More domestic travel, sustainable tourism: What flying post-pandemic could look like

Guests: Brian Hayes, David Gillen, Anna Pollock

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MG: Today, with international borders closed, visiting the grocery store is probably the biggest adventure most of us go on. The pandemic has ended a lot of travel dreams, including those of Melissa O'Brien. She, her husband and their three kids had to cut short what was meant to be the journey of a lifetime. And they're now back at home in the Comox Valley on Vancouver Island.

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So we had started planning this trip about 10 years ago, almost 10 years ago, started saving for it and planning, thinking about where we were going to go. And it was going to be around the world trip, [unintelligible], but basically stripping our lives down to the bare essentials. We were going to travel carry-ons. And our plan was to start in Asia and to head west until we got home, just basically following wherever the wind took us. And we had planned to be away for nine months and then found ourselves home after three.

MG: Melissa's certainly not the only person whose travel plans were derailed because of COVID-19. Brian Hayes is a medical student at UBC Southern Medical Program based in Kelowna. Brian, good morning.

BRIAN HAYES: Good morning.

MG: Where are you supposed to be today?

BRIAN HAYES: So I am supposed to be in a country called Bhutan in Central Asia right now.

MG: And why were you going to Bhutan?

BRIAN HAYES: So I was part of a team of four other UBC medical students and we were going to tend to run the country's first mental health symposium. And then afterwards I was going to do some travel myself around the region.

MG: So a big trip. Other side of the world. How much planning goes into something like this?

BRIAN HAYES: We had quite a bit. So we're recent medical students running first year, so we just started planning in the fall. But it's quite extensive applying for visas, memorandum understanding, all the details behind the scenes, which I know appreciate, but quite a bit of work.

MG: And what did this trip mean to you?

BRIAN HAYES: This trip was a really unique opportunity for me. One of my career passions is to work in international development, supporting developing countries. And this trip was going to be one of the first opportunity for me to go somewhere that is developing new systems such as mental health support. And so it was going to give me a taste to see if this is direction the I want to take my career. So I was really looking forward to the opportunity to experience that and to get my feet wet in that field. So it's definitely a big loss not be able to go at this time.

MG: How did you land on Bhutan in the Himalayas?

BRIAN HAYES: It was a trip that had been introduced as an idea by a previous student. And some of these trips that UBC does are re-occurring each year with partner accusations on the ground. This was going to be the first year for this Bhutan trip that had been suggested. And the topic of mental health from the symposium topic was selected by our local partners in Bhutan.

MG: How did you find out that all of that work and the planning and also just the mental preparation for a big trip like that was for not in the trip would be cancelled?

BRIAN HAYES: It was definitely quite, quite hard to kind of wrap my head around it first. I mean, obviously, once you step back and look at what else is going on there, there's context. It doesn't seem as terrible. But in the moments all I kind of think about right now, being in a different country and having such a great experience, both from a professional experience standpoint as well as from a personal experience standpoint, is something that, you know, it's a difficult pill to swallow for sure. It's something I was really looking forward to and I hadn't travelled much in the last few years as I was really working hard to get into medical school and trying to drive my career forward that way.

MG: When did the plug get pulled on it?

BRIAN HAYES: The plug was officially pulled in early March because the country had its first confirmed case from American tourists. And there, because of their relatively small medical system, they were very cautious about shutting the borders at all tourists as soon as the first case hit.

MG: As you say, I mean, in perspective and you'd know this as a medical student in the midst of a pandemic, travel perhaps isn't the most pressing issue or anywhere near one of the most pressing issues. But at the same time, you invest a lot of time and money and energy into something like this. You said it was difficult to wrap your head around. Tell me a bit more about that and some of the things that you went through when in early March this was officially put on ice.

BRIAN HAYES: Yes, I mean, it's part of it as you look forward to travelling. And I've been hoping and putting off a lot of travel plans until, like I said it, I've gotten over a certain hurdle of getting the medical school. So having that kind of almost like it was taken away, it was definitely a bit difficult. And then at the same time, for me, the next few years are what I also have some and most flexibility in my career. So what I kind of start to look at is if COVID is going to be an issue for a few years now and travel is put on hold for a while, I don't know when I will have these travel opportunities come up in my life again, where I have the same timeframes and the same opportunities as a medical student to go and learn somewhere. I think that's a really unique opportunity. So, I mean, to me, it's kind of an evolving thing where it hits me in different ways a little bit. But at the same time, it's helped to kind of invest myself into efforts locally around Canada and around my area in Kelowna by COVID in different ways. And that helps me kind of stay grounded into what's important, as you said, when travel may not be the priority.

MG: And again, it's not like you're going to go and swan around on a beach. You're going there to do work. Do you think at some point in time you'll be able to do that kind of work again in future?

BRIAN HAYES: I would certainly hope so. I think there's definitely a place for these kind of ventures. And I think when we talk about travel being ruled out because of COVID, I think one thing we can keep in mind is that the need that we were hoping to go address on the ground in a country like Bhutan doesn't go away. If anything, the need for mental health systems and support has just increased because of the isolation and the impact their feeling [unintelligible]. I mean, the whole country is on lockdown. So I would hope that these travel plans and these ventures and outreaches can still happen for whatever organizations down the road because the need is not going to go away just because of a virus, that coronavirus.

MG: You've got a great perspective on this. And I hope that you get there and I wish you the best of luck in the work that you're doing in Kelowna. Brian, thanks.

BRIAN HAYES: Thanks very much, Matt.

MG: Brian Hayes, medical student at the University of British Columbia. He was in Kelowna, B.C. Borders may be shuttered today, but that won't always be the case. Travel will at some point in time resume, but that travel industry will likely look very different for the foreseeable future. David Gillen is director of the Centre for Transportation Studies and a professor at UBC Sauder School of Business. David, good morning to you.

DAVID GILLEN: Good morning.

MG: How different do you think, and we'll start with air travel, will be for the average passenger in, say, the next 12 months?

DAVID GILLEN: I think it will be significantly different. I think that just from a scheduling and passenger demand perspective, we're going to see a very slow recovery in total demand and you're probably going to see more peaking during the day. So kind of the shoulders of the day are going to be pretty quiet. But I think that the process in the airports are also going to be significantly changed. And this is, of course, going to depend very much on what the evolution is in terms of treatments and vaccines for the COVID-19.

MG: Let's walk through some of the steps quickly. You get to the airport. What does that airport going to look like in future?

DAVID GILLEN: Well, one of the fundamental issues is, is distancing from passengers. And if you think of the experience that you have when you go through to Toronto, where I'm- I go through Vancouver. You have a Check-In, you've got security. You've got a whole room prior to boarding a flight. You've got concessions. And keep in mind that the airports, many of them are earning upwards of 50 to 60 percent of their [unintelligible] revenue from the concession area, not from flights or passengers. And then you've got pre-departure screening, which is going to be quite different because now airlines are going to be responsible for any passenger that they let on board. And the boarding itself is going to be different. And then, of course, when you arrive at particularly international flights, which I think I'd like to take a long time to come back. You've got border and health checks. And then even simple things like baggage claims. Our own experiences are that when you arrive and if you have checked luggage, you hang around the baggage belt. That's not going to happen anymore. And so I think that that's those are going to be the biggest differences. And it's going to result in some real changes in how the airports manage passengers and the airlines as well.

MG: What about on the planes themselves? I mean, already we're hearing about this idea of rear facing seats or the middle seat being taken out. Everybody has to wear a mask. Why do you think it'll be like when you sit down on the plane?

DAVID GILLEN: Well, I think it certainly initially there will be a lot of nervousness. I think that in the case of the the masks it's- it was pretty clear that trying to leave a middle seat empty didn't make an awful lot of sense. One is that airlines would all lose 40 percent of their capacity. And that's just not a moneymaking proposition. And I think, secondly, that even if you've got a middle seat, empty you're not, six feet away from your neighbours. So I think that at least will be in the direction of wearing masks is important. But I as I say, it's going to be quite different. We're used to seeing flight attendants serving us without masks on. And so I think just kind of the physical presence of those is going to create a sense of nervousness about travelling internationally.

MG: And you think of the inter-country travel that people perhaps took for granted, now, if you were, for example, to fly to Europe, to Italy, to the United Kingdom, what sort of restrictions do you think there might be for travellers going into those countries? Would we need to go into quarantine, for example? Would we even be allowed to travel into those countries?

DAVID GILLEN: That's an open question. And what happens within the European Union is going to be an interesting question, because right now you have schengen and non schengen countries in the European Union without the borders. It's fairly easy to go between countries, as you point out, and we simply took it for granted. And I think that's going to change. And would you look at the way in which the disease spread going across borders for so many countries that authorities are going to be really reticent to allow that degree of freedom of movement. But I also think travelling internationally, which is, as I said, I think is going to be a long time coming back. And not least of which is because, as your previous callers said, countries are not happy about a lot of tourists coming in and importing the disease, which may overwhelm the health care system.

MG: This is interesting. Air Canada, which announced earlier this week that it had lost something like a billion dollars in the first quarter of this year, said that it believes that there will be a significant amount of flying by Christmas. Do you think that that's dreaming in technicolour?

DAVID GILLEN: That's an interesting point. I have spoken to a number of people and there seems to be two camps. One campus is the Air Canada camp that says there's going to be a lot of pent-up demand because of the isolation and the lockdown. And once people are allowed to engage in some degrees of freedom, that they're going to use it in spades. There's others who, and I'm in this camp, that I think that people are going to be a little bit more careful where they go. You're probably going to see more domestic than international travel, but I don't anticipate that we're going to see the increase in demand for probably a couple of years.

MG: Because it's a psychological thing. As you mentioned, you get to the airport and it's not just you sitting on the plane, it's you lining up with all those people. It's you being in the airport or in the waiting lounge with people who are right next to you.

DAVID GILLEN: Correct. That's exactly right. And we're being conditioned to have this social distancing. And then all of a sudden, we're put in a position where that social distancing is difficult to achieve.

MG: David, good to speak with you about this. Thanks.

DAVID GILLEN: You're very welcome.

MG: David Gillen is director of the Centre for Transportation Studies at UBC. He was in Vancouver. Anna Pollock is the founder of Conscious Travel. It's a tourism consultancy firm in the UK. And good morning to you.

ANNA POLLOCK: Good morning.

MG: Do you see this as a huge reset for how we travel? David is suggesting that some of the things that maybe people who are able to travel took for granted are going to be, if not out the window, then certainly parked for a long period of time.

ANNA POLLOCK: Absolutely. I think it's the biggest reset in the travel industry since it took off after the war. There's no other [cutting] in demand as big as this and there's no other disruption that's gone as deep as this either.

MG: What do you think travel will look like in the, in the after time?

ANNA POLLOCK: Well, I agree with David, I think obviously we're going to see a lot less of it. The industry had grown phenomenally since the global financial crisis, which was the last blip in demand that we experienced. And it sort of bred a sense of, you know, well, we can bounce back from anything. And it took a while, I think, for the intensity and the depth of this particular pandemic to sink in. I think it will take at least a good year before we begin to see more regular international travel. My personal feeling is that in some respects, this was inevitable. The industry had grown so quickly. It didn't necessarily have the health and the resilience that was necessary to withstand these kind of shock.

MG: You were on the program not so long ago talking about over tourism as well.

ANNA POLLOCK: Well, that's the irony. I mean, in 2016, 17, 18, everyone was talking about over tourism. Last year where we were talking about farmers and floods. We've forgotten about that now. And now, of course, everything is just about coronavirus. The reality is travel it's absolutely essential in the global economy as an industry, in my opinion, has become somewhat vulnerable and bloated. And because of that, we didn't have the resilience to withstand something as major as this. What I'm hoping is that what it will lead to is less emphasis on continuous volume growth to far more emphasis on continued and developing net benefit to the communities that the visitors go to.

MG: What do you mean? What do you what do you mean by that?

ANNA POLLOCK: Well, at the moment, I mean, if we count numbers, how many people came across our borders, we count our spending, we don't necessarily count as potentially the costs associated with that. What really matters to build an industry which is going to enjoy long term community support is to be able to see that it is, as a host community, is really benefiting from the sheer numbers of it's just coming down. So therefore, we have as an industry have to look at how do we create a healthier form of tourism that does in fact benefit the community to a great extent to contribute to the well-being of the places that host the visitor, as well as the well-being of the visitor as well.

MG: We heard from Melissa O'Brien earlier. She and her husband and their three kids were going to go on this nine month around the world trip and they had cut it short after just a few months. Have a listen to what she said about how she's thinking about travel now.

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Lots of people have asked us if we will continue our trip at some point or if we'll do a part two. And I don't know that we will, to be honest. I mean, we're still interested in travelling, but our priorities have definitely changed. Before we left on that trip. I mean, it never, never occurred to us that we'd ever be in a position where we were trapped somewhere. Honestly, we took that security for granted, I think, just never having lived through anything like this and now having had that feeling, it's definitely something to consider in future travels.

MG: Anna Pollock, how do you think this will shape how people think of travel in the future?

ANNA POLLOCK: Well, actually, I I personally think that it's probably a good thing that people realise that travel is a privilege in many respects. We got to the point of just assuming, as the lady was saying, that we we can just pop in a plane and go anywhere. In that case, of course, they were taking it very seriously, but planning a long journey of discovery. But there were lots of travel, particularly in Europe where I live, which was almost impulsive travel. You know, let's go, let's pop over from London to Nice for the last weekend or to Croatia and have a party. So travel it becomes so relatively cheap in terms of what one could buy. This, I think, also added to the impact of the high volume in these places. We were just beginning to see a negative response to that with over-tourism before COVID sort of hit us, if you like.

MG: As you mentioned, travel to a lot of people as a privilege and not everybody can afford to fly, especially now when people have lost jobs, lost hours. Do you think, I mean, you look at maybe the road trip coming back. Could this lead to a rise in tourism in our own communities, in our own countries?

ANNA POLLOCK: Well, there are so many other factors to bear in mind, just because we are focussing on the virus right now doesn't mean to say that the issues around climate change, biodiversity loss and all of these other factors that have been affecting us are going to go away. My main concern is that I suspect many of these change drivers are totally intimidated. And when they combine, they could have a negative effect on our economy. It's too early to say just what the economic fallout is going to be. Tourism depends on people having disposable income. And if the economy tanks, then again, that's going to affect demand as well. I think we all recognise the absolute vital importance of recreation and taking a break and holidays. I'm not saying we shouldn't do any of that. But I think it would be crazy to think that the way that we do that isn't going to be affected by the events of the last few years.

MG: It's so interesting. We're now at the point in this pandemic where people are trying to think about what could change in future. And travel seems to be one of those things that will come out of this thinking about in a different way. Anna, thank you. It's great to talk to you.

ANNA POLLOCK: Absolutely. Thank you very much.

MG: Anna Pollock is the founder of Conscious Travel. It's a tourism consultancy firm in the UK. Any thoughts on what we've heard this morning? Just in terms of how travel will change, maybe how you're thinking differently about travel. Summer is on our doorstep, he said, fingers crossed. Maybe you're thinking about a bit of a break and you're not going to be going anywhere far, but maybe exploring in your own community. Let us know your thoughts on that conversation. You can reach us through the Web site at cbc.ca/thecurrent and click on the contact link. The CBC News is next. And then dramatic back flips. Not just for Jose Bautista. Korean baseball is back and it's got a lot of new fans in North America. We'll hear that story in six minutes. I'm Matt Galloway. This is The Current on CBC Radio One. Stay with us.

Korean Baseball; Wesley King

Guests: Dan Kurtz, Heed Kim, Wesley King

MG: Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current.

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MG: Coming up, as a former NHL player, he's used to fighting adversaries, but the fiercest yet maybe COVID-19. We will hear from George Laraque coming up. But first, loading the bases, but not the stands.

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[Korean commentary]

MG: Well, there was no crowd to go wild. But you heard the crack of the bat there, and that is the sound of baseball's opening day. No, not Major League Baseball. That's from the Korean Baseball organisation League teams from the KBO got back on the diamond this week. And thanks to a deal with ESPN, fans in North America can get in on the action.

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[Music and cheering]

MG: Those are fans and the before times cheering for the KIA Tigers. Whether it is the Samsung Lions or the LG twins, Korean baseball is definitely a fans game. If you want to start following the league, there are a few things you should know. Dan Kurtz is the founder of myKBO.net. It's the top English language Web site for Korean baseball. Dan, good morning.

DAN KURTZ: Good morning. Thanks for having me on.

MG: Thanks for joining us. How was opening day?

DAN KURTZ: Opening day was for me as a fan located now in the United States. It was incredible and almost surreal to be able to turn on my television and watch the KBO on my TV. Normally, I'd be in the past years jumping on my computer, trying to stream through a Korean Web site to watch, but to be able to watch in the English language. It was just incredible to me.

MG: How did you, somebody in Olympia, Washington, get so deep into Korean baseball?

DAN KURTZ: It started about 20 years ago or 40 years ago for me, because I was adopted from South Korea when I was 4 months old. I then returned to South Korea and my first time in the year 1999, discovered that they had a pro league. And then in the year 2000 decided to study abroad there for one year. And then that's when I was first introduced to my first KBO game. Get to see the Duce on Bears play. You actually on playing right now. And it was just, I was just awestruck as soon as I entered the stadium. The sounds. The crowd. It was something that I had to keep on learning more about. And that's why I started my website, because back then there was not a lot of English resources for KBO fans. Man, I just thought, hey, let's try to help other fans out. Learn more about the league.

MG: I want to talk about what happens on the field in a moment. But you mentioned the fans and we heard a little bit of the crowd there. What are the crowds like at these games?

DAN KURTZ: The closest thing that I could say to the North American audience would be like college football for here down here in the United States, a large college football game, or, you know, think of European soccer games where you have crowds singing, chanting, cheering. And in the KBO you it doesn't matter if your team is either winning, losing or down by 15 runs. The cheering in crowd noise is still the same. Everybody that I've taken to a baseball game that's never been to a baseball game, they want to go back.

MG: That sounds very different than the genteel North American Major League Baseball experience.

DAN KURTZ: Yes, I am a Major League Baseball fan. I go to MLB games have gone to Mariners games because of proximity where I am now. I grew up a Philadelphia Phillies fan spent to them. And even when they're winning and your hometown team is doing well, it's just kind of like a sterile, okay. All right. We want to the game. Where the KBO you're singing, you will lose your voice if you're if you're going over there cheering for the team that you want to win. I mean, you will absolutely come out of there not being more able to speak and not being able to hear, frankly, because the speakers are loud. The crowd's loud. It's just one experience that everybody has to go and experience.

MG: And so in these pandemic times, what's happening with the crowds? Are there any crowds at all?

DAN KURTZ: There are no crowds. So I've been watching the games pre-season and now since the regular season started yesterday, I've been watching the games. And it is just odd for me as a fan that's been to these stadiums to see nobody allowed in the stadiums. It is quiet on on TV. Even so, I can only imagine how quiet it is on the field for when the players are out there. I was watching preseason game on TV. They had to tell the coach, hey, you get to wear a mask. Come on. That's the new with new pandemic rules. They had to wear masks when they're on the field. And you could easily [unintelligible] into the coach. Get your mask on before you come on out in the coach'd say, okay, I'll be right back.

MG: I want to talk now about what happens on the field. This is a very similar sport, but there are some differences as well. Have a listen to this.

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[Baseball commentary]

MG: Jose Bautista of the Toronto Blue Jays hitting a huge homerun in Game 5 of the 2015 ALDS against the Texas Rangers when he did that, people know bat flip in the air. He was criticized for that move by some people in the league. In the Korean Baseball League. What happens when it comes to players and homeruns?

MG: While specifically to that. But he's to bat flip. I was living in South Korea at the time, and that's, I cal that, you know, because at the bat Flip heard round the world. I saw that. I heard about it. I talked to my Korean baseball friends at that time. And you're like, what's the big deal? You know, because in the KBO backflips, no big deal. It's not offensive to the pitcher major leagues. You flip your bat, you're going to get drilled the next time or you're gonna give your team-mate hit by a pitch and you don't want that to happen. So the guys just have not been doing it here in the major leagues. You go to the KBO you can flip your bat. You can have a little bit of flair. You can have fun when you're up at the plate and you hit a home run. You can watch it a little bit. You're not going to get nailed. You don't have to worry about getting hit by a pitch or your team-mates getting hit by a pitch. You were allowed to show a little more exuberance. And for me as a fan, I say, why not? Because they just scored a run. It's gonna take until I a you know, spike in the football to score a touchdown.

MG: Where do you think that comes from? I spent, because I'm sports starved half an hour or so last night watching highlights on your Web site of Korean baseball. And you see these bat flips from everybody. Where does that sense of exuberance come from?

DAN KURTZ: They're just happy to play in the game, I guess, and it goes back to one of the stars from the early 90s. And he literally then came out to say, Young John [Unintelliglbe]. He played for the Samsung Lions. And he just basically said he was so sterile, kind of they played you know, they very quiet on the field. And he was a kind of didn't fit into conformity. And he just wanted to show some flair. 20 years, you know, 30 years later, people are still doing it, whether they hit a homerun or not.

MG: This is a league that now people are getting exposed to all around the world. There's a Canadian who's in this league. Jamie Romak, who's from London, Ontario. Tell us about him.

MG: He is a slugging star. I just saw one of his pre-season highlights. He just hit- they play in a pretty large stadium in Incheon, his home stadium. He just crushed a ball. It literally went into the grass and the backstop like where they have like the picnic area. And it just rolled, kept rolling. And then the TV folks, that's like, wow, I've never seen that happen. He plays for the S.K.Y runs. And he is he is a prototypical slugger for that team. And he makes things happen for them. They hit a lot of homeruns and it's, a lot of them, belong to him.

MG: Part of this, the excitement around this is that Major League Baseball isn't on and there's not really any sports at all in a major league sense that are on television right now here in North America. So people are desperate for things to watch. When we get out of this pandemic, do you think that what people are seeing now in the Korean Baseball League will continue and that that that sense of excitement that people are witnessing will turn them into lifelong fans of the league?

DAN KURTZ: I think for some, if they're baseball fans already, they might say, hey, I found another baseball league that I can follow. And ESPN has decided to carry it through the end of this season. So they'll continue. There's some others that are like, you know what? I just needed my my fix until the pro sports that I enjoy comeback. My hope is that even if they just gain a few more fans, it's fans that they probably would've never reached. You know, some things can be like, hey, I like the LG twins now. And so they might want to head to Korea. They might want to go take a trip, go attend a game and see what it's really like. In person, I think it's been great for this league.

MG: Who's your team?

DAN KURTZ: My team is the Doosan Bears.

MG: And why do you love them?

DAN KURTZ: Because they were my first game when I went to . And it's just as simple as they were. The first team that a guy got to see, a guy by the name of Tyrone Woods hit a monster home run. And I like you know what? I got to find out more about this team, more about this league, more about the player. If it would have been L.G. Twins who happened to share the same stadium, I probably would have enjoyed it. I probably would pick the LG twins. But it just so happened 20 years ago. I went to a Doosan Bears game.

MG: Dan, enjoy this moment for a sport that you love. Thanks for talking to us.

DAN KURTZ: Thank you very much for having me on.

MG: Dan Kertz is the founder of myKBO.net. It's the top English language Web site for Korean baseball, as you can imagine. Many Korean Canadians are thrilled to see their national game on North American screens. Hedo Kim is the program director of the Korean Canadian Baseball Association. Heedo Kim. Good morning to you.

HEEDO KIM: Good morning, Matt. How are you?

MG: I'm great. Your organisation is more than 40 years old. This is your moment. What is it like to see Korean baseball hit the mainstream?

HEEDO KIM: Honestly, it's amazing. Something I haven't been looking forward to my whole entire life. I'm a huge KBO NLB fan and there are a lot of things that are coming up between like Korean baseball in terms of interest that Americans are showing. I think just well, nails on the alert for those who loves baseball in Canada.

MG: As Dan was saying, the game is the same, but how it's treated and the atmosphere in the stands is completely different. How would you describe what it's like to watch one of these games?

HEEDO KIM: Well, when I first watched my baseball game in Korea, I was just kids, so I wasn't really sure what to expect from baseball because I wasn't- I didn't know about it, but I could enjoy the atmosphere. It was exciting. Everyone loves the game. The food there is amazing. There's a whole life right [unintelligible]. It's an environment where people who doesn't know baseball necissarily, or are fans of the game can go ahead and enjoy the game.

MG: So these are the foods different when you go to a baseball game here and traditionally it's, you know, hotdog and beer or something like that. What do you get if you go to a game in Korea?

HEEDO KIM: It's honestly so special in a way that you can order delivery food. They have like cooking or Korean barbecue that you can do within the stadium. So it's like a whole different level of variety of food.

MG: What about the players? I mean, we're talking with Dan about those backflips. And again, it seems like every player has their own signature back flip. What you think is going on with that.

HEEDO KIM: So basically, I think it's part of the game. It makes the game a little bit more exciting. In Korea, baseball season is not as big as America. It is a smaller country. So a lot of people know each other, like the players who play in high school their rivalry does go up to professional level as well. So I think game A makes the game a little bit more exciting. It brings that forward momentum going for the fans, too. And it's a treat to watch for a lot of baseball fan.

MG: And there's cheerleaders as well?

HEEDO KIM: For sure. Yes. There are cheerleaders. Again, there are people who just like mascots for each of the teams, like each of those cheerleaders as they have big of a fan. They just have as a professional baseball player is that big and people love it and they enjoy watching cheerleaders as well.

MG: So the mascots are stars as well.

HEEDO KIM: Yes for sure. They're, like, each of the mascot has their own special unique personality and like they do bring all of the fans into the game as well. They do a lot of [cutting] is similar technology, in that case an American baseball where they can bring excitement for the fans.

MG: The fans are such a huge part of this. What is it like watching these games without any fans in the stands because of this pandemic?

HEEDO KIM: It's very unfortunate. At the end of the day, like I would say, if Korean baseball experience 80 percent is with being with the fans, watching the players, of course, is a big thing. But it's very unfortunate that we can not actually show that to the whole world or America, rather. But at the same time, it's something that gives opportunity for the fans at home to watch the baseball game. So I think is still a huge thing that we have a league going on while the pandemic is happening. But at the same time, it's very unfortunate that we cannot have the fans actually being able to participate live at the game.

MG: These games are on here in Canada in the middle of the night. You get up to watch them.

HEEDO KIM: I definitely do it. It was a little bit hard yesterday when I tried to watch them because it was like 4:00 a.m. in the morning. But I definitely was interested enough and it was my favourite team that I actually played. So that actually helped with me giving me the urge to wake up in the morning to watch those games.

MG: Who's who's your team?

HEEDO KIM: My team's Samsung Lions. I think it's more familiar to a lot of the people in America because they're Samsung. And like a lot of people using stem cell phones, Samsung TV, et cetera.

MG: What do you love about that team?

HEEDO KIM: It was my mother's team. So my mum pulled me out to play baseball and how to experience baseball and her favourite team was Samsung. Naturally, ever since I was little, I was like, okay. I got to follow my mom. Mom's passed and I loved the team.

MG: As a fan, we know- I mean there're chants and songs. Do the Samsung Lions have kind of like a chant for the team?

HEEDO KIM: Yes, they definitely do. And each of the players have their own song. So when they come up to hit, they step up to the batter's box. Everyone chants those songs and it's very exciting to see and it's very enjoyable to watch.

MG: Can you sing the Samsung Lion song for us quickly?

HEEDO KIM: Huh? So players they change a lot. Well, I do not really remember technically because I haven't been to the game for a year or so.

MG: Sounds like you're trying to avoid singing on the radio.

HEEDO KIM: Just a little.

MG: Well, give me a flavour. What would it sound like? What would one of the chants be?

HEEDO KIM: So it will be like really similar to some of the traditional songs in Korea. And then they would incorporate like Korean players name. And it's very simple as play. [Chants in Korean] And then you will clap [unintelliglbe].

MG: Fantastic. Heedo enjoy this moment for your sport. It's suddenly you and a lot of other people are up in the middle of the night watching baseball from far away. Thank you very much.

HEEDO KIM: No problem. I have a great day.

MG: Heedo Kim is the program director of the Korean Canadian Baseball Association. He is in Toronto. This is the current on CBC Radio One. I Matt Galloway sticking with sports, sort of. Tom Power, the host of Q is here. Hello, Tom.

TOM POWER: Matt, you never asked me to sing on the radio. How come?

MG: I could? Do you have a song about baseball that you'd like to sing?

TP: No. One time you actually did make me sing a song about murmuring live on stage when you were hosting Metro Morning in Toronto.

MG: I did indeed. Because you when you ask somebody on the radio did do something, sometimes they'll do it.

TP: I'm going to keep that in mind. Get you to sing Tie a Yellow Ribbon Around the Old Oak Tree.

MG: Never going to happen. We want people to continue to listen, not turn the radio off. You're here not to talk about baseball and basketball?

TP: Yes, I'm here to talk about a pretty amazing story. Wesley King is a children's author in Nova Scotia. One day he was sitting in his boat. He gets a call from Kobe Bryant. Kobe Bryant wants him to work on a children's book with him. So he flies to Los Angeles and they work on it together. I mean, of course, Kobe Bryant died earlier this year in a tragic helicopter crash. But before his death, he was working on this children's book series and now it's coming out. Check this out.

SOUNDCLIP

TP: How are you? I'm doing all right. Thanks. Thanks so much for making the time. Before we get going. It just occurred to me that we've all been mourning the loss of Kobe Bryant as an as an icon or someone we were a fan of. But it's rare to meet somebody who is mourning him as a friend. I'm so sorry.

WESLEY KING: Thank you. Yes I mean, it was certainly a new experience to be mourning a friend, but also that in the sort of this public forum, you go to the grocery store and see your friend's face looking at a very newsstand. It was and continues to be just such a strange experience.

TP: How did you guys meet in the first place? How did he reach out to you?

WESLEY KING: Yeah. So, you know, sort of random, I suppose. Turned out somebody had given him one of my books. He had had this inkling towards getting into children's storytelling. He he read them all and became a fan and reached out to me. But much, much to my surprise, I was sitting on a fishing boat in rural Nova Scotia when I got the e-mail that Kobe Bryant wanted to talk about writing a book together. So talk about a clash of worlds there a little bit. And we hopped on the phone that night. We hit it off and I was on a plane to L.A. within days,. We just sort of go right in, you know, four years ago.

TP: Do you have any idea how you got in his radar?

WESLEY KING: You know, he's funny. I just said he read the books. I don't know who actually gave it to us. Probably owe him a big debt of gratitude. But he just got the first one. He read every single one of my books before I even arrived. He's a surprisingly voracious reader. I mean, in retrospect, of course, I know these things. But, you know, he was a big, big reader, a big fan of children's storytelling, a big Potter head. So we obviously connected on a bunch of things right away.

TP: You know, it's not it's uncommon for any athlete to have a side project like this, especially one like Kobe Bryant. I mean, he didn't need to write a children's book series. He could do. You got to just lay on a beach, you know, for the rest of his life. Did he ever talk to you about why he was so interested in telling stories like this?

WESLEY KING: Yes, he developed a real passion for it. You know, even as a kid and, you know, through high school, he'd had this just teachers are infected. And I think the real triggering moment was just just kids. You know, he was this phenomenal coach, this phenomenal dad. And this is just a venue to sort of share some of these values with the world at large. I think he knew we had a captive audience, especially of maybe young, impressionable readers, and he wanted to give them the kind of positive messaging he gave his own daughters. And so there was this really sort of pure motive behind it, but also just let itself into what we've started doing.

TP: Okay. See, you're on a fishing boat. You got a plane to Los Angeles. You get off the plane. Pay me a picture of when you met Kobe Bryant for the first time in real life.

WESLEY KING: I mean, I guess now it seems like the most prototypical Canadian coming to L.A. moment ever, because I had loafers, shorts, a softball shirt and a ball cap on. And I went to this like High-Powered office in Newport Beach. You know, walk into this glass sort of office in his office and he's sitting behind this massive celebrity desk. It's twenty by twenty picture of a black mamba snake on the wall. You the super villain type archetype there. And they just stands up and gives me a hug and says, Are you ready? And I was like, let's do it. And we just sort of sat down and started going, but I look back on that picture, you know, amusedly, because here I am going to LA for the first time, you know, wearing loafers and shorts and a ball cap. But I think he likes that sort of. We had a very honest approach with each other. So that was that.

TP: Tell me about the series The Wizard. He set up the premise in just a couple of words here.

WESLEY KING: Sure. Yeah. So just down in the luck basketball team that's visited by this magical coach he just sor of challenges them to look inside themselves, to confront their own fears, their own insecurities, and to become the ball players and ultimately the men that they can be. So it's this very sort of positive, uplifting story about how we can work on ourselves to become what we dream of being.

TP: What are the stakes here like? What's the conflict inherent in this new series?

WESLEY KING: You know, they're interesting. There's no there's no obvious [unintelliglbe]. This isn't a typical narrative arc that a lot of young leaders would be used to. This is more moving inward and using magic to sort of challenge the doubts and insecurities of ourselves. So there's stories in here about things like body image, like assumed responsibility for our families, all these types of issues that manifest themselves into these magical cool challenges and that we have to confront and identify in our everyday lives again. And this was sort of along those lines of the mama mentality. But just encouraging kids to believe in themselves and all this sort of pure message at the heart of all this.

TP: What were your writing sessions like?

WESLEY KING: Little bonker, little zany at times. You know, Kobe like to throw out ideas. So did I. You know, we'd just be sitting on couches, bouncing ideas back and forth. I remember one time I came back, he called me up and I was in the Mediterranean Sea on that sailboat. He's like, can you come to L.A. like tomorrow? Well, I'll do my best. You know, as I docked in Tunisia, in Africa, got on the plane. I think I was in L.A. like three days later. And his office was just covered in Post-it notes. He'd just been writing maniacally Post-it notes everywhere. And that helped shape this next part of our book. So it was all very spur of the moment.

TP: So I guess if you have that hard work, that [unintelliglbe] mentality that he said like that unending drive, it's also going to be there in every part of your life, not just basketball.

WESLEY KING: Oh, absolutely. I mean, he became a mentor figure for me, but, you know, not for what people might think. You know, a mentor figure of how to prioritise his life. It was family first. I was waking up at 5:00 a.m. He was coaching his daughter's team four hours a day, taking them all to school. He was spending time with them throughout, running all these businesses, publishing books, doing all this stuff. I mean, it was this is this source of constant energy that I admired so greatly.

TP: How are you finding doing interviews and promoting this book? After his passing?

WESLEY KING: Yes, I mean, bittersweet, I guess is the word for it because obviously it brings back the good memories. You know, the mentality I had about life prior to January 26, courses changed so dramatically. Kobe and I had talked about writing books in perpetuity. You know, he stays in TV, writing books forever. This was sort of my future plans. And more than that, it was losing a friend. So that part's hard. On the plus side, you know, I'm seeing on the books, went no one New York Times again and been translated again being spread on the world. So to see his values and his message continue to live on that legacy to spread, you know, that's the sweet part of it. So it's a bit of both, I guess.

TP: If you'd like to tell me more about how your attitude towards life changed after you heard about Kobe's passing.

WESLEY KING: We all mourn in different ways. And I got, you know, just. It was a sucker punch to the stomach. You know, I was down. I was in a daze for weeks and months and only ultimately with the realisation that this is so contrary to the way that Kobe lived his life. Kobe believed in this conference and moving on and getting back up no matter what comes at you. That sort of shook me out of that a little bit. And I'm trying to just impart some of those those values back in and maybe live a little bit like the book that we prescribed. But it's tough. You know, he was, again, sort of a mentor and a close friend. And, you know, you want to balance these things. And, of course, the whole world is weird right now. So, you know, Ccoronavirus has changed the way that we all reflect on the world. And I respect. So we'll see as things maybe as the dust settles a little bit, can get back to work.

TOM POWER: Wesley, I really appreciate your time. Again, I'm sorry for the loss of your friend. And thank you for talking to us today.

WESLEY KING: Thank you for having me.

MG: Tom Power and conversation with the children's author Wesley King. Coming up on The Current former NHL enforcer, Georges Laraque, he is recovering from COVDI-19. He has a very serious message to share, especially for anyone who thinks they are too young or too tough to be infected. What has he been through and how could that shape how you think about this virus? We'll find out. Coming up in about 90 seconds. We'll be joined as well by our national affairs panel. Lots to talk about, including the announcement yesterday from the prime minister of aid for the agriculture sector. Nowhere near what that sector was asking for. So what needs to still flow from Ottawa? We'll find out. I'm Matt Galloway. This is The Current on CBC Radio One. Stay with us.

Georges Laraque on surviving the virus; National affairs panel on agricultural relief

Guests: George Laraque, Kady O’malley, Murray Mandryk

MG: Hi, I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current. If you're young and fit and healthy, it's easy to think that COVID-19 isn't much of a threat. The most vulnerable we know are the elderly and people who are already sick or have compromised immune systems. Even for one of the toughest guys around, though, this virus has been an ordeal.

SOUNDCLIP

I'm in the hospital. [Unintelligible]. Thanks for your help. You're putting your health at risk just to help me. You guys are just amazing. It's unbelievable what you guys do every day to help me.

MG: That's former NHL enforcer George Laraque in a video recorded Saturday from his hospital bed. He's wearing a gown. His condition was so severe he had to be put on oxygen. George Laraque is now at home in Montreal recovering, and that is where we have reached him charge. Good morning.

GEORGE LARAQUE: Good morning.

MG: How you feeling?

GEORGE LARAQUE: Way better. Way better. From the first few days I was at the hospital. Now I still have pneumonia, obviously, in my lungs. But just the fact that I could breathe without oxygen knowing my breathing is getting much better, night and day from the first few days.

MG: How bad did you feel when you were recording that video. I've watched it and seen the photos of you in the hospital, but how bad were you feeling then?

GEORGE LARAQUE: It was hard because at that time I was at the peak of the virus and I was getting fevers continuously and my breathing was really hard and they were pumping three litres of oxygen through my nose. So to talk while you're getting that must oxygen pumped was really hard to talk and to breathe at the same time. I should have saved my talking long when I was getting it, because every time you talk, it takes oxygen. And they were blowing it through my nose. So it was a hard thing to do. But at the same time, I was bored out of my mind in the hospital. I had nothing else to do. And I want to do a sensibilization campaign, because I was one of the people that never thought I was going to get it, that it was a bit blown out of proportion. And it happened to me. It had to happen to me this way to understand how serious it was and how contagious this thing is.

MG: Go back to the beginning. When did you start to feel sick?

GEORGE LARAQUE: On a Sunday. Because I was delivering food to the elderly and I was getting a lot of grocery for a lot of people. And on Sunday, like the full week of picking up stuff during delivery, I start having chills and my breathing was not that good. And I started to worry. And it was ironic because the next day on Monday, I was supposed to work in the CSSLB. This is where the old people retirement home are, they're struggling. And I applied the forms to be an employee to go and work to help them out. So Sunday night I called a girl and I say, you know what, I'm sick and I don't think I could come tomorrow. And I don't think she believed in me that I was sick. I think she thought that I just backed out, that I was scared. She's like, well, if you feel better, could you still come. And I'm like, I don't think I'm going to feel better tomorrow. So the next day on Monday, I go to hospital because I don't feel better and I wonder what's going on with me. And I wanted you to do a COVID test. And the hospital didn't want to. They said, no, we don't need to. Non-important. And they did an X-ray. And when they did the X-ray, they said, your lungs have been inflated and they avve me cortisone and they sent me home. So when they sent me home, things got, my breathing got worse and worse. And because of asthma, I start to worry a bit. The hospital calls me back and they say there was a mistake in your x-ray. We saw pneumonia. So you have to come back.

MG: A mistake in your X-ray?

GEORGE LARAQUE: Yes. In the way they read it. The why the doctor read it the back. The diagnosis he told me that it was nothing, just an inflammation. Another doctor calls me, saw my X-rays, said there was a mistake. You have pneumonia. And I'm like, what? So I'm at home. My breathing is getting worse and worse. So I end up going back on Thursday morning and my breathing is very bad at that time. And when I got to the hospital that time I'm a mad and I'm like, listen, I've been doing delivery for elderly people. Everybody's wondering if I'm sick, what I have. So I could tell them so they could go get checked. I wanted to be tested. The doctors said no. Can I please get tested now? So then I could know what I had and what's wrong with my breathing. They do the test and they see a double pneumonia. And then they also diagnosed me with COVID. So I could tell all the elderly people. So at that time right away to connect me to an oxygen tank. And because that hospital that I was with, they weren't designed to keep patients with oxygen tank, they put me in an ambulance and they sent me to Charles-Le Moyne in a room with two other elderly people that were plugged in to a tank also, much older than me. But they were really struggling much more than me and I could see them all day long run in front of me in this room suffering and I was plugged with three litres of oxygen. And when I got there was supposed to be there for two weeks.

MG: That must've been really scary. I mean, I don't know whether you felt you're around other people, you're in this hospital, whether treating other people. But did you ever feel like this could really turn for you?

GEORGE LARAQUE: No. And I never thought once my life was going to be dangerous. Actually, the one thing, though, that I was not happy about is, and after [unintelliglbe] is when I was at that hospital, first thing to plug me to oxygen and then I started breathing better, I would have love to have the opportunity to go to a private clinic or, you know, to do something else. But the minute that I was diagnosed and no longer had any resource that it could do on my own, I had to go to the ambulance and I had to let them take me to the other the hospital. And being on the floor were there was only people that were infected on that floor and in a room with two other people. So, you know, that was not a fun place to be. But again, I really needed that oxygen. And I was on the verge, actually. I remember when I got there, the first day was so bad on a Thursday that the doctor came to see me. And they were considering sending me to the ventilator.

MG: Wow.

GEORGE LARAQUE: That was on the Thursday, the first day, because my breathing was so bad.

MG: How were the staff managing? We were hearing that, you know, hospitals are overwhelmed. You're in Montreal and the city's not been successful in flattening the curve. There's a lot that's going on. How are the the staff managing with everything?

GEORGE LARAQUE: The staff when I was there, was unbelievable. Like because first of all, there was a lot of us that were on the floor and they were telling me, the nurse that I saw, that they were down there on a voluntary basis and they were smiling. Some of them got the call that they got sent home. And when they were fine, they got back. But they were very, very good because- I'm not proud to say that but on that floor I was the youngest one, so I was the only one that was able to go to the bathroom on his own while the other ones had to get diapers changed because they needed a lot of help, even just to take their medication. So that's why I knew as soon as that in the doctors said that I'd be able to just keep doing my treatment at home because the only way to treating my pneumonia when I was there is by give me one cortisone pill a day. That's it.

MG: If you're a young fit guy, you're a tough guy. I mean, that that was your role in the NHL was to be an enforcer. Did you ever think that you could get sick?

GEORGE LARAQUE: No, no, no. Not ever since. Ever since I became vegan in 2009, I'm never sick. I've been sick twice. And this virus, I thought it was so blown out of proportion. And I was like, it's never going to happen to me. It's impossible. I'm healthy. I was actually running. I was training for my third marathon. And, you know, things were so good. And I was doing tombola volunteer work. People were afraid to get out of the house. I could give you a grocery shopping. I'll do it for you. No problem. What, you want me to go? I'll go. You know, I wasn't afraid of anything. It was like, there's no way it's gonna happen.

MG: What does this touch now? Now, I mean, and in part of this is you putting that video up, but also speaking to us. I mean, what's the message that you want to send to people who might think that they're immune from this?

GEORGE LARAQUE: Not to be stupid like me. And and that that gives me a big dose of humility to realise that, you know what doesn't matter- Yes, the elderly. The life is more dangerous if they get it. But it doesn't mean that at our age, even though we're younger and we're healthy, that we can get it. And the scary part about it, just so you just so people understand, if you get it, it's not your life necessary that you're going to be scared about, because I was not scared about my own life. Is that people around you that might die, that could be affected by it because the older, because they're too preconditioned. Because when I got confirmation two days ago that all the elderly that I delivered the food, they all got tested and everybody was negative. That was my biggest scare when I learned when I got it. And I told everybody and I even when it did the post at first that I got it is to make sure that everybody that I saw the week before all got checked and then make sure I didn't forget anyone, because that's the biggest scared of it. It wasn't the fact that I got it. And that was, you know, I was going to recover. I mean, I knew that I would is the people that I saw that I don't know the condition and those that are precondition. And I want to make sure to get checked, to make sure that I didn't get him infected and everybody was fine. And to me, that was the biggest relief.

MG: When you hear that Quebec is looking at easing restrictions there, talking to reopening schools and allowing some businesses to to start to open up again. What goes through your mind?

GEORGE LARAQUE: Well, the schooling thing, I to me, it makes no sense. I was flabbergasted. In Edmonton, in Alberta, there was a third of the case that there is a Montreal, and they're still not opening school till september. In Montreal, considering the fact that when I went to the hospital, they didn't want to test me at first, even though I had all the symptoms because they said they don't have enough test. They don't even have enough test so nurse to get tested before they go home to their families. So to be in a safe environment, to send kids at school, you have to be able to test all of them. But this problem testing in Montreal is not enough. So if there's not enough testing for all the kids and going back to school and we're talking about elementary school for, not for a year, 20 days of school left. How does that make sense to put at risk those kids, those teachers, the parents. And actually the teachers, they don't even want to be there. They have to go because they're going to get fired. So when I saw that because of this situation that I went through that they told me didn't want to test me, beause they have to save the test, to me, it does not make sense for 20 days to reopen the school and take a chance to live through a second wave because of that decision.

MG: Just before I let you go and just have a few seconds left, there's a T-shirt that you've been wearing and I have to say this carefully so we get in trouble. The T-shirt says 'stay the puck home'.

GEORGE LARAQUE: Yes.

MG: Tell me about it and what the message is that you're trying to send.

GEORGE LARAQUE: Just so people know, this is not my foundations. Just so people know. Some people they thought that I created this to make money or whatever. No, I bought this T-shirt because 'Sty Puck Home', it's Hockey Hub the whole mess and go [unintelligible] down the hockey. Those two foundation teamed up together to raise funds to give to all the centres that take care of homeless people across Canada, with the money they give it to all be homeless. So when I got the T-shirt, I just sent a message. If people want to do something for the homeless by a t-shirt, it goes to those two foundation to disperse it to the homeless.

MG: And stay home.

GEORGE LARAQUE: Yes. Yes, exactly. And and you know, you need that T-shirt because when I got home, the T-shirt was already waiting for me and I was like, it comes at the right time because I have to stay home anyway. So I'm going to wear that T-shirt and give the message. And it's funny. By the way, the last thing I want to say. Now that I'm home, every time somebody brings me something. All the neighbours, everybody are [unintelligble] outside. It's almost like, oh, my neighbours, they're going to be, they want to be the person that's going to catch me if I get out of my house. It's like a medallion right now. Everybody's watching everything that I'm doing. It's pretty ironic. It's like I'm E.T. right now. E.T. is your neighbour. Let's see what he's going to do now. Somebody is coming.

MG: I'm glad you're home and that you're on the mend. And that's an important message to people that you're not immune, you're not protected from this just because you're young and fit. George, take care yourself.

GEORGE LARAQUE: Anytime, Matt. Thanks, Bro.

MG: George Laraque played 13 seasons in the National Hockey League, he was released from hospital on Monday and is recovering. As you heard from COVID-19 at home.

[Music].

MG: This is The Current on CBC Radio One. I'm Matt Galloway so many of us are staying home, and in many ways our relationship with food has changed. We're spending more time in the kitchen these days. We're thinking about where our food comes, perhaps in a different way. And now help is on the way for farmers and factories that process that food.

SOUNDCLIP

JUSTIN TRUDEAU: We're responding to pressing needs in terms of processors, in terms of predictability and support for farmers and for producers. We know that there is more to do and we will keep working with them to determine exactly how we can best help. We will be there for agricultural producers because they are so important to all Canadians.

MG: That's the prime minister, Justin Trudeau yesterday promising new relief in funding for Canada's food and agriculture sector. As we discussed yesterday on the radio, though, it's not anywhere near what the industry wanted. To talk further about that, I'm joined by our national affairs panel. Kady O'Malley is a freelance parliamentary correspondent who writes for politics. She's in Ottawa. Murray Mandryk is a political columnist with The Regina Leader Post. She's in Regina, good morning to you both.

KADY O'MALLEY: Good morning.

MURRAY MANDRYK: Morning.

MG: Kady, let's talk a little bit about this emergency funding for the agriculture sector. How much money was promised yesterday?

KADY O'MALLEY: The total amount of money was 250 million dollars and that's split between the $77 million for food processors. That's to basically help these companies at retrofit their factories, make sure they have protective gear in place and take the steps needed that they can continue to operate or begin operating again while complying with social distancing protocols, as well as a there's a $50 million three surplus buyback program. And that will allow the government to basically buy surplus products, particularly livestock, and produce and distribute that. So that basically so that farmers and livestock producers aren't forced to euthanize animals simply because they can't afford to keep them on the land and keep them alive. And there's also money for a recovery fund, an extended credit and loans. So it's basically a suite of measures that are aimed at helping farms stay in operation at this, particularly for those who aren't able to cut. To be eligible for any of the other benefit programs that have already been rolled.

MG: Murray Mandryk, what's your sense as to how farmers in Saskatchewan and across parts of western Canada will react to this money? There's a lot of money. Two hundred and some million dollars. But it's not what the Canadian Federation of Agriculture was asking for.

MURRAY MANDRYK: There's a real sense here that it was written for everybody except farmers. And you have to understand the vastness and the size of the industry out here. It's it's still the biggest industry in Saskatchewan, not oil, not not anything else, not potash. I think you hear about it. It's still agriculture in terms of contributor to our economy. And the problem with that being is that it's almost impossible for any government to operate the level of support aid needed. There wasn't anything very specific for the pulse grain and ailseeds industry here, which is the bulk of the farm commodities that come out of Saskatchewan. And we're coming off the absolute worst year imaginable as it is. It was a horrible harvest last year with the fall rains and an early winter. And so in essence, the 2019 crop is still being harvested right now. There's incredible frustration over that. And anything with the Trudeau name attached to it in the farming community automatically spurs even more frustration, rightly or wrongly, fairly or unfairly. So in answer to your question, the reaction to this has not been good out here. No.

MG: The question, or one of the questions for the prime minister yesterday was why this took so long and whether this had anything to do with the fact that the slow response was seen somehow tied to the fact that the Liberals have no seats in Alberta and out west. Is that realistic, do you think?

MURRAY MANDRYK: Oh, absolutely. You know, as I said earlier, it was written for everybody else in the country, perhaps, except Saskatchewan farmers or Alberta farmers or Manitoba farmers in that sense. And farmers here almost get that right now. There is a sense right now that they do get what they pay for. And there's so little expectations coming out of the federal government and particularly under this particular prime minister. And it is very visceral in terms of of dislike here. The COVID-19 crisis and everything else going on has put all of that on hold, politically and otherwise. But if you're looking at the farming community in Saskatchewan, you're looking at ground zero of the frustrations with the federal liberal deficit.

MG: O'Malley, how does the Liberal government try to thread that needle? Again, as you said, there's there's concerns around farmers having to euthanize livestock. We've seen images of farmers pouring milk down the drain because there isn't a source for it to go to with restaurants and hotels being closed. What sort of pressure is the government under to come up with with an adequate response?

KADY O'MALLEY: It's definitely under tremendous pressure. And this is in no way meant to sort of diminish the issues and the crises being faced by the agricultural sector. But there are other sectors as well. You mentioned the hotel and the hospitality sector. They've been putting a lot of pressure on the government to basically bring forward targeted aid that will help them specifically. You've also got airlines. And there's the oil and gas sector. There is no shortage of sectors that feel the sort of one size fits all emergency benefit packages that have been proposed and brought forward. So far, they don't see that as sufficient and they don't see those as addressing their specific respective concerns. So farmers are definitely and agricultural producers in general are definitely on that list. I think there is there are there are a number of sectors and areas that are really competing as far as those priorities go. And the government is basically trying to churn stuff out as quickly as possible. One thing I found really interesting is every time they say, well, every time we've had three incidents and so far, but every time the government brings forward one of these kind of massive, comprehensive, allegedly comprehensive, aid packages, it always turns out that something huge was overlooked. And they have to adjust it and they have to, you know, bring in legislation and make changes and tweak it so as to basically to help the largest number of people. So I am quite sure the prime minister was very clear that this was an initial payment. He sort of stressed this is kind of phase one of what the agriculture sector can expect to see. But you know, I would expect them to announce some more, some perhaps additional money, but also ways to make sure that the money that is out there can be accessed by the people that want it. And that's something that we saw with the student payments, the emergency wage subsidy, and with the overall emergency benefit.

MG: Presumably coming after pressure from opposition parties, Murray MAndryk, if you talk about how people in Saskatchewan feel about Justin Trudeau in the Liberals, what about the Conservative Party and leader Andrew Scheer? How are they performing during this crisis? Based on what you're hearing?

MURRAY MANDRYK: Well, the odd thing is I don't think that they were gaining much ground until maybe the last week or so in terms that everybody had parked their politics somewhat, understanding, knowing the magnitude of COVID-19 and what had to be done to deal with it. So you weren't hearing quite is much partisan politics. But two issues have really incited the political chatter, I think was once again one of this, what we're talking about right now. And I think Kady makes a brilliant point in terms of how massive the needs are in all areas and agriculture in particular, and how you just can't address everything. There is that sort of frustration. But I think the conservatives and perhaps maybe Scheer are starting to hit the right buttons, at least out here in terms of reigniting the frustration with the [unintelligible]s, with the other issues, obviously, the whole gun legislation. And that brings back the whole 1993 fight, even though I think what's being proposed right now is so far removed from the national gun registry that it's not even a fair comparison. Nevertheless, that's not how people think out here sometimes when they're in that that vein. And I think that might sort of reignite sort of the conservative leadership race because they're starting to talk about it here. There actually hasn't been surprisingly little talk about it here, perhaps because we don't have a candidate from out here.

MG: Kady O'Malley, that's in the race is an interesting thing because Mr. Shear, leader of the party, but is on his way out. And there are questions as to how long he can hang around and whether the race needs to be postponed or perhaps accelerated. How do you think people in the party feel about what Andrew Scheer has brought to the table?

KADY O'MALLEY: Well, I think in general, just to address Murray's point, I think the reason why you don't hear the issue of Western alienation being kind of stressed or emphasized in the campaign is, first of all, as he says, there's no clear Western candidate as in one from western Canada who is vying for the leadership, but also because, frankly, it is basically that is a baseline assumption within the Conservative Party is that everyone feels the West is hard done by and that everyone feels the West needs more equity. It's not even, there's no controversy. You wouldn't find a leadership candidate who would say anything different. So it's not one of the areas on which the different candidates are trying to basically highlight their differences. Because when you're running for leadership of a party, you don't really want to focus on all the stuff you all agree on. You want to highlight what it is that makes you different from the other candidates. And that's kind of why we're seeing a different discussion going on in the race. In terms of how- it amazes me that the Conservative Party, you might recall, it took them a long time. They were basically at the same time that Japan finally announced that the Olympics weren't going to take place in 2020. That was the same. That was the same day that the conservatives said that, you know what, maybe we're not going to be able to have this leadership race by the end of June. And it was seen as being an obvious decision that they just prolonged. Even when they did kind of change the timeline a little bit. They didn't adjust, for example, they didn't extend the nomination period, which could have given other candidates maybe more chance to left to meet the threshold from raising money and signatures. The timeline basically stayed intact, even though that is a little bit longer before the vote itself happened. So I think there's 10 days left, it's either 10 or 5 days left to sell memberships and then the cap is put on and no one who joins the party after that can actually vote. So this is a huge, there's a lot of pressure on all the remaining candidates for a candidate in the race. And I think that that's really driving what you're seeing now as far as Mr. Scheer Goes. I'm not sure his performance has been particularly impressive to conservative outside of western Canada. And there really is a feeling that the sooner they can get a permanent leader in there, the better.

MG: And the choices that are in front of them are the choices that are in front them. There's no possibility that other people could be added to this mix?

KADY O'MALLEY: Not unless the Conservative Party were to do an astounding about-face in a reversal, which is not to say that might not be a good idea.

MG: It sounded wise.

KADY O'MALLEY: So far it's not been something that we've seen them leaning towards.

MURRAY MANDRYK: Murray Mandryk, is there the possibility or the desire, do you think, from your part of the country to see different candidates in this race?

MURRAY MANDRYK: I think that there might have been. Or it could have developed into something. But it's an almost a side issue and an injunction to basically the overall frustration with the Liberal government, et cetera. I think there's a lot of Westerner's particular conservative Westerner's that want to see politics get on with it and do something to defeat Trudeau, because that is the sentiment in the conservative camp and it's so attached to a lot of industries like farming, etc. that we're talking about. So I think there's more of a driving force to get on with it. Mr. O'Toole is seemingly making some headway in this province, in Alberta and such. There seems to be a general satisfaction. I'm sure it would be far better if they had Rona Ambrose or someone else that was sort of a Western candidate to put forward those sentiments and maybe better in terms of some of the real dissention settlements from the Wexit movement and otherwise. But right now, I think there's an overall sentiment that they do want to get on with a replacement for Andrew Scheer, because even here, I don't think they've seen Andrew Scheer as being terribly effective.

MG: Kady O'Malley, just a few seconds left. If you're Justin Trudeau and the Liberals, are you happy with the fact that that race is set as it is?

KADY O'MALLEY: In the like three seconds and I'm not worrying frantically about how I'm going to get all this money out to go to all the industries that want it, yes, maybe I'm a little bit hoppy, but again, kind of dwarfed by the context.

MG: Guess that's the context that it's in. It's not politics as usual, certainly. And we'll see whether that returns in the short or long term. It's good to speak with you both. Thank you.

MURRAY MANDRYK: Thank you.

KADY O'MALLEY: Thank you very much. Have a great day.

MG: And you, Kady O'Malley, freelance parliamentary correspondent who writes for Eye Politics. Murray MAndryk is a political columnist with the Regina leader Post. Your thoughts on this. Welcome in terms of the performance of various parties, but also what we were talking about in terms of just what people in farming communities and in the food sector need. The federal government announced 252 million dollars yesterday. Canadian Federation of Agriculture asking for a couple of billion dollars. If you are in that sector and it's a number of different sectors and we'd be happy to hear from you. You can reach us through the website at cbc.ca/thecurrent and click on the contact link or send us an email thecurrent@cbc.ca.

[Music: Theme]

MG: You're CBC News is up next and then the case for boredom. Why it's time to listen to that restless feeling and what it's trying to tell you in these locked down times. Many of us perhaps are feeling bored and maybe that's not such a bad thing. I'm Matt Galloway. This is The Current on CBC Radio One. We're back in six minutes time. Stick around.

Bored during the pandemic? Blame it on a lack of agency, say experts

Guests: James Danckert, John Eastwood

MG: Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to an extended edition of The Current.

[Music: Theme]

MG: Still to come, the COVID bike boom. Why cycling shops are thriving right now. That's coming up in half an hour. But first, embrace your boredom.

[Music: Theme]

MG: In case you needed a reminder, it's Wednesday, the middle of the week. Except these days it's almost like time doesn't exist. Maybe you're feeling tired and agitated or maybe you're like Ellen Degeneres right now restless and eager for connection.

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[Sound: Phone rings]

ELLEN: It's Ellen. Happy birthday.

VOICE: Thank you.

ELLEN: Just wanted to call and say Hey.

VOICE: So you're also doing nothing?

ELLEN: Yeah. Nothing.

[Sound: Phone rings]

VOICE 2: Hey.

ELLEN: John?

VOICE 2: Yeah, who's this?

ELLEN: It's Ellen. I wish I had kids right now. I'm so bored.

VOICE 2: Yes. We're bored too.

VOICE 3: We're super bored.

ELLEN: Yes. All right. Well, I just want to call say, hey, you know.

MG: Now it's hard for many people to feel sorry for someone who's isolating in a mansion. But that feeling of boredom is a common one, no matter who you are. Chances are you felt it as well. Canada, it turns out, is home to two world experts on boredom. James Danckert and John Eastwood are both professors of psychology and together they have a book coming out. It's called Out of My Skull The Psychology of Boredom. James and John, good morning.

JAMES DANCKERT: Good morning.

JOHN EASTWOOD: Morning.

ELLEN: James Danckert, what is it about boredom that you find so interesting?

JAMES DANCKERT: Yes, the thing I think that drives me to research it is that I think most people just trivialize it. They don't really think about it if they think about it at all. And I think boredom is an important signal that influences our behaviours in really important ways. So boredom is fascinating to me. It's something that we need to understand better as to how it influences our behaviour and our daily lives.

MG: Can you just start by defining it? What is your definition, James, of boredom?

JAMES DANCKERT: Boredom is that uncomfortable feeling that you have when you want to be doing something, but you don't want to be doing anything that's currently available for you. So you really have that strong desire to be engaged with something purposeful, meaningful in your life right now. But whatever's in front of you just doesn't appeal for whatever reason. And so it's a sort of feeling of restlessness and discomfort and agitation. And, you know, one that we sort of try to fairly quickly do to redress.

MG: John, you run the boredom lab at York University. What happens in a boredom lab?

JOHN EASTWOOD: Yes, that's a good question. Well, one of the things that we do is we actually make people bored and then look to see what impact that has on their behaviour. And we also try to see what kinds of variables can make people more or less bored.

MG: How do you make somebody board?

JOHN EASTWOOD: One of the things that we do is we ask people to watch a video. It's an English language, learning videos and it's well below the level of the people who are watching the video. And we also manipulate the passage of time. So we take away clocks and we tell them, you know, the movie is going to be a certain length, but it actually is much longer. And so it's the time tracks for them. And we also manipulate choice. And so we tell people that, you know, unfortunately, you're you know, you're gonna have to watch this movie. You're not going to have a choice because we've had some technical problems. And so lack of choice is another factor that we know is really important. So when you combine all these together, it's just mind numbingly boring.

MG: It sounds to some people perhaps like the lives they're leading right now, being stuck in their home, not able to go anywhere. Choice has been removed. What do you see as the connection between this pandemic that we're in and boredom? John?

JOHN EASTWOOD: Well, you know, one of the things that James and I really focus on in our book and in our research is this idea of agency and you could think about agency as the ability to be autonomous, to make choices, to be self-determined — and boredom really alerts us to the fact that we're not being agentic in the moment. And I think during this time, this pandemic time, a lot of people's choices have been limited or curtailed. And so that's really going to contribute to boredom. But it's important to recognize that boredom is not just the absence of possibilities. You know, as James said, it really stems from that inability to muster up an actionable desire. And certainly when you're constrained, it's going to be a harder thing to do.

MG: In light of that, James, tell me. But the research that you're doing at University of Waterloo.

JAMES DANCKERT: Well, it's just- how much time have we got, Matt? There's quite a bit going on. I think that our focus that's somewhat different than what John does is that we look at the neural [unintelligible]. So what's happening in your brain when you're bored. And as John was saying that in his labs that they have various ways of making people bored. We, too, do that when we scan their brains, we have them watch a movie of two guys hanging laundry for eight minutes. It doesn't take much more than about 15 seconds before people sort of realise that this is going to be terrifyingly boring. And what we find is that when you watch that boring movie, that there's a sort of network of activity in the brain, in a network known as the default mode network. And there's a lot of things that are associated with this particular network, but it's more active when there's nothing sort of external in your environment for you to do. And the interesting thing about us finding that in our scan is that there is something in the environment for you to do. There's a movie that we've told you that you should watch and pay attention to. But we've intentionally made it such a bad and such a boring movie that your brain sort of shuts off and goes into that default mode and doesn't engage with the movie. There's a lot more research to do on that front. We also work with people who've suffered traumatic brain injury because these individuals report that after their brain injury, they find boredom to be more prevalent and more difficult to deal with. And I think that's got something to do with the resetting of how we sort of value the things that we do in our lives, that that's for these people, something needs to be more exciting or more thrilling or engaging for them to sort of find it interesting after they've had that brain injury. So we do a little bit of research with those people as well.

MG: John, it's not as though people are watching a movie of a couple of guys hanging laundry these days, but they are, again, it's that removal of agency. We can't do the things that we want to do. But also, it feels as though time has flattened itself out and every day is just another day. There'll be a couple of reactions that you'll hear commonly about how people are feeling right now. And one is extreme fatigue. How is that related, John, to the idea of boredom?

JOHN EASTWOOD: Yes. Well, you know it when we're bored, we often experience what you could think of as like a jumble of energy levels, so we might be incredibly lethargic and kind of listless at one moment and then sort of restless and agitated the next. And, you know, one way to think about this is sort of this is our body or our mind kind of oscillating back and forth and trying to get engaged. It's sort of like you come up to the plate; okay, I'm gonna do it. There's nothing there. And you'll pull back again into that more lethargy. And so it's that oscillation or that jumble of energy levels that really characterizes what's going on and boredom.

MG: Does that also reflect why people just become irritated the longer that they are bored?

JOHN EASTWOOD: Well, you know, there is a little bit of studies showing that when people are bored, they can be more irritable or more hostile, even towards others. There's some interesting research out of the U.K. showing that when you make people bored, they in particular behave in more aggressive or hostile ways to people that they perceived to be different than themselves. So kind of people from other cultural groups and they're more friendly or more forgiving to people from their own cultural groups. And the idea here is that when we're bored, we have a sense of a loss of meaning and a loss of purpose. And one of the ways that people try to redress that loss of meaning is to circle the wagons around your own cultural group and be aggressive towards others. And I think that's something, you know, particularly concerning during this time.

MG: Yes. Is there any - you're talking about what goes on in our brain, James, and the idea of the default mode. Is there any evolutionary purpose to us getting bored? What some sort of larger reason as to why this happens to us?

JAMES DANCKERT: Absolutely. You can rephrase that question just to be. What's it for? If if evolution selected for boredom, then it must have a purpose. It must serve a function and in our lives. And the purpose that boredom serves is to galvanize us into action, to push us to act. At the moment that we're feeling boredom, as John mentioned, we're feeling a loss or a lack of agency. We're not being effective actors in our lives. We're not being the authors of our own lives. And so boredom is saying you need to explore your options to change that, to become an effective agent in your life. And you do see that that boredom is evident if this is something that has a long evolutionary history. We ought to be able to see boredom in animals and we do. Anyone who has a dog knows that, you know, if you leave it alone with nothing to do for too long, your shoes are in trouble, you know. But it's also been experimentally demonstrated that animals that are sort of held in situations that are bland and don't allow them to behave in the way they normally would in the wild will tend to to sort of exhibit behaviours that are indicative of boredom. So the function, I think is real at the end and it's evident in other species. And it really just is to push us into into action and to actions that we find satisfying and meaningful to us in some way.

MG: But if you can't partake in those actions and you think it's now spring in many parts of the country, summers on our doorstep, do you think our feelings of boredom, James, will intensify if we can't go out and enjoy the summer in the way that we want to?

JAMES DANCKERT: It's a tough question to ask. You're asking me to speculate, but I think the quick answer is yes. And it's because, as John says, when we have our agency threatened and when we have opportunities that we would normally engage in prevented, when we're prevented from doing things that we would normally do, then, yes, we can get frustrated and hostile and ultimately bored. And so I'm no different than anybody else. As soon as the weather turns nasty, you might detect that I have a bit of an accent. But I've been in Canada for long enough to know how much Canadians cherish their summer. As soon as the weather gets nice, like everybody else, I want to get outside and do all the things that we associate with summer. So yes, when you feel like you're prevented from doing those kinds of things, it's quite plausible that boredom will become more prevalent and more difficult to deal with.

MG: John, if it becomes more difficult to deal with. What are the worst case scenarios in terms of the boredom drags on. What happens to somebody?

JOHN EASTWOOD: Yes, well, you know, I think boredom is a is a signal that, you know, as James said, alerts us to the fact that we need to redress a problem. We're not being the authors of our lives. And how we respond to that signal is really key. You know, sometimes and some people can respond to that signal in adaptive ways and productive ways. And other times, people, you know, go down a darker path. We know that boredom is associated with overeating. That's something that many people, I think, during this lockdown have noticed or experienced. It's also been associated with risky decision making and substance use and addictions, just absent minded errors, you know, inability to focus, anger, irritability that we mentioned earlier and also depression. I did some qualitative interviews with people who experienced chronic depression and they talked about boredom being kind of a frightening thing for them because when they were bored, they were disengaged from meaningful and satisfying activities with the world. And so they fell back into sort of a more depressive rumination. And so for those people who are at risk for depression or other kinds of trouble like that, boredom can be a risk factor. So, you know, but on the other hand, there can be some upsides, too. I think it's important to note that when we have a break from our routine, when we have a break from all the business of life, it gives us an opportunity to kind of pause and reflect and sort of ask ourselves, you know, who am I, what matters to me and what do I most want to be doing with myself? And then we can look for activities that give expression to and flow from our passion and our curiosity and our creativity. But that's challenging, right, because boredom feels so uncomfortable. We want to numb the feeling as soon as it emerges. And so I think it's important to encourage people to, you know, to be calm, to breathe through it and see if they can use this disengaged moment as an opportunity to reflect and then reconnect with the world armed with a better sense of who they are and what they most want to do.

MG: James, do we know whether boredom impacts people at different ways, at different phases of their life? I think I say this as a parent. You hear from your kids. I am so bored and there's a million things that they could be doing. But they say, I'm so bored and they'll say it again and again. And eventually, perhaps you become irritated because they're irritated. Do we know whether the kids experience boredom in a different way, or is it tougher on them than perhaps we understand?

JAMES DANCKERT: That is a classic experience for parents, isn't it? When the kids say I'm bored. I think they're really saying I'm bored and I want you to fix it for me. We don't know a hell of a lot about kids under about 10 years of age. We haven't really got that research, but we do know that boredom rises somewhat through the teenage years. And so that's sort of classic image of the bored. restless sort of teenager is backed up by research. It reaches a peak in sort of around 16 to 17 years of age. And then it starts to drop off and it continues to drop off into the middle decades, into our 30s, 40s and 50s. But it's important to say it doesn't go away. So in a large study that samples people's daily lives, boredom was one of the highest reported emotions, even for people in their 30s, 40s and 50s. And then towards the end of their lives and a lot of decades, there's a slight rise in boredom again. And that tends to be associated with things that are relevant to our time right now. So the people in their 60s and 70s that had high rates of boredom also tend to be socially isolated. They tend to have not a very deep, connected social network. And so that rings true for most of us now who are socially isolated for the reasons that we have no control over.

MG: Is there anything positive that can come out of being bored? You'll often hear people say will embrace your boredom or that they come up with ideas that they've been stuck on when they're doing something mundane and they're ironing 40 shirts and suddenly I am able to crack the problem that has been swirling around in my brain because I'm bored and my brain is kind of wandering around somewhere else. John, is there anything creative that can come out of embracing your boredom?

JOHN EASTWOOD: Yes. Yes. I think there is. I might rephrase a little differently, I would say there's something creative that can come out of these unconstrained times when we have nothing to do and when we have a lot of freedom. And and, you know, another psychologist, Dino Yang, talked about constructive internal reflection. And I think that's a skill that we need to foster and develop: the ability when there's nothing to do around us, to be able to turn inward, perhaps to daydream, to get lost in our thoughts. And there is some research suggesting that if people are bored and they're able to engage in daydreaming mind-wandering, then they can sometimes come to some creative insights or some creative discoveries. So again, the key is to be in an under stimulating situation and learn how to navigate it without becoming bored. And people who have that ability to be creative, I think can make good use of this time.

MG: How are you doing? And I'll start with you, John, in a time where boredom is everywhere.

JOHN EASTWOOD: How am I doing?

MG: Yes.

JOHN EASTWOOD: I'm busy right now. You know, as a university professor, we've had to move all of our teaching and our courses online and lots of Zoom meetings. You know, but you can be sort of restless and bored even amidst the busyness. Right. Because it's when you're not able to sort of connect with the world based on your own desires. But I'm certainly busy and it's given us some opportunity to design some research studies that we can run during this time. And we're very interested to try to understand the relationship between emotions and boredom. Emotions are like compass points that orient us in life and they help us to move towards things that are of value. And it means something to us. And when our emotions are all mixed up or in the worst case of our emotions are numb when we're really going through some traumatic situations, it's kind of like losing our compass points. [Unintelligible] interested during this time to try to understand the relationship between emotions and boredom.

MG: James, in this time where time has kind of flattened itself out and you don't have the agency to do what you want to do, how are you handling the rising boredom?

JAMES DANCKERT: I would echo John's thoughts that we are busy. I would also like the thought that we you can still be bored during the busy times. I do want to say, you know, we also recognise that we're quite privileged to be able to do the work that we do from home. And certainly those of us who are frontline workers and the people in health care are facing a much tougher time than I can imagine. But unlike John, I think I do find myself here, working from home is unusual. It's not what we would normally do. And I think fairly quickly that the lockdown it was evident to me that I liked the routine of going to work. And then I liked being in a different place for some period of time, physically different places, some time during my day. So, yes, I do sometimes at around 4:00 or 5:00 in the afternoon and I start to feel a little bit of a twinge of boredom and I need to just find something. As John pointed out earlier, to be calm about it and just find something meaningful to do in that moment. And it doesn't have to be a big meaningful task that solves some of the world's problems. That can be as simple as baking cake, which I have done.

MG: Delicious. Good to speak with you both about this. The book is timely and I think a lot of people will be interested in how you interpret this moment that we're in through what we are and aren't doing. Thank you both.

JAMES DANCKERT: My pleasure.

JOHN EASTWOOD: Thank you.

MG: James Danckert is a cognitive neuroscientist and professor of psychology at the University of Waterloo. John Eastwood, Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology at York University. And together they've written this new book called Out of My Skull The Psychology of Boredom. It comes out next month. This is the current on CBC Radio One. My name Matt Galloway. As we we're saying, the days seem to blur together. Lately, they kind of drag on as well. It's Wednesday, in case you forgot. For the past few weeks, we've been asking you to let us know what songs you're listening to to help you get through the songs that help melt some of the anxiety that's around us. Perhaps offer a little bit of comfort for these odd, unusual times. Today's suggestion comes from Kathryn Arbez, who's in Nanaimo, British Columbia. She writes that for her, this song, in Kathryn's words should be a call to arms during COVID to the ongoing climate crisis we still need to tackle suggested by Kathryn Arbez. This is the Canadian singer songwriter Sarah Slean and The Day We Saved the World.

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[Song: The Day We Saved the World by Sarah Slean]

MG: Sarah Saleen as suggested by Kathryn Arbez of Nanaimo, British Columbia, what are you listening to in these tricky times? It's helping you get through. Let us know. Song suggestions welcome at cbc.ca/thecurrent. Click on the contact link. Coming up next, cycling in a time of crisis. Why bike shops are seeing a surge of new customers right now. If you're bored, get out for a bike ride. Although you may have to line up to get into the bike shop. That's coming up in a minute and a half. I'm Matt Galloway. This is The Current on CBC Radio One.

Biking boom in Canada; Healing power of music

Guests: Kimberley Nelson, Carlton Reid, Maryze Bernard, Sister Louise Dillon

MG: Hi, I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current sounds of spring. Birds chirping, the lawn more fired up. And this.

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[Sound: Bike bell]

MG: That's the bike bell. Warm weather always brings out the cyclists, but it seems in this pandemic that bikes might be the new toilet paper. Well, maybe that's a bit far, but it is a seller's market. Business is booming. Sales. Repairs. Here's the scene in one Nova Scotia bike shop.

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My name is Mark Ricards and I am the owner of the Bike Lane, Nova Scotia. So as I come in in the morning, I actually have to start dodging the bikes that are parked everywhere. It's a bit of an obstacle course right now. Like, I think there's 65 bikes in our repair queue and then there's probably another 25 ready for being picked up. So it's kind of a walking room only, which is in some respects handy that we're not allowing customers in at the moment because there's nowhere to put a customer. You know, I'd make my way through to the back of our shop where we keep our air compressor just get back close to it again. But like I quite literally have to step over bicycles in order to get to it. Let's just see. Typically, at this time of year, we have quite a few used bikes for sale, but at the moment we have sold through all of them, which I have never seen in the nine or 10 years that we've been around as a shop here in Dartmouth. Typically, spring is quite busy, but this year has been significantly busier than others. We've seen quite a few that haven't seen the light of day in 25, 30 years. Yes, and they were good bikes way back then and people are now seeing the opportunity to get out and get on them. And yes, it's one of the few things that they're allowed to do really.

MG: And with so many cars off the road, bike advocates are seizing this moment to make inroads for their cause. Kimberley Nelson is Alberta director for Velo Canada Bikes. It's a national cycling advocacy organisation. She's in Calgary. Kimberley, good morning.

KIMBERLEY NELSON: Good morning.

MG: What's the cycling like in Calgary these days?

KIMBERLEY NELSON: Oh, well, luckily, I'm in one of the first cities that started opening up what's been termed COVID Lane. So cycling is booming. And the beauty part is we have a lot of data counters set up around the city as part of our active transportation Active Living Streets group. And so we can actually watch those numbers daily coming in. That's pretty impressive.

MG: What has happened in your city, in light of the lockdowns and the physical distancing guidelines to make cycling easier?

KIMBERLEY NELSON: So a number of roads have been either closed to the vehicular traffic and open for pedestrian bicycle traffic, or they've at least allocated one lane to allow that same thing to happen.

MG: Well, speaking with the mayor of Montreal yesterday, Valerie Plante, she was talking about what's happening in her city and an opportunity to rebalance the roads and make it a more equal and shared space. What else are you seeing across this country?

KIMBERLEY NELSON: Well, we've actually set up a Canadian map and a tracker on our website so that people can see what's happening kind of across the country. I know that there I've seen at least 18 different trackers. [unintelligible] has one going. They're happening everywhere where people are, you know, itself reporting what their own city is doing. We've seen huge gains in Brampton. Winnipeg, Calgary. I've mentioned Vancouver. It's just happening everywhere. People are understanding that the space that we've allocated for people is not adequate to allow for this physical distancing that's required during a pandemic.

MG: What was happening? I saw this photo in Saskatchewan of the soup cans that were used to mark off a bike Leon.

KIMBERLEY NELSON: Yes. And I'm pretty sure they they took the idea from somewhere in the states. It's pursuing a Red Cup campaign. This case, they're actually collecting soup cans and putting them out onto the roadway to create their own. And then I would imagine that at the end of this, hopefully when the city kind of moves in and does it properly, all of that food can then go to the food bank. It's kind of a brilliant solution.

MG: What do you see as the possibility coming out of this thing that we're in right now when it comes to that idea of creating more space in the road, safer space for people to ride bikes?

KIMBERLEY NELSON: Well, I think one of the things that got lost at the beginning of this pandemic, which really hit Canada on March 11th, March 12th, is that Andy Fillmore, MP in Nova Scotia, announced that they were launching a better national active transportation strategy. So we don't have any of the details yet. Clearly, the government has been fairly busy since that announcement was made. But the fact that there's now going to be an overarching strategy is certainly encouraging, especially at a time like now where, you know, we have governments that need to get stimulus funding out into municipalities. We know that the return of investment for cycling infrastructure is so much larger than road projects and that now is the time that we can start making some of those changes and fund it as part of that stimulus to help the economy out while we're in the middle.

MG: People are also going to be in larger urban centres looking for other ways to get around, because presumably until we get some sort of vaccine, taking transit may not be an option for many people.

KIMBERLEY NELSON: Yes, transit, I would imagine, even later on, you know, ridership might be slowed to pick up. I think a lot of people are going to be very wary of getting onto a train car or a bus if it's got a fair amount of people on it. So, you know, the options right now that cities are looking at are either you're going to force by default people into personal vehicles, which won't help anyone. It won't help air quality, which we all know is one of the contributing factors to covered or that they can make the investments and do some of these, you know, short term closure, maybe even look at doing some long term retrofitting of existing facilities. There's an opportunity here to just start to look at what this is going to look like in a year, five years, 10 years. And the actions that we take today will have those long reaching effects.

MG: Kimberley, safe riding. Good to talk to you. Thank you.

KIMBERLEY NELSON: Thank you.

MG: Kimberley Nelson is the Alberta director for Avello Canada Bikes. It's a national cycling advocacy organisation. She was in Calgary. This isn't the first time that the world has seen a surge in cycling. In the early 1970s, a bike craze hit North America. Politicians were introducing bike bills calling for bicycle past. There were university courses in biology. Adults were choosing two wheels over four. Even the transportation secretary for Richard Nixon was cycling to the White House on a fold up bike. The author and journalist Carlton Reed documents all and more in his book Bike Boom. Carlton Reid is in Newcastle, England. Carleton, good morning to you.

CARLTON REID: Hi there, Matt.

MG: Describe what plans were underway in the United States in the 1970s. Because the picture that you paint is one where the U.S. was poised to take over or overtake the Netherlands in terms of one of the most bike friendly places. What was going on?

CARLTON REID: Well, people like Kimberley were certainly thinking so that they'd equivalent to Kimberley back then to bicycle advocates were absolutely expecting this to happen. But then again, they were, as you just mentioned, that so were major people like Volpi, who was the secretary of transportation in the U.S. at the time, who basically told his department to go ahead and fund a hundred thousand miles of bikeways. And that would have totally dwarfed what was available then in the Netherlands. So people were were definitely thinking that the automobile era was was was gone., Basically. That was the thinking at the time from right at the top of government and then bicycling. The era of bicycling will be will be next on line. And we know that that's not exactly what happened.

MG: In the context of that, just briefly. I mean, in the 1970s, for people who may not remember. Why was it that people were believing that the automobile was on its way out and that the way you would get around would be on a bicycle?

CARLTON REID: Baby boomers were starting to buy things and one of the things they were buying - so the 16 year old 17 year old baby with the time latched onto bicycle's for environmental reasons. So 1970, for instance, is when Earth Day was created. And so the burgeoning environmental movement and the health care for the health kick that brought you jogging. I know that's a disparaging term to runners, but jogging when that was kind of created in the early 1970s, that was part of an environmental type health kick. All of these factors came together and a light to the pun on bicycle's and it totally shocked the bicycle industry who was not expecting it. And very quickly ran out of supplies, as has happened today, of course.

MG: And so what happened with the bike boom?

CARLTON REID: Well, it lasted longer than the current boom that we've got. So this boom that we've now got, it's only two weeks old, but it's been very impressive and very quick to happen around the world. But this boom in the 1970s lasted for the best part of four years. So it was a significant. It wasn't like a two week flash in the pan.

MG: Why do you think it went bust ultimately?

CARLTON REID: It's hard to say exactly, but certainly one of the factors was cycling just fell out of fashion. So the environmentalists, for instance, the Friends of the Earth with the lead organisation pushing cycling in the 1970s, at this point, there weren't any bicycle advocacy groups. They were created after the doom's in 1975 was when a lot of the world's famous advocacy groups came about. But it was the environmentalists who are pushing for cycling and they kind of went away to save the Whale and anti-nuclear and they just basically just went onto other campaigns. So we lost the whole impetus of advocates pushing for this. And then just, I know it's a funny word to say in this context, but it's the cycle of fashion. So this particular fashion for cycles just went out of fashion, unfortunately, and there wasn't enough done when it was at the peak. When you really could have pushed through and you could you could pump any amount of money and nobody would really push against it. And not enough was done to actually keep the boom going. So industry analysts definitely thought another year of this and you would have a Netherlands style U.S. and North America. And unfortunately, for all these different reasons of why it didn't carry on, it just didn't.

MG: Well, people, will point to the Netherlands. Those of us who ride bikes will look, you know, and think wistfully of the Netherlands as one of the best by cultures on the planet. How is it that it hasn't gone out of fashion there? How do those places sustain their enthusiasm for cycling?

CARLTON REID: Well, I'm gonna risk being contrarian here, but it did go out of fashion in that the Netherlands, just like everywhere else, fell in love with the cars, started planning for the for the car, started ripping out things for the car. But when they fell out of love with the bicycle, which they did, they were at such a high level of bicycle use in the Netherlands and some cities followed by 1912 to about the 1970s. They were 90 percent use of bicycle's in their cities, and nowhere else in the world ever approach anything like that. You know, even a good cycling city, those days in the UK, for instance, will be about 25 percent usage. So Netherlands just was so high and so rarefied that when bicycling fell out of favour in the Netherlands, it fell, but it fell at a much higher level. So bicycle use fell from, say, 90 percent in those cities to what is now an amazing modal share of 40 percent. You couldn't have that 40 percent if you didn't start with 90 percent.

MG: Do you see? That's really interesting. Do you see any possibility that this moment could be different? In part because as Kimberley was saying, people are going to think differently about how they get around. They may not want to cram themselves on a bus or a street car or subway if they have those in their communities. But also, roads are being reshaped. And there's the possibility, as we heard from the mayor of Montreal yesterday, that that reshaping could be permanent. We're going to rethink how our roads are used. So could the moment that we're in now be any different than moments in past? In terms of it having some longevity?

CARLTON REID: I think so. Because we've got planners and politicians who are now talking the talk and putting their money. So, for instance, in London. In fact, just today, Park Lane, Euston Road. Major, major thoroughfare in London are going to have these temporary cycleways put in. But then you look at the press release and the mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, says we're totally gonna make it permanent. So people are already thinking ahead. Right. These things that have Kimberley were saying that the soup can pop up cycleways. People are already planners and politicians are already thinking about. Yep. But, you know, we're going to make these permanent. It's very important to get these cycleways and widen sidewalks down now, now at the height of the pandemic and the lockdowns and in the future to actually solidify them. So there's no reason that motorcars need quite so much space they've currently got. You can take space away and it doesn't lead to congestion. No, this isn't one of those anomalies that always freaks out transport planners. You know, when you for instance, you close a bridge and it's going to be traffic Armageddon. Lo and behold, there's no Armageddon. When you close that bridge, because traffic just somehow makes its way else way or it often just disappears.

MG: If you build the infrastructure, will they come? Well, the cyclists then appear?

CARLTON REID: A pandemic has and the lockdown has definitely shown us that there are people out that are not hardcore cyclists. I don't know what it's like in Canada exactly. But in the UK there are people out cycling outside my window, because I live in a big city, who are out with their families and you're locked in like little little ducks in the road. The parents with their kids following them have never seen that on on city roads before. So that absolutely show there's this latent demand that is latent because it's not safe to be out there. It's safe for hardcore cyclists who know what they're doing. But that 10 year old child probably isn't going to feel safe. The the thing that infrastructure first people say is you've got to design for that 10, 12 year old. You don't design for the fast spandex wearing, helmet wearing roadie. You you designed for the 12 year old child.

MG: Let's see where this goes. Carlton Thank you.

CARLTON REID: Okay.

MG: Carlton Reid, freelance journalist and the author of Bike Boom. He was in Newcastle, England. This is the current on CBC Radio One. My name is Matt Galloway.

SOUNDCLIP

Hi, this is Maryze. And I would like to share a song for friends and family who are far away right now. [Starts singing]

MG: That is Maryze singer songwriter based in Montreal. Her grandmother is currently in an Ontario rehabilitation hospital recovering from a fall and from pneumonia, and last month Maryze posted this song on Facebook as a dedication to her gramma. Mayze Bernad is on the line with us now, Baris. Good morning.

MARYZE BERNARD: Good morning.

MG: That's lovely.

MARYZE BERNARD: Thank you. Thanks so much. Thanks for having me on.

MG: Tell me a little bit about writing that song. Why did you want to write that?

MARYZE BERNARD: I was feeling a little bit low, I think, with the pandemic. It just was so much information to process. And then after a few weeks, then we didn't really know how long all this would last. And I was just feeling far away from friends and family. I'm from Vancouver, but I currently live in Montreal and most of my family is actually in Ontario. So, yes, I just you know, I wanted to write something that just kind of expressed how I was feeling and hopefully would resonate with other people who are feeling a bit lonely right now.

MG: Tell me about your grandmother.

MARYZE BERNARD: So my grandmother is amazing, she has seven kids, so we have a really big Irish family and we're, you know, the type of family that gets together a lot and just loves to be together. And she had a fall just as the crisis was kind of beginning. So a couple months ago now, she had a fall and she developed pneumonia. And so she's been in hospital for about eight weeks now. She's been in a rehab centre now, though, for four weeks, which is really great. That's some progress. We're missing her a lot. We obviously can't go in to see her right now. So that's tough.

MG: And so you write this song coming out of that experience, what were you hoping would happen with the song?

MARYZE BERNARD: I mean, I just wanted to share it with loved ones. I was hoping it was something that my nana would be able to hear it because she is not you know, she can't really access technology right now. And I didn't know if that would be possible. So, yes, the goal was just for people to hear it and maybe feel a bit of comfort and love. But I really, really was hoping it would get to her. And it did managed to. So that's great.

MG: And it managed to through the assistance of somebody who's been listening into this conversation. Sister Louise Dillon is a chaplain at the Shaver Niagara Rehab Centre. That is where your nana, Rosemary McNamee, is staying. Sister Louise, good morning to you.

SISTER LOUISE: Good morning.

MG: When did you learn about this song and how did how did you hear about it?

SISTER LOUISE: Well, actually, at our hospital with the COVID-19 pandemic, which started in mid-March, our hospital was following directives from public health and Ministry of Health for safety and the well-being of those we care for. And visitors were restricted to only those patients who were very seriously ill. And so I had spoken to our senior team, who I'm a part of, and it was agreed that we would play music on our hospital in a intercom to help benefit those patients and staff alike. And along with the music, various staff have been also participating in mindfulness and brief zumba exercise during breaks and so on. So on St. Patrick's Day, we started a 15 minute musical interlude each afternoon. And since then, both staff and patients love the music and soon began to gave me many requests for various artists ranging from country to to Elvis to soft rock, Mamma Mia, James Taylor, you name it. So then I was visiting with Mrs. McNamee and I know her family quite well. And they had sent me this piece of music, which I loved. And so I shared it with Nana. And so I asked her what she would think if I played this on the intercom with delight, she responded. So I got the necessary permission from Maryze. And so we played it on the intercom because the music really resonated with what everybody was experiencing here at the hospital, especially patients who were so separated from their loved ones. So that's really how it got started.

MG: Maryze, what is it like for you to hear that that the song that you write that you wanted first your nana to hear because it was about the experience that you're going through. She hears it, but then it ends up being broadcast, as you heard over the intercom, in the hospital where she's recovering.

MARYZE BERNARD: Well, it really burns my heart. It definitely makes me want to cry, but I'm not going to. And I mean, it means so much, Sister Louise, just that you facilitated that, that you made that happen. Cause I think a lot of people are feeling a little bit powerless just in their ability to connect with especially older loved ones who are in some kind of care facilities. So, you know, to hear that it was not only she got to hear it, but that others did, too, and that it brought some comfort and joy. That's just you know, that's the best thing you could want, really, when you're writing music.

MG: You hinted that this, Sister Louise, just briefly, what is the role that music's playing for you and for those in the facility?

SISTER LOUISE: Well, as I said, with the pandemic, in Hotel de Shaver Health and rehab centre people were pretty stressed and directions, were changing pretty much every day in the early part of the pandemic. And so anxiety was pretty high. So music really became and has been in the past a real source of relaxation and healing for patients and for our staff. And so we would play music, we could, staff would sing, patients where a toe tapping and others were singing along to some of the music and staff, some staff, could be seen dancing in the corridors. So it really was uplifted the whole atmosphere of the organisation and staff look forward to this music at 1:30 in the afternoon each day, which has been playing since St. Patrick's Day.

MG: We're all trying to figure out ways to get through this. And music is - we've heard from our listeners, Maryze, that music is it is a huge part of what they're turning to as a coping mechanism. What for you? What about for you? What role do you see music is playing in the midst of this pandemic?

MARYZE BERNARD: Well, for me, song writing has always just been a way to kind of channel my emotions, I'm going through an even better understands what I'm going through. And I think in moments of sadness and uncertainty, it's just, you know, it feels lucky to be able to have something creative to put that energy into. So I mean, I'm just so grateful that I have music to do that I think it would feel heavier without it. It's definitely cathartic. And yes, it's a way to connect. Sometimes we don't have the ability to necessarily just with spoken words to or at least for me to communicate exactly how we're feeling. So, yes, music helps me do that.

MG: I love that you wrote this song and I love that it connected with the people that you wanted it to and beyond. Thank you for writing it, Maryze.

MARYZE BERNARD: Well, thank you so much for playing it. That means a lot.

MG: I'm going to play some more right now. And Sister Louise, thank you for the work that you did in getting it heard in the hospital. It's great to talk to you. Thank you.

SISTER LOUISE: Thank you very much.

MG: Sister Louise Dillon is chaplain at the Hotel du Shaver Health and Rehabilitation Centre in St. Catherine's. Maryze Is a Montreal singer songwriter. And here's a bit more of that song that she wrote for her Nana. It's called Miss.

SOUNDCLIP

[Song: I Miss You by Maryze Bernard.]

MG: This extended edition of The Current continues in about six minutes time, we'll talk about Ramadan and how it is a different Ramadan and Muslims could have ever anticipated in the midst of a pandemic. I'm Matt Galloway. This is The Current.

The shadow of COVID-19 on Ramadan; Hamza Haq

Guests: Noor Al-Henedy, Ingrid Mattson, Hamza Haq

MG: Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to an extended edition of The Current.

[Music: Theme]

MG: Coming up, he plays a doctor on TV and now he's trying to help the real ones in his community. The star of transplant, Hamza Haq, is coming up soon. But first, it's a Ramadan like no other.

[Music: Theme]

MG: It's Ramadan this month, and more than a million Canadian Muslims are celebrating fasting during the day. Breaking bread with friends and family at night. But Ramadan, like so much else in our lives, looks different. This year, the mosques are closed, groups cannot gather, and there are other hardships.

SOUNDCLIP

My name is Zinnat Jahan. I have been working in a restaurant. And I lost my job due to COVID-19. And now I'm struggling. So this Ramadan thing is completely different due to COVID. Like me many people in the community are unable to pay rent. And yes. So this Ramadan I mean, uncertainty off this is hammering me on my head every time. So this is what we are getting with while fasting.

MG: Zinnat facing the stress of being unable to work, others are considered essential workers and they have to continue doing their jobs throughout Ramadan.

[sc].

My name is Sanya Chawla Hussein. I am a registered nurse working in a long term care. We are in COVID outbreak right now at my work and I am pregnant. And the good thing is, as a pregnant woman, I am excused, I'm not fasting. But this series has been exceptionally hard because I do go to work and you know where in PPE, head to toe, all the time. Before, all the other years, I would be using my break to read Quran or pray extra, you know, continue my goals during break time, even before or after work. But now I am so exhausted and on my break I just want to remove the mask and be able to breathe and just get some fresh air. Then when I come home, I'm more exhausted than usual. And I'm not allowed any vacation. So this is the time where Muslims focus on their spirituality, time to reflect on yourself, your character. Unfortunately, not getting less time to do that. It would have been different had it been a pandemic.

MG: You cannot argue with that. Ingrid Mattson is chair of Islamic Studies at Huron College at Western University in London, Ontario. Neoor al-Henedy is communications director for the Al-Rasheed Mosque in Edmonton. Al-Rasheed was the first mosque built in Canada and now has thousands of members, members who would typically be there over the course of Ramadan. You both.

GUESTS: Good morning.

MG: Noor al-Henedy. What has this Ramadan been like for you this year?

NOOR AL-HENEDY: Well, it's looking very different. A couple of weeks back because of the regulations here that we have in Alberta, we have a restriction on mass gathering to a maximum of 15 people. And we are asked to do a lot of physical distancing thing about two meters apart, which means for our congregation in particular, looking at the fact that we get anywhere between 2000 to 3000 people any night in Ramadan, we did have to close. So it is looking very different for our community members. They are struggling a little bit with the fact that they cannot come to the mosque, they cannot do their evening prayer, that is a very big part of Ramadan where everybody comes in the evening around 10:30 in Edmonton, time to perform that evening prayer and a big congregation. So it is definitely looking very different.

MG: What about for you, Ingrid? What has been different about this Ramadan for you?

INGRID MATTSON: The big thing is breaking the fast just at home with me and my husband. Now, I have to say, this is a privilege being able to do that compared to other people who are suffering, working and having, maybe not even having the food they need to break their fast. But feeding others is the opposite side of the coin of fasting. And we not only have lots of gatherings at each other's homes where we see friends in the community, but there are many community as far as our community fast breaking where we invite neighbours, we invite our friends from other faith traditions. And it's a really great time to, you know, connect with the broader community. So I miss those gatherings.

MG: The community and I want to talk a bit more about about this town in a moment. But that communities is such a big part of life, you know, in normal times, how are others in your community being impacted by this during Ramadan, Ingrid?

INGRID MATTSON: Well, I think for for many people, not being able to come to the mosque is is really a big loss. And it's not just because of the prayer or the spiritual connection. But for many people, it's where they can really feel at home. For many of our elders especially, it's very difficult because Muslim elders, like others in society, often are a little bit isolated and that isolation increases if there is any language difference. And for many other people, the mosque and having that opportunity to connect with others means that they can also connect with counselling with culturally relevant social services that are either available at the mosque or that the mosque can refer them to or connect them with.

MG: So where would they go for those services now that they can't go there?

INGRID MATTSON: Well, people are still in most cases, there's usually still someone who is answering the phones. And so these things are being done either by phone or the connections are made virtually. But again, it's, I would say that in general, younger people are more savvy in those things, but the older members of the community might not be as capable of connecting virtually with the resources they need or might be a little reluctant just to, you know, reach out and make that phone call. You have to be active in doing that. And what happens in a community setting is that it's other people that notice when someone needs something and they're the ones who are reaching out. And so that lack of face to face connection means that we may be missing out on realising what people need and this time.

MG: Noor how is that playing out in Edmonton?

NOOR AL-HENEDY: Well, with Al Rasheed mosques, the services were not suspended. But Ingrid, them make a point that many of them did have to go virtually. Whether it's counselling now for things like marriage and divorce services and whatnot, they do have to still come to the mosque. And I will a second her on specifically the senior's point. The seniors are a huge part of our community and the mosque is the place where they gather. It's their social hub where they come and see their friends. And when you put in a lot of elements like language barriers, cultural barriers, it is really a struggle for them not being able to even visit each other outside the mosque because of the COVID pandemic. Now, I know in Edmonton what we tried our best to do is to get our services out to our population as much as possible. So we moved a lot of our programs and lectures and prayers and started livestreaming them. But again, the access to such services is not- in Edmonton we have around a 100,000 Muslims. And I would say only one third or half of them are accessing these services online. So you're still missing a big portion here.

MG: Ingrid mentioned the iftar, which is the moment in which the fast is broken. And that is a very celebratory social moment in, you know, the old times before the pandemic arrived, the before times, as we sometimes call it, Noor, what was the avatar like for you?

NOOR AL-HENEDY: It was a huge gathering. Right. So at Al Rasheed lost in particular. Every Friday, Saturday and Sunday, we put together a huge feast. We have like a certified ship that cooks from an industrial kitchen. So it's a really big get together. We we have around 800 people that come to the mosque for each Iftar. That is just in the mosque. Right. Then you have the families outside the mosque all gathering together. And another big part of it is, I think for many Muslims, Ramadan is an opportunity to share a culture with our neighbours that do not practise Islam. It is an opportunity to show them what our family values are all about, what our connection is all about. So and if inviting somebody who is not fasting for an iftar is one of the favourite things that we like to do, and I always encourage people to say yes. If somebody invites you to break for Assad, their house they like you. Go. You need to go. You need to accept that invitation. Now, one thing we thought about here is we didn't want to cancel the iftars. And we realised there is a need in the community, especially with the COVID outbreak. So we turned it into like a delivery style iftar where basically anyone can sign up to receive a meal. And we had like an army of volunteers that literally delivered every single meal to every doorstep that signed up.

m: There's something there's something that's lost that when people aren't together. I mean, that step is really important. But there is something when you're around a table and literally you break bread. That is a special effort.

NOOR AL-HENEDY: Yes, I mean, think that is just limited to just our Muslim community.

MG: No.

NOOR AL-HENEDY: I know it's a big part of what? As far as. But I think all Canadians are struggling, struggling right now with not being able to have that Sunday morning breakfast with their grandparents or that lunch that they always had with their mother. You know what? It is a struggle, really, for everybody. Not being able to gather again and share a meal with us just coincidentally happened that Ramadan came in light of the COVID crisis, so that iftar was a big part of it. But I think this is a struggle for many, many Canadians, not just Muslim.

MG: Ramadan is also a moment or a month with many moments of reflection. And part of that comes through the fasting. And people focus on things that matter. People will focus on fellowship, on being involved in philanthropy. What are you reflecting on, Ingrid, through this period?

INGRID MATTSON: Well, it's really interesting to see, you know, people reflecting on what they're missing, reflecting on their priorities. I would say that there are there are some upsides to this, at least for some people. We see that those who have always had difficulty accessing the mosques or the community centres because of perhaps their living with disabilities or for other reasons, that there's using this as an opportunity to maybe say to the general population, I you know, this is how we've always felt. We've always missed being able to go to these gatherings. And so many of us were able bodied or have no other barriers to accessing the the mosques are saying, wow, like look at how you know, how difficult it is when we can not access this opportunity to be with our community and to worship together. So I think that is a good lesson for all of us. And I hope that we'll reconnect to more inclusivity, you know, across spectrums. I'd also say that there are some communities like I know a lot of women's organizations who already had gone virtually online and were doing teaching and worship in virtual communities because there are some communities, not most, but some communities where women might have felt marginalized or other groups. And so it's really interesting to see that they are the ones who really were well-prepared to engage in meaningful virtual worship and other connecting activities during this time. And I think they're teaching the rest of the community, the mainstream Muslim community, how that can be done.

MG: Noor, for you in the last minute or so that we have in a period of reflection. What are you thinking about?

NOOR AL-HENEDY: Well, we're just trying to really be hopeful and appreciate the blessings that we've been able to enjoy. I think one part this year that we're missing the most in Ramadan, we're reflecting upon as our children more than anything. When I told my daughter this year that she cannot go to the mosque because of the COVID-19, her first reaction was, oh, no, Ramadan is cancelled this year. She actually thought the whole month is cancelled because in a way, going to the mosque and like some like celebrating the month with your community is like Santa to us. You know what I mean? It is that feeling, a special feeling for the children in particular, where they get that really, really special time, where they don't get it any other time of the year, where they can go to their mosque, share the iftar, volunteer even as young children, engage with the community. So I think a big part of their reflection was how can we really make this more engaging for our children? How can we teach them to be able to cope with not being able to go to the mosque in such a month?

MG: We'll get through this difficult time. We'll get through this and people will be able to gather in the ways that they did when we're done. In the meantime, it's good to speak with you both. Thank you.

GUESTS: Thank you, Matt.

MG: Ingrid Mattson, chair of Islamic Studies at Huron College in London, Ontario. Noor al-Henedyis a communications director for the Al Rasheed Mosque in Edmonton.

[Music]

MG: This is The Current. On CBC Radio 1, I Matt Galloway, he's Tom Power, the host of Q. Hello.

TP: Matt, what a sweet moment at the end of that last interview.

MG: You never know what's gonna happen in live radio.

TP: You never know. I just love that.

MG: People working from home. Kids are everywhere. And that's part of life.

TP: We're all living that gif of. We were that kid who ran in during that British newscaster's live. I remember. And Nicky had to haul him out. We're all kind of living that right now.

MG: You're here to talk about what's it like, art imitating life in some way?

TP: I mean, it's not a bad time not to be grim. It's not a bad time for a medical drama to come out and become the kind of the big hit show on TV. There's a new medical drama on CTV called Transplant. It's set in a Toronto hospital. The Canadian actor Hamza Haa plays a trauma surgeon who's also a refugee from Syria. And there's a lot of struggles along the way as he adjust to life and work in Canada. But, you know, kind of good timing for a show like this.

MG: Absolutely.

TP: So we talked about how the show is supporting real doctors and nurses in the community. Here's our conversation.

SOUNDCLIP

TP: Hi. Welcome to Q.

HAMZA HAQ: Hi. Thanks for having me. Nice to have you. You're with your folks right now. How are they?

HAMZA HAQ: They're they're doing well. It's surprisingly optimistic and adhering to the rules, which is something I've never seen them do. So it's kind of great. Like I thought I'd be having to worry about, you know, come on now, you've got to take this seriously. But like, they're the ones who are just like, all right, do you have your gloves, do you have your mask. Okay, cool. You know, they're doing good. And my mother is working from home. And my dad and I were watching a lot of TV. It's good.

TP: Speaking to TV. And speaking of working from home. You mentioned your show Transplant Donated PPE, personal protective equipment to hospitals in need right now. Can you tell me more about that?

HAMZA HAQ: Yes. It was a couple of weeks into the lockdown where I was. I thought I'd check in on our medical consultants, doctors Zach Levine and Mike Richardson, who's the nurse at Montreal, General. And I was just asking how it was going. And they had a few cases of people who were coming in that were stealing PPE, you know, because the stores had run out or whatever. So one of our producers [unintelliglbe], you know, she told them, she called them and they were just like, oh, yes. And Anne Mary said that we can just go to set and pick up anything we need. So we'll be doing that. And I thought that was just brilliant. It was just great.

TP: For people who haven't seen Transplant yet. It's a medical drama set in a Toronto hospital. When we first meet your character, Bashir Ahmed, he's working in a kitchen. For some background for people who haven't seen the show, because I find this interesting. How does he become an emergency room doctor?

HAMZA HAQ: Okay. So on the day the head physician or the attending physician of York, our fictional York Memorial Hospital in Toronto is dining at the at the Harissa restaurant. And there's a horrible crash now, little that everybody know that, A, there was gonna be a crash meant to be that their cook was a trained trauma surgeon back in war torn Syria. And he ended up saving a bunch of people's lives, including that of Dr. Jed Bishop, played by John Hannah. And as a result, he's given the opportunity to become a first year resident, as an exception is made for the fact that his credits don't transfer over from his qualifications in Syria.

TP: I mean, your own family came to Canada from Saudi Arabia when you were nine. Is this story reflective of your parents story? Can can you see any of their story in it?

HAMZA HAQ: To a certain degree. Oftentimes in interviews, people make the mistake of referring to that. Which is an immigrant over a refugee. And I find, you know, the analogy I've always made into the fact that, you know, it's a difference between going skydiving and being thrown out of a plane and finding your parachute on your way down. You know, my parents chose to come here. They did a lot of work. We had family here before. When I first visited in 1996, I think my dad filed all the paperwork for immigration then. And it usually takes a couple of years. So when we moved in 2000, everything was ready. My my dad still worked in Saudi Arabia for about six to eight months until he landed a job. But, you know, then the tech bubble burst in 2003. And, you know, that whole Nortel Alcatel thing that went down and some 75000 Canadians lost their jobs. And, you know, he found himself unemployed. And he was a you know, he's an electrical engineer. My mother's has a master's in organic chemistry. And and here we are, 2003. And my parents are raising four kids, two of them who are about to go into university. You know, just doing whatever they can. My dad was working for a lawn care company and my mother was working a couple jobs. She was working as a telemarketer from home as well as she was working at a deli at your local grocery store. All to make sure that we had a proper education, which was the impetus to come here in the first place so they can appreciate their struggle. And that that element of it was very personal for me.

TP: They must be proud of you.

HAMZA HAQ: I'm equally as proud of them.

TP: It's interesting to hear you talk about the difference between someone who's an immigrant, who can treat someone who's a refugee, especially in the context of this show, and it brings to mind some some things that you've been open talking about, which is that the show originally tried to cast a Syrian actor in the role you play. I mean, you're Pakistani Canadian. Can you tell me more about that?

HAMZA HAQ: Yes. I mean, it's you know, we live in an era of representation and everybody tries to do their best. This was a circumstance, rather, of a production company and a show. Those trying to do their best to take casts the best person for the job. So though I was in talks early to star, room had to be made in a sincere effort, had to be made to have somebody of Syrian descent to play the character. Now I've stated and I'll state again that I was fortunate enough they just couldn't find the guy who I know can do this 10 times better than I can. So, you know, given the time constraint and whatever, I think it was about a two month casting period. And then after that, they opened it up to other people of Middle Eastern and South Asian descent, which is when I formally did my audition as well. And I was fortunate to get the call.

TP: What's the story here? Like you ended up getting a personal trainer who was from Syria who helped you out or something?

HAMZA HAQ: Yes, it was really- so I had I had a I had a language coach and a dialect coach. I tried my best to, like, learn Arabic. But, you know, I can read it. I can write it because I grew up in Saudi. I'm Muslim. So, you know, you know, the Quran is often written in Arabic and I have some experience with it, but I'm not fluent at all. So I hired a coach to try to learn Arabic, which proved all too difficult given although all the other work that I had to do. But I gave it a sincere effort. And then I also had a dialect coach to try to learn the Syrian dialect as well, which we ended up finding a happy medium between, you know, Bashar's experience and an authentic original Aleppo accent. But I had- becauseit was about two months of like not knowing if I was going to get the part or anything. I kind of just forgot about it. I just gained a bunch of weight, just like eating ice cream and chicken wings every day. I was about 25pounds heavier and I just didn't think that that reflected Bashar's character once I got the call. So I literally Googled best personal trainer in Toronto, which is where I was living at the time. And of this top 10, there was a gentleman named Ziad and I was like, oh, cool. Like, you know, I'll hire this guy. He seems you know, he seems like, he's like he's a brown guy. So I wanted to give him my business, you know, just about three weeks in. I mentioned to him, you know, what the character was. And because the show had been announced yet. So I wasn't really allowed to say anything. But I'm I'm not really great at following those guidelines. And I mentioned it to him and he was just so happy. And it was like, roll it. You know, that's that's really cool that you're happy about. This is a guy who's like, no, bro, I'm from Aleppo. Like, I left in 2000 and right before the war and I was living in Lebanon and stuff. So he started teaching me a couple of colloquialisms and most of which I would never be allowed to say on camera. But yes, it was just this lovely, happy coincidence that my trainer that, you know, that had reached out to happen to be from the same region that my character was supposed to be.

TP: Hey, thank you so much for your time.

HAMZA HAQ: Thanks for having me.

MG: That's the Canadian actor. Hoque in conversation with Tom Power, the host of Q. It's time to say goodbye to our friends in Newfoundland and Labrador. CROSSTALK is up next for you. For everyone else, we're back in 90 seconds. Remember travel? That was fun. We'll talk about what the future of the travel industry will look like. How are you going to be able to go anywhere when the pandemic ends? And what will it seem like from the airport to the aeroplane to the place that you're going? We'll find out. Coming up, I'm Matt Galloway. This is an extended edition of The Current on CBC Radio One. We're back in a minute and a half.

Joe Keithley

Guests: Joe Keithley

MG: This is The Current on CBC Radio One. I'm Matt Galloway Tom Power, host of Q is back. Hello, Tom.

TP: Hi, Matt. I got one for you?

MG: Yes.

TP: Ready.

MG: Oh, yes.

TP: Why did the guy fall in the well?

MG: I don't know.

TP: He didn't see that well.

[Both laugh].

MG: You know, I will miss this. I'm going to call you up every so often and you could just tell me jokes on the phone. How about that?

TP: I'll do it whenever you want, anytime of day or night.

MG: Thanks. [unintelligible] Joe Klein.

TP: I'm excited about this. So Joe Keithley, who has a name when he was in a punk band called D.O.A. That I cannot say on the radio, Joey, ahem, Head. He has gone through a transformation. He fronted D.O.A. one of Canada's first punk bands. Did you know he is now a city councillor in Burnaby, British Columbia?

MG: It's amazing when you think of the trajectory he's had.

TP: It's pretty remarkable. But he hasn't given up on music. He hasn't given up on the punk spirit. He hasn't given up on making political music. In fact, he's brought those two roles together to create a new anthem for his city. Inspired by COVID-19, we talked a little bit more about it.

SOUNDCLIP

TP: Joe, how are you?

JOE KEITHLEY: I'm doing good. How are you doing?

TP: Not too bad. How did you get to the point? Rehab. Figured you had to write a song about COVID-19.

JOE KEITHLEY: Well, I just kept seeing people like not social distanting. Locally and obviously people in Florida and stuff like that not behaving responsibly. I was talking to Mayor [unintelliglbe]. He says, well, why don't you write a song about it. So that's what I did.

TP: How did you get the mayor on board to be a part of the song?

JOE KEITHLEY: Well, we've been doing it's funny because he emigrated here from Northern Ireland, came here like 30 years ago and came in as a musician. So he was a full time musician for 10 years before he became a firefighter and then the mayor. So we've been doing shows around Burnaby like benefit shows were like go recovery societies like Neighbourhood House. And we've been employed at the seventy fifth anniversary of our local Legion. Stuff like that.

TP: I'm heartened to know that there are so many musicians in charge of Burnaby right now.

JOE KEITHLEY: Yeah, I think somebody was commenting yesterday, if you really want to run for city council, you should be a drummer, so that we can have the trio complete.

TP: So, you know, it's interesting to think about stay home, keep social distancing as a political message. I think at the beginning when we were all told to stay home, it was just something we all did. But slowly it sort of became a political act to do so or more importantly, to not do so. What are your thoughts on that?

JOE KEITHLEY: I think that, you know, the sooner people stay home or continue staying home and everybody stays home as fast as possible, the sooner we'll be through this. I mean, that was the song was, you know, it kind of looks people's spirits up and get them a point in the right direction. And then also realise we know that I know personally and they're basically the same way. Like, man, how long can this go on tape saying we've never, never really had anything like that like this in our generation? Right. So it's just, you know, reinforces the sooner you just keep doing the right thing and it'll be over sooner than later.

TP: I never thought like saying stay home, stay isolated during a quarantine would be like a political message at all, you know?

JOE KEITHLEY: Yes, stay home. Stay healthy. I think somebody mentioned to me that like, well, his guilty plea has been like exposing, bending or breaking the rules his entire life that he said kick with the rules. Now is the time.

TP: You know, it put me in mind of when I was getting ready for this yesterday with Pete Seeger's birthday, you know, the legendary political satire. You know, I think a good singer, great social movements, especially the labour movement. And, you know, when I was doing my research for this, I saw that you said you you work sort of inspired by Woody Guthrie, you know, who wrote This Land is your Land, a great friend of Pete's as well. Tell me tell me more about how that sort of songwriting entered your world here.

JOE KEITHLEY: Yes, there's a backstory to that. I was lucky enough to play with Pete Seeger a couple of times and lead him at a big rally in Vancouver back in 1986. And amazingly, 12 years later in Toronto, I was there for the folk saying he actually remembered us that which was shot. So you must lead so many people. So, yes, everyone's working inspired by him, by Woody Guthrie and Mike. Mike, our back story growing up was and it took me 30 years to realise this, but my oldest sister was bringing home all these [unintelliglbe records, you know, like the Weavers, Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Gabriell Murray, Bob Dylan, that whole area in the late 60s when the Vietnam War was raging and I had real effect on my political consciousness, but I never realised that because I was in high schoo. We all listen to like Deep Purple on Led Zeppelin, stuff like that. So but the political context for this on what I was listening to.

TP: Do you think that - I mean, this is something you've, this has been part of your life's over your career with D.O.A. Do you think that the power of a song is real, that a song can can affect real change?

JOE KEITHLEY: Yes, I think it's amazing because music is the one, really the one, unifying thing that we have in the world. So when you have like- it will reinforce a time of disarray and disunity and hatred and people inflaming different prejudices and stuff like that. The one thing that everyone in the world loves is music and everybody loves to participate, sing a littel bit. Or maybe, you know, play guitar, piano, whatever they can do. Bang along on the table with their hands. Right. So, you know, music is the language of love and healing. So it can bridge a lot of love, hatred.

TP: Joe Keithley, thanks so much for your time.

JOE KEITHLEY: Yes, thanks very much, Tom.

MG: Tom Power in conversation with Joe Keithley, city councillor, musician, punk, rock star of years past and current. He was in Burnaby, British Columbia. He can't talk about song without playing the song. And so we sign off today with We're All in This Together featuring the mayor of Burnaby, Mike Hurley. I'm Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening to The Current. Take care. I'll talk to you tomorrow.

SOUNDCLIP

[Song: We're All in This Together]

The Current Transcript for May 6, 2020

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

More domestic travel, sustainable tourism: What flying post-pandemic could look like

Korean Baseball; Wesley King

Georges Laraque on surviving the virus; National affairs panel on agricultural relief

Bored during the pandemic? Blame it on a lack of agency, say experts

Biking boom in Canada; Healing power of music

The shadow of COVID-19 on Ramadan; Hamza Haq

Joe Keithley

Wednesday May 6, 2020 Full Transcript

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