nashville. We have a very robust tourism industry so we have a lot of tourists using them. You know for me, I want these to be used by Nashville residents. And you know, the ones that are used by Nashville residents I think it's folks that... don't want to take their is a personal vehicle or ride share such as an Uber or Lyft. You know, perhaps across downtown or across the short distance or across town... that way you don't worry about parking your own vehicle, or it's more expensive to use the ride share. So, you know, that's the kind of user that we're trying to get at and trying to analyze the data. And so far it looks like that is a good portion of the userbase that we're trying to figure out the rest of it.

DC: It's a good opportunity for us to bring someone else into this conversation. Maddie Harreman-Fernandes who is a graduate research assistants at McGill University School of Urban Planning and a member of the university's transit research group. She joins us in our Montreal studio. Hi Maddie.

MADDIE HARREMAN-FERNANDES: Hi. Good morning.

DC: How do you think these e-scooters should integrate, if you will, with existing or traditional public transportation systems or things like Uber, Lyft, car share that kind of thing?

MADDIE HARREMAN-FERNANDES: So they do serve as a complement to these alternative modes like public transit. They provide a solution to what's called the "last mile problem". So that's the mile between your trip on public transit and either to or from your destination like home or work. And it's a problem in that it can discourage the use of public transit as it is a less direct and convenient option to your car. So making mobility options like e-scooters can provide a solution for these short trips to public transit stations.

DC: So the idea: you'd take the e-scooter to the subway station, get on the subway or whatever it is, lightrail or bus or whatever you're going to, and then from there you could take another e-scooter from that point on to your work or to the store or wherever you're going?

MADDIE HARREMAN-FERNANDES: Exactly.

DC: There is, of course, a question around just how our cities are designed and the notion that, you know, for the same reason you don't like an adult driving on the sidewalk on a bike because if you're a pedestrian you do want to get squished by them, some people may feel the same way about e-scooters. So where do e-scooters belong in that infrastructure, do you think?

MADDIE HARREMAN-FERNANDES: So they should operate as a bike since they do travel at a more similar speed, although there are issues with... they do typically travel at a faster speed than your average cyclist, so cities may want to look into the speeds that these devices operate at. But they should be in locations where you would expect to see cyclists, so in the bike lane or on lower speed roads. They should not be on the sidewalks and one of the good things that the Ministry of Transportation has done in Quebec is they've made it so that you're not allowed to ride on the sidewalks in Montreal.

DC: You're not allowed to... Chris, how do you manage that? I mean, what is the role for your company to talk to users about where they should use these devices or even advocating, or I mean, one could argue paying for a different infrastructure in terms of where people might ride?

CHRIS SCHAFER: That's a good question. In my role at Lime I spend a lot of time meeting with municipal councillors and provincial politicians across Canada, and the one message I always deliver is to treat the e-scooter, the electric scooter, like a bicycle and belongs in a bike lane and on roads. And we spend a lot of time communicating that message. Other messages as well, such as wear a helmet, to our rider base. And we do things like First Ride Academies where in cities, even before we launch or including after we launch, we hold free sessions, advertise where local residents can come. We've held these in Montreal, a number of them, to date. Residents can come try an electric scooter. And also, we spend a lot of time educating them on the rules of the Quebec provincial pilot in addition to the Montreal bylaw for electric scooters. So we do that in cities around the world in which we operate.

DC: Jeremy, in Nashville you've decided to sort of cut the number of these e-scooters and that is just one step. What would it take for you and your fellow councillors to be confident and totally comfortable at keeping e-scooters in your city?

JEREMY ELROD: Well I think it's several things. One, I think it's just changing the culture and helping riders realize that they're supposed to ride these on the street instead of the sidewalk. That's the problem of course that we have in Nashville, like in other places. Also, I think that there's things in the city we need to be doing. One is improve and really invest more in our bike infrastructure because we're very car-centric city and don't have the bike infrastructure and protected bike lanes that we need. Something we've really been lacking so far is enforcement as far as you know telling folks... every day on the sidewalk "hey you're not supposed to be on the sidewalks, you're suppposed to be on the street". Or some of those bad parking jobs by scooters, trying to clean that up... and then through permit fees and that kind of thing, have the companies pay for that enforcement. But overall, I think we need to have a city that's a lot more involved in trying to make these work and try to fit them into our overall infrastructure, have preferred parking areas. One of the things that, you know, that he talked about as far as having no-go zones or go slow zones where the scooter may shut off, or stalled, or go very slow to these areas. You know, get a lot more into or some of those details or some of those programs to try to make it work because I think that's something we've seen here in Nashville. As our city governments it's a bit frustrating. Hasn't been able to or willing to make those kind of changes or to try to get a lot more innovative. And this is an industry that's only been around for about 18-24 months. It is changing a lot. I think we need to have a city government that's a lot more nimble to be able to adapt to it.

DC: Maddie, you actually study e-scooters and study their role within the broader transportation system. But you been on one?

MADDIE HARREMAN-FERNANDES: I have not yet. They have not launched in Montreal. They were supposed to launch two weeks ago. but I gather there were some issues getting permits. But as soon as they arrive I intend on trying one. [laughs]

DC: Yeah. They look like a lot... I mean, I actually have been on them and they are fun. But I've also taken my kids on them and I've got a little concerned about just how fast they can go, particularly when we're talking about going into traffic.

MADDIE HARREMAN-FERNANDES: Yeah exactly. And the fact that the helmets aren't necessarily provided, you know, it's likely that people may not wear them. So the speed that they go at is kind of a concern.

DC: Absolutely. What are your next cities, Chris, in terms of Canadian rollout?

CHRIS SCHAFER: So as you mentioned, Lime launched this past weekend in Calgary. Edmonton City Council just put through their bylaw changes to permit e-scooter share. So we're expecting to see permit application materials very soon and we plan to apply for a permit in the city of Edmonton. And of course in Montreal. We have applied for a permit to operate in Montreal and that's being processed currently.

DC: All right. Well thanks to the three of you for a primer and a chat on e-scooters much appreciated.

JEREMY ELROD: Thank you, David.

MADDIE HARREMAN-FERNANDES: Thank you very much.

CHRIS SCHAFER: Thanks.

DC: Jeremy Elrod is a City Councillor in Nashville, Tennessee and he joined us from Nashville. Maddie Harreman-Fernandes is a Graduate Research Assistant at McGill University School of Urban Planning and a member of the university's transit research group. She was in our Montreal studio. And Chris Schafer is the Denior director of Strategic Development for Lime, that's the e-scooter company that's in Canada and may be coming to a city near you with their e-scooters. He was with me in our Toronto studio.

DC: Well this weekend is going to be a really hot one in parts of Canada. There are heat warnings for Southern Quebec and Ontario with temperatures above 30 degrees. The humidex hitting 40. It could feel like, get ready for it, nearly 50 degrees tomorrow in parts of Southwestern Ontario. They're calling it a "heat dome". Our producer in Montreal Susan Mackenzie visited a heat lab there. And if you missed her report last week you can find on our website, cbc.ca/thecurrent. The physiologist working there gave her some tips for enduring the heat. This is Georgia Changeling with some help from Ella Fitzgerald.

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[Music: Too Darn Hot by Ella Fitzgerald]

GEORGIA CHANGELING: Obviously, number one is to try and stay cool, whether this is using air conditioning, whether this is putting a fan in front of you, have a cold shower, wet yourself with cold towels or water spray, just do something that is actively trying to keep your skin cool and keep yourself cool. So don't just sit in a hot room.

[Music: Too Darn Hot by Ella Fitzgerald]

GEORGIA CHANGELING: If not, locate yourself to an area that does have air conditioning such as a shopping mall, or a cafe, or a movie theatre. Somewhere where you can be around people in a cool environment and not just sitting in a hot house.

[Music: Too Darn Hot by Ella Fitzgerald]

GEORGIA CHANGELING: So if you feel thirsty it's advisable to drink fluid. And the amount of fluid that you drink, two thirds will probably replace the amount of fluids that you lose. And it should help with that balance of drinking too much and then needing to go to the bathroom just as much and then kind of, like, outdoing all of that fluid that you consume.

[Music: Too Darn Hot by Ella Fitzgerald]

GEORGIA CHANGELING: Don't do strenuous physical activity when the sun is at its peak or when it's quite hot. Obviously it's best to try and stay as inactive as possible during this time. Ideas like keeping the windows closed and keeping the curtains drawn is fine as long as there's something to keep the house cool during that time. So you can get a lot of convective airflow through the window when you keep it open, but obviously you're allowing the warm air to come into your house. So shutting the windows and closing the blinds is great to stop the heat from coming in but then you need something inside the house to keep it cool as a compensation for that.

[Music: Too Darn Hot by Ella Fitzgerald].

DC: Montreal physiologist Georgia Changeling: take care in the heat if you're going to be experiencing it. Especially if you are elderly, if you have heart disease or other health issues. Keep in touch with someone. Try not to be alone. If you do know someone, a neighbour, who is alone this is the weekend under that kind of heat to be saying hi. Checking in on them.

Professor defends against claims he's 'culturally illiterate' for calling The Lion King fascist

Guests: Dan Hassler-Forest

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[Music: The Lion Sleeps Tonight by Billy Eisner and Seth Rogen from The Lion King (2019)]

DC: Actors Billy Eisner and Seth Rogen in an updated version of The Lion Sleeps Tonight. That's from Disney's much anticipated remake of The Lion King which is open in theatres today. It's been getting huge praise from some critics for its photo realistic animals and its star studded cast. Others, though, say the Lion King is the opposite of a cute and cuddly fable.

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SCAR: Life's not fair. While some are born to feast, others spend their lives in the dark... begging for scraps.

DC: Messages like that one from The New Lion King's trailer hold a sinister message for one academic. Dan Hassler-Forest caused an uproar online when he argued that the story of The Lion King is rife with fascism and racism. Would have liked to see his inbox after that. Well his opinion piece for The Washington Post was titled "The Lion King is a fascistic story. No remake can ever change that." Dan Hassler-Forest joins me from Amsterdam in the Netherlands. Hello.

DAN HASSLER-FOREST: Hey there. How are you doing?

DC: I'm good. So explain this to me, How is the Lion King a fascist story?

DAN HASSLER-FOREST: [laughs] Okay. Well, the way I would explain it would be to say it's not... Firstly it's not about lions, right? It's a fable in which animals perform roles that we associate with human social structures. So it paints a picture of a society in which a power is defined biologically and in which the weak have learned to worship at the feet of the powerful. And the only way for the herbivores to survive in this world is to become the servants and friends of the powerful. So we learn to empathize with the Lions who are the fascist leaders, and our point of view is determined by them. And this makes it different from a lot of other kinds of fables that have a different political view, like for instance Animal Farm or even Disney's own Robin Hood which tended to side with the less powerful groups in these societies.

DC: OK let me just go back to what you started by saying is that this is not a story about lions.

DAN HASSLER-FOREST: Right.

DC: Who's to say that?

DAN HASSLER-FOREST: I think it's something that's obvious to any viewer who watches the opening scene. Animals generally don't congregate to worship before a newborn prince. When a new lion is born, animals, I think, would be indifferent. Lions aren't actually kings of the savannah. They're part of a complicated ecosystem. And lions don't have birds that offer their services to them. They don't make friends with herbivores who happen to live out in the jungle. These are all very human forms of behaviour and we recognize that in these films. But they become enjoyable to us as parables, as allegories, as fables... that we've known through all kinds of fairy stories. So our way of understanding it, I think, this is the way I teach it to my students in any case is you know, to first ask like what are we invested in here? What are we learning? Nothing about lions. We learn nothing about hyenas. Everything that we learn about them is incorrect. Lions are a matriarchal. They're not run by a king and their system wouldn't collapse when the king abandoned this position. The lionesses are in fact in charge. So because everything that the movie tells us about what animals do is either incorrect or misleading, I think it tells us a lot more about what we imagine a perfect human society to be. When Simba runs away in fear because he thinks that he's responsible for his father's death, we see the whole lion ecosystem crumbling apart because the hyenas have taken over. The hyenas are portrayed as the outsiders in this society. They're the ones who live in the shadowy part outside of the Pride Lands, like the ghetto of the Savannah.

DC: What do the hyenas represent?

DAN HASSLER-FOREST: The hyenas, I think, represent the way that minorities are often represented in film. They're the groups that aren't included in circuits of power. There are many, many films that include scenes where young white kids get lost in the wrong part of town. And the scene where Simba and Nahla go into the elephant graveyard and then encounter three dangerous, dark-skinned predators who have it out for them is very much like that kind of a scene where kids engage with a gang on the wrong side of the tracks. When I show this to my students that is exactly the way they interpret it outside of the context of the film... I'll go, "Look at it, let's watch this scene and see what happens," and they say, "OK I see three gang members, one of whom has a street accent, a black street accent," that's Whoopi Goldberg, "there's one Hispanic and there's one who is apparently mentally deranged." That's why I write in the piece that the way in which the society is structured is the powerful try to keep minorities out of power in order to maintain balance. This is a very conservative, hyper-conservative political view that I think you could justifiably deem fascist.

DC: OK so let's pick up on that because you're talking about a hyper conservative view. It seems like a great segway to talk about Fox News. A conservative commentator on there, Michael Knowles, didn't quite agree with what you said.

DAN HASSLER-FOREST: No.

DC: Here's what he had to say.

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MICHAEL KNOWLES: The Lion King is a wonderful story. It is about redemption. It is about grace. It is about endurance. It is based on Hamlet. It's based on the books of Genesis and Exodus. It is not about fascism, but because the left right now has become so culturally illiterate, the only thing that they can ever refer to in their cultural criticism is Hitler. Everything they don't like is Hitlarian, or Fascist, or Nazi.

DC: Dan are you culturally illiterate?

DAN HASSLER-FOREST: [laughs] I don't know. I wouldn't call myself that. I've spent many years cultivating my knowledge of media theory and media themselves. And I'm a cultural theorist. It's my job to know about culture and to teach about it. I think like it's... What sounds a little bit illiterate to me is to say about a story that it is absolutely one thing and therefore absolutely not another thing. You can respond to The Lion King in a lot of different ways. Many people, I think, just respond to it intuitively. We respond to it as a classical story about a father and son and about family conflict and about, you know, an exciting adventure involving children and trauma and those kinds of things. But what we get when we watch a story like that is not just a story about individual characters but we are also taught a worldview. This ideology. So we start understanding this worldview by looking at how is the world in which this story takes place organized? And that's where, actually, the difference is from Hamlet, which it wasn't based on but which was one of many inspirations. The differences between the Lion King and Hamlet are actually very instructive. There is no equivalent of the hyenas in Hamlet. There is no danger of this perfect realm becoming suddenly contaminated by these creatures who don't really belong there and upsetting the natural order. There's nothing like that in Hamlet at all. And those are precisely the elements that make the Lion King so, I guess you know, fascist. [laughs] So weird when you start thinking about the political meanings that it generates.

DC: OK so bring it down to the cinema level here, are you saying kids shouldn't see it?

DAN HASSLER-FOREST: No, I'm not saying that at all! I'm saying that it's a really good example to look to when we think about what kind of political meanings we're actually consuming, often mindlessly. We don't like to think about things that we enjoy. We don't like to think about stories like The Lion King or The Lord Of The Rings or any of these kinds of fantasy stories. We'd just like to sit back and enjoy them as "innocent" in scare quotes, you know, "fairy tales." I think we would, you know, it would be... It would be nice if we would spend more time debating and discussing the meanings that are being generated there. And I know, of course, that calling something that is as beloved and as institutionalized that The Lion King calling it fascist would be something that would, you know, cause people to have feelings... cause a lot of people who just read the headline to, you know, disregard it or to respond violently to it as, you know, obvious nonsense. But I think once you get into actually, you know, a discussion about looking about what kind of power structures are in these films, does it... what does it tell us about Africa? What does it tell us about how we would like to see the world? What does it tell us about how we imagine power to be passed on from father to son, or those kinds of things? Doesn't mean it doesn't have the other elements of being about grace and redemption and those kinds of story elements. But the worldview that is being communicated is also, I think, irrefutably there.

DC: All right Dan. It's a different take but thanks for sharing it with us.

DAN HASSLER-FOREST: Hey, I'm happy to talk to you about it.

DC: Right-o. Chao.

DAN HASSLER-FOREST: Bye bye.

DC: So if you read the Internet, Dan Hassler-Forest is a horrible person incapable of experiencing joy. You can judge for yourself after we heard from him there. He teaches media studies at Utrecht University and if you'd like to read more about his fascist Lion King theory, I will throw a link up on our website - cbc.ca/thecurrent. In the meantime, here from the new Lion King remake, this is Beyonce with “Spirit”.

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[Music: Spirit by Beyonce from The Lion King (2019)]

'I loved her': Greg Fertuck denies killing his wife Sheree in interview at Saskatoon jail

Guests: Alicia Bridges

DC: I’m David Common and this is the Summer Edition of The Current. Sheree Fertuck was a gravel truck driver in a small town outside Saskatoon, Saskatchewan working for the family company. But something seemed off. One day in December 2015, Sheree didn't respond to phone calls from her mom, Julianne Sorotski.

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JULIANNE SOROTSKI: I didn't go out and look that night because I don't like going home at night and... Especially into a gravel pit where, you know. I didn't know what I was going to find. So I didn't go out until about 8 o'clock the next morning and it was still kind of dark. And I had her dog with me. And when we got to the pit, oh my God he started to whine and cry because he recognized her truck.

DC: Sheree was never found, even after an extensive search. For years the case of Sheree Fertuck went unsolved. And then just last month, the RCMP arrested her estranged husband Greg and charged him with first degree murder and causing an indignity to a body. In an interview with the CBC he has denied being involved and said he only confessed to undercover police because he was afraid the cops were going to kill him. Alicia Bridges is one of the reporters who interviewed Greg Fertuck. And along with her colleague, Victoria Dinh, she's been digging into this case for a new CBC podcast called The Pit. Alicia Bridges is in our Saskatoon studio. Hi Alicia.

ALICIA BRIDGES: Good morning David.

DC: Tell us more about Sheree Fertuck.

ALICIA BRIDGES: Sheree Fertuck was a 51 year old woman. She was a mother of three. She's from a place called Kenaston, Saskatchewan. It's about a 40 minute drive from Saskatoon. That's where she grew up, and that was actually the area where she was working when she disappeared. So she worked as a gravel truck driver for a living. She drove loads of gravel from point A to Point B. And it was a family business. I think- everyone we spoke to described her as being a really strong person: a strong lady, a strong woman, we heard that over and over again. And I think part of that came from what she did for a living. You know, a lot of the other gravel holes is in the area were men and I think she was the only woman that I've heard of. So I think that was it. That was something that came up amongst the men quite frequently was that they were sort of impressed by her ability to do that job.

DC: Of all the people to disappear, why did you want to look so deeply at Sheree Fertuck's case?

ALICIA BRIDGES: Well Sheree Fertuck's case I... I mean, I had noticed that the coverage her case had been quite minimal. We just didn't know anything about Sheree. There are no pictures of her with her children. There was nothing about who she was as a person. And that's why we went to interview Julianne in the first instance. And I think from there, from that interview, that's the reason that we wanted to look into this further.

DC: Let's go back to the day that she disappeared. What do we know about what happened?

ALICIA BRIDGES: Yes. So I think she had driven her gravel truck like she did every day. Well we know that she did to the Kenaston area. She had lunch with her mom, Julianne Sorotski, at the family farm. That was at about lunchtime, so 12:00 p.m. And then she went back to work at the gravel pit. She was supposed to be back for dinner and she never arrived.

DC: Did anybody know what had happened to her?

ALICIA BRIDGES: No. Nobody knew what had happened. I think her mom had been on the phone in the evening trying to call her. She didn't go out to the pit that evening. And in the morning she went out there to have a look to see what had happened. She'd been worrying about it all night. And she found the semi-truck abandoned with Sheree's cell phone, keys and coat still inside.

DC: So the police, the RCMP, get involved. At what point does Greg Fertuck, her estranged, husband become a suspect?

ALICIA BRIDGES: Yeah. So Sheree disappeared on December 7th, 2015. And in May 2016 some court documents were released sort of accidentally. A local reporter found them. They were part of an RCMP sort of I guess... a court filing to access family law documents. And they said that the police were... In that a constable wrote that he had reasonable grounds to believe that Greg Fertuck was involved in the disappearance or in the murder of Sheree Fertuck. By that point they had concluded or decided that they believe the reason for her disappearance was that she had been killed.

DC: So you mentioned you talked her to her mom and her name's Julianne Sorotski. And let's take a listen to some of that interview because it speaks directly to how Sheree felt about her estranged husband Greg.

SOUNDCLIP

JULIANNE SOROTSKI: There was different incidents when she'd say, "You know mom, you know if anything happens to me do this or do that." So she kind of always had it in the back of her mind. I think that she was very... uneasy about Greg's disposition. I mean Sherry was a big girl. She could fend for herself. But you know, there were different instances when she ran out of the house because, you know, he was either abusive with her verbally and or and physically.

DC: Alicia, as we listen to that I mean I have to wonder, were there any charges because of that alleged abuse?

ALICIA BRIDGES: Yes. So there are two recorded charges. So in 2010 Greg was charged with threatening Sheree, or threatening to kill Sheree. It was a death threat charge. He had threatened to, according to the court documents, put a bullet between her eyes. So that was 2010. In late 2011 he was charged again with assault. He had grabbed Sheree with both arms around the head and neck and dragged her out of her room. And so in terms of what happened with the charges there, I mean you know, how they handled 2012 sentencing was affected by the way that they handled these charges in 2010.

DC: I am still struck by one aspect of this and that's that they never found her.

ALICIA BRIDGES: Yeah. They've never found her body. When the RCMP announced the charges... against Greg, they did say that it's quite unusual and more complicated to lay charges when they don't have Sheree's body or when they don't have a body. In any case. But they say that they're confident that they have enough evidence to be able to sort of still prosecute. They are still looking for Sheree's body too. The week of Greg's arrest, they were looking in an area near the gravel pit, a rural area. They didn't find Sheree's body in that instance. So that search continues.

DC: Any single time, anytime there are murder charges, the one thing that tends to happen is the person who has been accused, who has been arrested, they're either in custody or they definitely don't want to talk to any reporter. So how is it that you came to speak to Greg Fertuck?

ALICIA BRIDGES: Yeah. So we had always planned to try to speak to Greg Fertuck. We've been working on this for some time. But we really needed her to know everything that there was to know before we approached Greg. By the time we were ready to do that, he was already in custody. He was in jail. So we sent him a letter. We tried to drop it off but we couldn't. They wouldn't let us do that. So we sent an express post and in about... It was about a week later, I had kind of given up on the idea that he would call. It's kind of a shot. And then he he called us and he said that he would be ready willing to do so. So we went to the Saskatoon Correctional and they led us into a board room there, and Greg sat down for an interview with us to tell us how he, you know, his version of events.

DC: He said he didn't do it.

ALICIA BRIDGES: Yeah. He says he's innocent. He says that the reason that he told the police that he had "gotten rid of Sherrr" was the way he put it, was because he was frightened because of the the scenario that the police had set up as part of this Mr. Big sting.

DC: Yeah. And so these Mr. Big stings, these have been very controversial in police practice. They've been used right across the continent. But the idea that the police, undercover, will pose as perhaps some big criminal and try to build trust. Yeah. But it can be a bit scary and trying to extract a confession out of a person under those circumstances... Is that sort of how it went down with Greg Fertuck?

ALICIA BRIDGES: Yeah. That's what he says happened. There were all these characters. There was a crime boss. There was someone he described as the "cleanup guy" who he says [he's] seen sort of clean up after a murder in Calgary.

DC: But they're all undercover cops.

ALICIA BRIDGES: They're all undercover cops. Yeah. So he says... when he told the story about, as he puts, "getting rid of Sheree" that that was when he found himself with the crime boss and the cleanup guy. He felt that there was nobody left to clean up except for him.

DC: So he says he concocted this story as opposed to telling the truth. But let's actually just hear directly from Greg Fertuck himself from your tape.

SOUNDCLIP

GREG FERTUCK: I made it up. We went out supposedly looking for the body. Well, there is no body. So we just drove around different places. Because it was all BS. I never... [laughs] I didn't kill her. There was nobody out there. So they didn't find nothing, so.

ALICIA BRIDGES: So you're... Is this when they were with you? You guys went out driving around, or was it afterwards? Was it based on something that they- that you told them?

GREG FERTUCK: No, it was after the hotel deal. Well, I had to take them somewhere, you know.

ALICIA BRIDGES: Did they say- were they saying that they wanted you to prove it? Is that why you had to take them, or why?

GREG FERTUCK: I don't remember. The big boss told me to go with them and find the body or whatever. But there was no body to find because I made it up, you know?

DC: It's quite something listening to him, Alicia. It's remarkable that you've been able to do an interview like that. Of course, this is a very controversial police practice and in some cases just the use of it has led down the path towards acquittal.

ALICIA BRIDGES: Yeah. It has been criticized for inducing false confessions. In some cases, you know, confessions have been deemed inadmissible in court. And in 2014 the Supreme Court, or a Supreme Court ruling sort of put stricter rules on Mr. Big operations. And even in Saskatchewan, there was quite a high profile conviction which, in very similar circumstances to Greg Fertuck's case, and that was earlier this year and that's already up for appeal. So I... yeah. It is a controversial practice. And there, you know, there have been instances of acquittals, as you say.

DC: You know, he was arrested before all of that but of course you were talking to Sheree's mom before the arrest. What what does she make of all of this?

ALICIA BRIDGES: Yes. So Sheree's mom... At the time that we spoke to her this was early 2018. She was quite close with the lead investigator on this case. We asked her, you know, if she was... you know, how she was feeling about the investigation today. Obviously they hadn't found sherry at that time. They still haven't found her and at that time there were no charges either. And sadly Julianne passed away in July of last year. So she never she never got to hear about these charges that were laid, and she hasn't been here for any of the developments. And it was, you know, really sad circumstances. And we did hear that the police officer who is working on Sheree's case had visited Julianne not long before she passed away because they were quite close.

DC: Alicia, I know you've got a lot more with your colleague Victoria in this podcast. We'll be sure to listen. Thank you very much for giving us a preview.

ALICIA BRIDGES: Thank you David.

DC: Alicia Bridges is a reporter with the CBC in Saskatoon and she is a co-host along with the CBC’s Victoria Dinh of a new podcast called The Pit which tells the story of Sheree Fertuck's disappearance. You can find it wherever you download your podcasts.

Love, anger and grief: Animals can display wide range of humanlike emotions, says author

Guest: Frans de Waal

DC: I'm David Commonn and you're listening to the summer edition of The Current. We heard earlier that The Lion King might not have much to do with the real animal kingdom, but this next story certainly does. Back in April, Anna Maria Tremonti spoke with author and primatologist Frans de Waal about the complex world of animal emotions. Here's that interview.

SOUNDCLIP

[Mixture of Dutch speech and chimps's sounds]

AMT: The sounds of an emotional reunion between Mama, a dying 59 year old chimpanzee, and behavioral scientist Jan van Hooff. You might have seen that in April of 2016. Meeting in a chimpanzee colony at the Royal Burgers’ Zoo in the Netherlands. It was viewed over ten million times on YouTube. Frans de Waal sees the video a little differently than most people. He knew Mama and he knows Jan van Hooff and he knows a lot about the inner lives of chimps and other animals. Frans de Waal is the C. H, Candler professor of primate behavior in Emory University's psychology department. He's also the director of the Living Links Center at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center. You may know him for his many books and his new one is called Mama's Last Hug: Animal emotions and What They Tell us about Ourselves. Frans de Waal joins me from Atlanta, Georgia. Hello.

FRANS DE WAAL: Hello, I am glad to be there.

AMT: I'm glad to have you with us. Can you describe for us what's going on in that moment between Mama and Jan Van Hoof?

FRANS DE WAAL: Well Mama was the alpha female chimpanzee of that colony and she was dying and she was left alone in her night cage instead of joining the whole group as normally would happen. And Jan van Hooff decided to visit her one last time because he knew that, and she actually died two weeks later. And so he did something that we never do. We never go in with an adult chimpanzee. That is a very dangerous thing to do. But since she was so weak and since he had known her - he had visited her many times and groomed her through the bars and things like that so he knew her very well. He decided to do this. And so Mama was asleep, more or less, and she at first didn't notice him. But this is the moment, the moment that you played, where she looks up at him and has a big smile and then embraces him, and he embraces her, and she taps him on the back. And actually tapping on the back part that Mama did is something that chimpanzees do with whining infants to calm them down. So she was actually calming him down instead of him calming her down and that was a very emotional moment. And many people said that they had cried and they were very affected by it. That part didn't surprise me. What surprised me is how surprised people were that mama had gestures, hand gestures and facial expressions very similar to us. So that's why I decided to take this as the opening story of my book because we all know the chimpanzees are our closest relatives, so why would anyone be surprised that they have the same expressions and the same gestures as us.

AMT: That's a good point. Now before we talk more about that, tell me more about Mama.

AMT: Well Mama was a very powerful center of the group. She did not physically dominate the males and chimpanzees that is never the case because the males are really built like bodybuilders and have big canine teeth that the females don't have. So she was not dominant over the males, but she was more powerful than most of the males. Basically I looked at that colony as being run by the oldest male and the oldest female, even though neither one was at the top rank of the whole colony. So she was a mediator and she would solve issues in the group and she would bring individuals together after fights. She would basically, literally, take a male by the arm to drag him to his opponent to make up and kiss and embrace as chimpanzees normally do. So she was really a mediator in that sense. And I called her Mama because she was basically the model of the group and she acted like that for 40 years.

AMT: And so what did you read into her reaction in seeing Professor van Hooff? What does that tell you?

FRANS DE WAAL: Well first of all, she recognized him and she was glad that he was there. That was it was a very positive encounter. But also I think he must have picked up that he was nervous. I think Jan was probably a bit nervous of getting in there, which as I said we normally never do. And he must have picked it up and that's why she calmed him down the way she calms everybody down in the colony. And actually her central role in the chimp colony is obvious now that she died, like two years ago, and we have a lot of turmoil in the colony and so I think her function was really important.

AMT: Can a chimp feel love?

FRANS DE WAAL: Why not? They certainly have attachments and bonding and certainly between mother and infant there's an enormous bond. And of course females go through an enormous depression if they lose the infant but not just between mother and infant. You may have a bond between two males. You may have it between two females. You have a lot of attachments. And I don't see why love could not be part of that.

AMT: And that attachment was what we saw with her and the professor. And so you said that it amazed so many people because we just don't understand primates.

FRANS DE WAAL: Well I think we underestimate how much of our behavior, non-verbal behavior is primate like. So we are frightened we have goose bumps, or when we're impressed with something. Well all this hair movement of the Goosebumps is visible in the chimpanzee and they also have goose bumps but it sets up all the hair. So we have all these primate patterns like kissing and smiling and hooting and jumping for joy, everything we do basically is very primate like. And if you are primatologist you see that all the time. So I think people were surprised by it and that's why I felt I needed to speak about the facial expressions. After all, the face is we're human studies of human emotions started. It always starts with the face and the facial expressions of chimpanzees are extremely similar. They have a frown and a stare when they are angry. They pout when they're disappointed. They have this smile. They have a laugh. If you tickle a baby chimpanzee they produce laughs and laughing sounds. And so all these expressions are extremely similar. And I think the emotions are extremely similar.

AMT: How did the other chimpanzees respond when Mama died?

FRANS DE WAAL: Well the zoo did something that zoos normally never do, unfortunately. I think they should do more of this. The zoo gave the whole colony access to her body. So normally a zoo would remove the body, and then no one is any the wiser. But they opened up the door and they let everyone in. And we noticed because all of this was filmed - we noticed that the males were not particularly interested. Even though the males tested out the body. They jumped on it and dragged it which also has been observed in the wild and we think that is a way of testing if she's really dead. It's a bit like in hospitals they also test you out if you died. They will test you to see if you're really dead. And so we think that the rough treatment of the males was maybe related to that and the females did something similar but some more subtle. They would lift up an arm and then see how it dropped down and so on. Mama had adopted a daughter, a daughter of another female she had adopted that after the death of that female. And that young female was very protective of her body and as soon as anyone did anything with the bodies she would be screaming and yelling at them. So she was very protective. And all the females came to look at her and were very silent. That's another thing is that chimpanzees are normally a very noisy bunch but they were very silent. There's also individuals who don't eat for a couple of days and so the chimps are very affected by it.

AMT: And you're saying that the colony is very different now with her gone?

FRANS DE WAAL: Yes. Her daughters, she had I think two daughters, her daughter dropped in rank which is something that often happens in primate groups when the mother is gone. And the group is a bit restless which I think is related to her absence. So yes she's missed by the chimps and by us.

AMT: What evidence is there that chimpanzees and other animals have an understanding of the permanence of death? Have you got other stories for us?

FRANS DE WAAL: Well I think they understand the death of others. Whether they have a sense of mortality - which would mean that they understand their own death, upcoming death - that we don't know and I'm not sure about that. But it is pretty sure that they understand when somebody else has died and that that's an irreversible process. Let me you an anecdote that happened, that has nothing to do with chimps. It happened in a sanctuary where the females had found a snake, poisonous snake. And they were very scared of it and they poked it with a stick and they kept it at a distance and they were inspecting the snake which was very dangerous potentially. And then the alpha female grabbed snake by the tail and hits it several times against the ground and she killed it. Once this snake was killed, the young bonobos came forward and picked it up and draped it around her neck and started walking around it with that very dangerous snake, probably knowing that this was it. It was over for the sake. And I think chimps have that kind of understanding of the finality of death. The irreversibility of death.

AMT: You know last summer another story of an animal death captured our attention. A mother orca carried her dead calf through the ocean for 17 days. I've got a bit of tape from some reporting on that. This is CNN's coverage. Let's listen.

SOUNDCLIP

ANCHOR: Experts say orcas have ceremonly carried dead family members in the past but the length of time J35 has been pushing her lifeless calf is unprecedented. A sign she may be experiencing difficult and complex emotions. Not so unlike our own.

VOICE 1: It's just a heartbreaking story but I think that people can relate to these whales in a multitude of ways. And you know they're now showing that they have this extreme grief and the strong ties to family. And I think if people connect to that you know? It pulls at your heartstrings.

AMT: So that's from CNN last summer. Frans de Waal, should we be surprised that other species grieve when a death occurs?

FRANS DE WAAL: No because they have attachments, so they have individualized attachments. And so obviously if one of these individuals whether it's an offspring or a friend or a mate dies that's going to affect them. That's going to affect our life. It's going to affect the situation. We know that these attachments are regulated by oxytocin. We know a lot about the neuroscience of attachment and it's very similar in rats and humans. These attachments are pretty similarly regulated. And so yes, the response to the absence of the partner or the death of the partner is going to be very similar. For example if the partner disappears or if an offspring disappears, a mother Baboon for example whose offspring has disappeared - because let's say a predator has captured it - she will be looking for days and days [unintelligible] and calling to see if she can find that offspring. So there's a very strong reactions to the absence of it. And in this case of the orcas I believe to have heard that they were afraid to the biologist, because I actually visit the place and I heard from the biologist that they were afraid that she would lose weight because she was not eating all the time that she was carrying the dead calf around. But actually she did not lose weight. And now they suspect they have not seen it, I believe, but they suspect that she has been fed by the other orcas.

AMT: Are you aware of any species besides humans that have rituals to mark the death of a member of the community?

FRANS DE WAAL: That depends what you call a ritual. We know that elephants go to the places where one of them has died and pick up the bones and hand them around and sniff them. So that seems like a sort of ritual.

AMT: We've been talking about the tender emotions but animals of course have brutal emotions. Tell us about the chimp murder at the zoo in the Netherlands.

FRANS DE WAAL: Well that was for me a very defining moment because until then I had studied the reconciliation in chimpanzees. And reconciliation is that they did come together after a fight and they kiss and embrace each other. And I had always looked at that as a sort of nice behavior that may be important, may not be important, but after the death of one of our males I just decided to devote the rest of my career to that kind of behavior, because I know just how extremely important it was. In this case it had failed. So these first three males in the colony who were unable to settle their differences and kept going at it and kept having tensions. And then one day it erupted. And one of them got killed by the other two. And we did not find out the individual dead, we found him heavily injured by the others. But we could not save him because he had lost too much blood. And so he was basically killed by the others. But at the time people would say, well, what do you expect. These are captive chimps and of course they kill each other. And so they were attributing it to the zoo environment, even though this is a very big island on which these animals live. But now we know actually from observations in the wild that this is not an uncommon occurrence. In chimpanzees in the wild most of the killings occur between groups, between territorial communities. So the males of one group may kill males of another group but it also sometimes happens in the group as it happened in the Burger zoo.

AMT: It was a really savage killing, it was like sadistic.

FRANS DE WAAL: Well we almost think you could even call it murder in the sense that I think it's intentional. The field workers who have observed this kind of processes in the kind of attacks in the wild - because I did not observe this particular attack - but we have observed them in the wild. They say it looks intentional. It looks like the males are intentionally killing somebody because they keep going until the individual is dead basically. And I would compare with predators. Predators are intentional killings. They keep going till the prey is dead. And in this case it also seems like an intentional process. And yes a very savage attack by two males on one. The females always jump in if the male battles got out of control and they would drive them apart because there's many more females in the colonies, like 12 or more adult females in there. Mama would have been at the front of it, I'm sure. She did not accept that kind of behavior. And so yes if the females had been present it would have been stopped. It happened in the night cages, at night, and the females were unable to interfere.

AMT: What can we learn about conflict resolution by observing chimpanzee behavior?

FRANS DE WAAL: They very often do preventative actions. Like for example if you bring food to a captive colony of chimpanzees, the first thing they will do is all embrace and kiss each other. I call it the celebration. There are hooting with excitement and embracing and kissing and then they share food and they are actually quite good at sharing food. And so it's as if all that contact before the sharing is to calm down the tempers. So they do it preventative but they also do it afterwards of course when they reconcile or when they mediate. Mama was very good at mediation and bringing parties together after fights. So they have all sorts of ways of dealing with conflict. Just as humans do. I think we have the same tendencies.

AMT: What are some other examples of the range of emotions you see in animals?

FRANS DE WAAL: I think we humans, especially in the West, we love calling ourselves rational. We are rational beings and that sets us apart. But actually we are very emotional beings and in writing this book I started to realize how much our lives are dictated by the emotions. I mean even our political choices. Look at the election in the US. Look at Brexit. They are emotional choices. They are not rational choices because rational choices would probably be different. And I think we underestimate the enormous influence of the emotions in our lives.

AMT: But you've been watching the emotions and the behaviors that connect to those emotions for a very long time.

FRANS DE WAAL: You know who Jan van Hooff was my professor was a specialist in facial expressions. And in the face, the similarities are really very striking. We used to think of course that humans have more muscles in the face and so that we could convey more shades of emotions than other species. But about five years ago people analyzed the faces of - post-mortem - the faces of chimpanzees and found exactly the same muscles in the face of a chimp. So a chimp can express all the same shades of emotions that we can and Jan van Hooff is a specialist in it. And so as a student I grew up already with the idea is that human emotions and animal emotions are similarly expressed. So I was more immune to that taboo on emotions I think as a result. But it was very strong. I had a lot of professors in animal behavior who would tell you never to mention emotions. You can say that an animal is aggressive, you cannot say that they are angry. You can say that they have escape behavior, you cannot say that they are fearful. And also actually any link to human behaviour should be avoided. So for example if two chimpanzees kiss each other you have to call that mouth to mouth contact, or if you tickle a chimpanzee and they laugh and produce laughing sounds, you have to call it vocalized panting. We had this whole separate terminology which is really, from a Darwinian perspective, totally ridiculous in the sense that our behaviour is connected with primate behaviour. But the scientists were deliberately interrupting that connection by using a different terminology.

AMT: So what can we humans learn about ourselves from other species on this planet?

FRANS DE WAAL: Well I think one of the things to learn is that we are much more emotional beings than we think we are and that these emotions are not necessarily new. I don't believe actually in any uniquely human emotions. I believe that yes we may have so many emotions that are more sophisticated or elaborated in other species because we put a lot of cognition in it that some other species may not have. But in the end all the emotions that we have we can find in other mammals. And that's quite different from the prevailing view in psychology. Psychology still often follows this view that there are six basic emotions - like anger and fear and so on - six basic emotions that are expressed similarly across the globe and so are human universals that we share with other species and all the other emotions they are secondary. They're basically our own invention and that includes things like jealousy and love and attachment and hope. Those are basically all emotions that we think are uniquely human and I don't believe a word of that. I think all the emotions that we have one way or another you can find that our species.

AMT: Frans de Waal it's really good to talk to you. Thank you.

FRANS DE WAAL: Thank you. You're welcome.

AMT: Frans De Waal is the C H. Candler professor or Prof of Primate Behavior in Emory University's psychology department. He's the director of the Living Links Center at the Yerkes National Primate Center. And his new book is called Mama's Last Hug: Animal Emotions and What They Tell us about Ourselves. He joined us from Atlanta, Georgia.

DC: That is Anna Maria Tremonti of course, in conversation with author and primatologist Frans de Waal back in April.

Celebrating the 50^th Anniversary of the Apollo 11 at the Ontario Science Centre

Guest: Ross Maynard

DC: Well this week we've been marking the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission and a new exhibition at the Ontario Science Centre celebrates a Canadian who played a key role in that mission.

SOUNDCLIP

ROSS MAYNARD: These are family items that we've lent to the Ontario Science Centre. So they came out to our farm and picked everything up, and the next thing we know now we're here looking at all... Oh. Look at that. Oh look at what they did it with... These drawings were like. Like this size. And then they they've turned them into. These large printouts. OK. My name is Ross Maynard. My father, Owen Maynard, was Canadian from Sarnia, Ontario, who at the time of the Apollo 11 landings was Chief of Systems Engineering Division and leader of the SPAN room, Spacecraft Analysis room, which would be just off of the main mission control room. He was with Apollo from the very beginning, being handed the idea of "how are we going to go to the moon?" Growing up, I was 7 years old we left Canada and 17 years old when they actually landed on the moon. So my childhood was surrounded by all of this space stuff. So that's my dad by the lunar module. That was from an article written back in the 60s. When someone from the Toronto Star I think it was came down to visit us and interviewed a whole bunch of the NASA Canadians. And that's my dad standing by the lunar module there. A mock-up of the lunar module. In here, I think they described him as "a tubby Canadian." So, we gave em a pretty hard time about that. The most important thing here for me, I would say the tall spacecraft model in the middle there, that's been around my family since 1969-1970. And this is about a 3 foot tall model of the Saturn 5 rocket. This is the biggest, fastest manned vehicle that has ever flown. Nothing else has flown higher, faster or farther than the Saturn 5 rocket before or since those Apollo missions. My father, when he was getting ready to leave NASA, he left NASA after Apollo 12. His guys at work with him asked him, "What would you like as a going away present? And he said, "I want that." And they came back a few days later and said, "They don't really want to give these away." My dad said to them, "You mean to tell me you could put people on the moon but you can't get me that model?" Well obviously they got it because you can see it's got his name on it. March 7th, 1970 when my father was working in the SPAN room at mission control he was the focal point of every system interfacing with every other system in the development of this Saturn 5 rocket. So it was just a huge amount of work. And a huge responsibility. And whenever a problem developed that they couldn't handle in mission control they would kick it back to the SPAN room and my dad would go to work trying to find out the best solution to that problem. He was basically this great big goofy guy that we saw somewhat infrequently because of the huge to tremendous hours that these guys put in. They basically said we've got to do this by the end of the decade and back calculated and said well, if we work 12-14 hours a day we might be able to pull this off. So he was very busy but when he was with us kids he was just all for us. So we had the lunar module here, for example. That was the first one he brought to our house and stuck around one morning and pulled it out of his briefcase, and we're all standing around, "Ok dad what you got to show us?" Took it up in the air like this and basically slammed it down on the table. He said, "That's it. That's what we're taking to the moon!" Seeing all this... this display of all these artefacts and drawings from my dad is a pretty moving because we've lived with these things in our houses for 50 years and now 50 years later we're getting to see it displayed at the Ontario Science Centre where there's going be a lot of people coming by here over the next two months to view this. These guys can say here was a Canadian contribution to this audacious mission to land people on the moon. And the Canadian engineers who were recruited by NASA from A.V. Row after the cancellation of The Arrow made these huge contributions. They were a large percentage of the first 100 people that formed the space task group. If you're going to do anything in this world, and I've said this before, you're going to want to start with a critical mass of Canadian talent. And every time I seem to look around at what Canadians are doing, I say, "Well, there another success." Whether it's a Raptors team or whatever you got going on. I would just make sure there was enough Canadians on board.

DC: That is Ross Maynard, son of Owen Maynard. And thanks to our intern Aruna Dutt for that item. And that is our program for today. Stick around for Q. Tom Power is about to talk to Lulu Wang, a director whose new movie The Farewell is based on a true story she told on This American Life. I'm David Common and that is it for me. Thanks very much for listening to the Summer Edition of The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

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The Current Transcript for July 24, 2019

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