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The Current Transcript for November 10, 2020

Host: Matt Galloway

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

[Music: theme]

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: If we had a nickel for every time we had a conversation about, oh, you can't use the Internet or can't chat with your friends. Like it's a daily conversation. Like it's frustrating. If we had a nickel for every time, we'd have enough money to get Cogeco to run a line.

MATT GALLOWAY: Just 10 minutes outside of a major city in southern Ontario, let alone far more remote communities, high speed Internet is something many Canadians can only dream of. Now, with more Canadians working and studying from home than ever before, the prime minister yesterday announced promise for broadband for all. Of course, this is a promise that's been heard before. In 30 minutes, we'll explore whether the connection will actually be made this time around. Plus, your ideas on how to embrace winter in the midst of a pandemic. And later this morning.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: I see anxiety. It seems to be rising almost literally from the streets themselves. But people are doing their best to continue living, even if it can't possibly be as before.

MG: Over 17 novels, the great American writer, Don DeLillo, has shown an uncanny ability to capture the anxiety of the moment. His new book, The Silence, is no different, imagining the unsettling prospect of our screens suddenly going dark. Don DeLillo is here in an hour. But first, fingers crossed, some good news. Did he say good news about COVID-19? Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway. This is The Current.

[Music: theme]

Early trials for Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine offers hope, but experts say logistical challenges remain

Guests: Helen Branswell, Caroline Quach, Rebecca McKillican

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: We see the light at the end of the tunnel. We are hopeful we are getting there because our scientists are working incredibly hard. But we need to do our part. We need to stay strong and hang in there a few more months, maybe more than that. But we can see it coming.

MG: Light at the end of the tunnel. The prime minister isn't the only one being cautiously optimistic these days, even with the surge in cases across this country. Yesterday, Pfizer announced preliminary results from its Phase three vaccine trial, and those results showed the vaccine may be 90 percent effective at preventing COVID-19. Helen Braswell is an infectious disease and global health reporter with STAT. It's a news outlet covering health sciences. Helen, good morning.

HELEN BRANSWELL: Hi, Matt.

MG: We are all looking for good news. How good is this news from Pfizer?

HELEN BRANSWELL: It's really [big?] news. You know, we have to be careful about not guessing too much of what this actually means, but it certainly is much better than the alternative. I know I had been worried about the possibility that, you know, the first trial might come out and show that it wasn't sufficiently successful to go forward so that or, you know, any vaccine. So to have one that comes out and says it could work as well as 90 percent is really, you know, it's a nice thing to hear.

MG: It certainly is, yeah. What does that mean, 90 percent efficacy?

HELEN BRANSWELL: Well, you know, that is the big question at this point. You know, their bar was pretty low. They were gauging a case of somebody who had a positive PCR test for covid and one symptom. So, you know, that could be a cough. That could be a fever. It doesn't necessarily mean that they have prevented severe disease. It just means that they have prevented symptomatic covid. So, you know, there aren't a lot of details yet. This was a press release. This wasn't a study. And it's not the end of the trial. They're continuing to gather data before they go to the FDA to ask for approval. So you can't know too much about what they found, but it definitely looks good.

MG: That 90 percent. How does that compare with with what we see from other vaccines?

HELEN BRANSWELL: Yeah, it's a good question. So, you know, that has been one of the things that has been spoken about when people have talked about what we might be able to expect from covid vaccines. There have been -- excuse me, some suggestions that they might not work super well, that they might be more like a flu vaccine, which, as you know, your listeners will know, work better some years than others, and aren't like a home run. This is more in the I mean, it's not as high as a measles vaccine, but it is, you know, 90 percent is very effective.

MG: Can you explain just quickly how this vaccine works, how Pfizer's vaccine works?

HELEN BRANSWELL: Well, quickly, they it's called an MRNA vaccine. It's a messenger RNA vaccine. And you know, effectively what it does is it uses your own cellular mechanisms to generate antibodies to protect against the virus. So it's a two-shot vaccine. And, you know, it, more than that would be difficult to go into in a short period of time. But, you know, it's a new technique. And it's important to note that there haven't been any MRNA vaccines yet licenced. This would be the first. But it has been a technique that has offered a lot of promise and has you know, one of the things about it is it's very quick to develop these vaccines, and it doesn't take that long to make batches of the vaccine. So, you know, there's been a lot of hope in the world of pandemic preparedness that this could be a way to respond to pandemics in the future. And at the moment, it looks like it could be a way to respond in the now.

MG: And I mean, you've written about this and others have spoken about this as well. Pfizer isn't the only company that's testing an MRNA vaccine. So if this is good news for Pfizer, this could be good news for those other candidates as well.

HELEN BRANSWELL: That's correct. The next one, you know, Pfizer is really at the front of the pack in terms of vaccine development. The next one is Moderna. And Moderna also has an MRNA vaccine and there are others, too. But it's not just good news for those vaccines. It's probably good news for most of the vaccines, if not all of the vaccines. They all target a protein that's on the surface of the virus called the spike protein. If your listeners have seen images of a coronavirus, those are the little knobs that make it look like it has a crown. And, you know, there had been some concern that the fact that all the older vaccines target the spike protein was effectively putting all our eggs in one basket. If it turned out, that that wasn't what you needed to induce a good response, then we might have a problem. But, you know, these results suggest that the spike protein is the appropriate candidate to target in a vaccine.

MG: It's developing the vaccine, but it's also making the vaccine stable and work. You said that this will almost certainly be the first vaccine that is authorised by the FDA, but it's also the hardest one to use. Why?

HELEN BRANSWELL: Oh, yeah. So the Pfizer vaccine has to be stored at minus 70 Celsius at the moment. And, you know, that is ultra cold storage that is -- makes it very difficult to roll this vaccine out. It's likely that it's going to be most useful in like large medical centres where, you know, there are a lot of health care workers, for instance, to be vaccinated and where they probably have ultra cold storage fridges. The company has built freezers effectively, to send the vaccine out. But, you know, you can only open them at most twice a day. You can only have them open for one minute at a time. It's really not something that is going to be useful in a doctor's office. The Moderna vaccine only has to be kept to minus 20 Celsius, which is a little easier. And some of the others that are further back can be stored in fridges. So, you know, they will be easier still. I'm told the company is working to try to, you know, improve its stability at fridge temperature so that it could get rid of this requirement. But for the moment, it is going to be a limiting factor in terms of where the vaccine could be used.

MG: We're just about out of time, but in many ways, this is the most important question, which is when? Do you have any sense as to when this vaccine or the Moderna vaccine, other MRNA vaccines would be available?

HELEN BRANSWELL: So, you know, when depends on who's asking the question. You know, there are Canada has a contract with Moderna for some vaccine. I don't know how much; some time in 2021. You know, given what we heard yesterday, it sounds like they're on target to reach that. But again, I would not be able to tell you how soon the first people to be vaccinated might be vaccinated in Canada. I suspect that there will be some use of this vaccine in the United States, maybe by, you know, early to mid-December. The company plans to apply for emergency-use authorisation with the Food and Drug Administration or at any rate, asked to be able to use the vaccine probably around the third or fourth week of November. So so things could happen very quickly after that. But, you know, in terms of like wide scale vaccination, that's still quite a ways off.

MG: Helen, it's great to talk to you as always. I really appreciate you walking us through what we know and what we don't know about this. Thank you.

HELEN BRANSWELL: Well, thanks for having me, Matt.

MG: Helen Branswell is an infectious disease and global health reporter with STAT. It's a news outlet covering health sciences.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: We know that some of the first vaccines to come out have extremely high degrees of logistical support necessary. So we have to have a very sophisticated plan to be able to roll out vaccines the right way, the right vaccines in the right place to the right people.

MG: The Pfizer vaccine is one of several options the federal government has already placed orders for. And yesterday the prime minister said that if all goes well, this vaccine could be available to Canadians, as Helen was saying, early next year. It's easier said than done. A potential vaccine doesn't solve the logistical challenge of vaccinating an entire population. Rebecca McKillican is the CEO of McKesson Canada. It's a drug wholesaler that recently produced a report on the supply chain challenges that lie ahead. Dr. Caroline Quach is a paediatric infectious disease specialist, medical microbiologist, professor of microbiology at Universite de Montreal and chair of Canada's National Advisory Committee on Immunization. Good morning to you both.

CAROLINE QUACH: Good morning.

REBECCA MCKILLICAN: Good morning,.

MG: Doctor Quach, let's start with you. Just briefly. Do you share the optimism that that Helen Braswell and others seem to have cautious optimism, but some optimism around this news of yesterday?

CAROLINE QUACH: Oh, absolutely. So cautious optimism, awaiting to see the data that are behind this press release because nobody has seen them so far except for the company. So we'll be waiting to see them before celebrating for real.

MG: Rebecca, what about what about you?

REBECCA MCKILLICAN: I agree cautiously optimistic that there is a vaccine out there that we're getting closer to obtaining and cautiously optimistic that we will be putting plans in place across the country to get Canadians vaccinated.

MG: Caroline, What don't we know? You mentioned that this is, you know, a press release and you're waiting to see the data. What don't we know about these results?

CAROLINE QUACH: Well, we don't know anything, basically, because we've had is a press release that said that the vaccine was 90 percent efficacious to prevent covid. But we don't know how long after vaccination these cases occurred. We don't know what type of populations in terms of other chronic conditions, racial diversity, age groups. So who got infected in both the vaccinated and the unvaccinated group? We don't have any data yet on safety. We expect that they are OK, because the data safety monitoring board probably saw them, but we haven't seen anything basically. So we really need to have a better understanding of the data before concluding that this is really 90 percent.

MG: When the prime minister offers that timeline early next year, what goes through your mind when you hear that?

CAROLINE QUACH: I think it is what the company has said it would do. Whether or not that's what is going to happen, we don't know. We are scheduled to have 20 million doses somewhere in the first trimester of 2021. But before that, we need to have this vaccine be authorised through Health Canada and then have NACI also review and make their recommendations, which we are already working on. But without the data, we can't really move forward. So those two, and then of course, as you said, how to distribute this vaccine across the country is another story.

MG: Rebecca, how do you do that? How do you distribute two doses? Because this is a two dose vaccine to 37 million people.

REBECCA MCKILLICAN: It's definitely a challenge. This is the greatest public health distribution in Canadian history. And we a. McKesson Canada have been preparing to support federal, provincial and territorial governor on the distribution of the vaccine. But it's not to say that it's easy. If you look at the public flu vaccine, which, you know, has campaigns and distribute approximately 10 to 15 million refrigerated doses a year, in which about 30 percent of Canadians get vaccinated. As you said, we're looking now at 75 million doses and frankly, every Canadian. And so it's significantly more, it's unique, depending on whether it's frozen, ultra-frozen, refrigerated. Just the scale at which we're we're going to need to distribute this, there's a lot of things and a lot of unknowns as have been discussed, that need to be determined in order to effectively distribute and inoculate all of Canadians.

MG: We should point out, I mean, your company is pitching itself as a potential partner to government to to distribute this vaccine. What do you want to hear from government to try to make this process, as complicated as it is, to try to make this process move forward in a smoother way?

REBECCA MCKILLICAN: You know, as we look at it as a potential covid vaccine distribution, I think, you know, looking at a public private partnership, such as the ones that are done for flu in order to ensure that Canadians have access to the immunisations that they need. And I think the government's been doing a great job in partnering with all sorts of different agencies and companies such as ours at McKesson Canada to support them in this greatest public health distribution. And I think it will take a very strong public and private partnership to ensure that we are bringing the best to Canadians at this time.

MG: Doctor Quach, it's interesting, when he comes to the flu shot, I mean, we're seeing really increased demand for the flu shot this year. There are some pharmacies that are complaining that they don't have the doses they need. It's in some areas difficult to get the flu shot. Should we expect similar issues if and when a covered vaccine appears?

CAROLINE QUACH: Well, the difference with the flu shot is that we expect the covid vaccine to be rolled out sequentially so that we won't have enough doses to vaccinate everybody at once. We expect to have enough doses over the next 12 to 18 months, at least that's a little bit of an ease-out. The government of Canada has already secured all the necessary syringes and needles, apparently to vaccinate all Canadians. And at this point in time, there are discussions between the federal, the provinces and territories so that everybody has a plan to deploy the vaccine. The -- I would say what is still on the hook is: who are we going to start to vaccinate? So, you know that NACI issued last week their key populations to start vaccinating, but we haven't sequenced them in any order awaiting the results from those phase three trials. And so once we know more, if we decide to start with health care workers, it's going to be a completely different strategy than if we start by vaccinating the elderly in long term care facilities, for instance. So it's difficult currently for provinces and territories to have a good idea and a good understanding of how they need to deploy. So they have to work on two to three plans in parallel just in case one of those will be picked as the first strategy.

MG: Who do you think should get it first?

CAROLINE QUACH: Well, I. I don't know, because we don't have the data from the studies. So if you look at the burden of illness, of course, the most vulnerable should benefit from direct protection. So the 70-plus. However, we don't have any data from this Pfizer vaccine to know the efficacy in that age group and the safety. So if it had, let's say, a much better efficacy in the younger age group, would it not be best to stick with health care workers who could then protect ... sorry, indirectly the most vulnerable by not transmitting it to them? So that's what we need to discuss at the NACI level, but we absolutely need the data to be able to do that.

MG: The other issue, and we've spoken about this on the programme a number of times, is around. You can have a vaccine, but people have to want to take it as well. How concerned are you about vaccine hesitancy?

CAROLINE QUACH: So vaccine hesitancy is there. It's always been there. My view on things is that if we are transparent with the data, if we inform the population, at least those who are just, you know, wondering if it's safe and if we're cutting corners, will see that we are not. And that should be helpful. I think that when people realise also the burden of illness and what it means to be able to get a vaccine to get out of this [morass and] where we are stuck, we've been stuck for the past eight months, I think also it will be beneficial. I'm not personally a proponent of mandatory vaccination. I know that some provinces might want to do that. But at this point in time, I think that clear, transparent discussion and, you know, transparency and the data should be a first start.

MG: Rebecca McClarkin, this is a huge challenge to get this vaccine out to Canadians. Are you confident and optimistic that that as a country we can figure this out?

REBECCA MCKILLICAN: Absolutely. I think that we have a lot of strong agencies, companies, governments working together. And I think that while this will be challenging because there's a large number of unknowns, and to vaccinate all Canadians, we will need to increase capacity of the existing vaccine supply chain, I'm confident that we can do it. I think that we've shown to the country we can come together, we can bring the best across the country. I'm very excited about what the public private partnerships have been able to do in terms of increasing flu vaccination rates over the last six years. And I'm very excited about what we can do together between governments, between private players, between community pharmacies who are, you know, offer 10,000 points across the country and access, easy access for Canadians. So I think that there's strong partnerships that exist and are currently being built on. And collectively together we can overcome these challenges.

MG: Doctor Quach, briefly, do you share that optimism?

CAROLINE QUACH: Yeah, I think it's feasible. I think it's going to be a lot of work, but I think we can do it. And anyway, we have to do it.

MG: We have to do it. But a bit of good news is is welcome. I mean it. As to your point, it's been a long eight months.

CAROLINE QUACH: Oh, absolutely. And I think it was great to hear that yesterday. Now we just want to really see the data and continue to be optimistic and be confident in what is being put out there.

MG: It's good to speak with you both about this. Thank you very much.

CAROLINE QUACH: Thank you very much.

REBECCA MCKILLICAN: Thank you, Matt.

MG: Rebecca McKillican is the CEO of McKesson Canada, a drug wholesaler that recently produced a report on the supply chain challenges lying ahead when it comes to a vaccine for COVID-19. Dr. Caroline Quach is a paediatric infectious disease specialist and chair of Canada's National Advisory Committee on Immunization. Your CBC News is next. And then.

SOUNDCLIP

[Sound of dial-up internet]

MG: There's an entire generation of people who have no idea what that sound is. For the rest of us, it gives us the fear, the fidgety, sweaty flashbacks of a grindingly slow connection of dial-up Internet. Might be a thing of the past for most of us, but for many Canadians, reliable and affordable, high-speed Internet is still far out of range. In a moment, we'll check in with those Canadians and hear how the federal government once again is promising to help. I'm Matt Galloway. The Current is back in six minutes. Stay with us.

[Music]

'I couldn't load my Zoom classes': Nunavik student skeptical of Liberals' internet promise

Guests: Andrea Brazeau, Maryam Monsef, Helen Hambly

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

[Music: theme]

MG: Still to come, the author, Don DeLillo imagines a world without screens. Spooky stuff. But first, living out of range.

[Music: theme]

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: Over the last few months, our daily routines have changed, people are working from home, kids are doing classes from the kitchen table, and we're all going online to stay in touch with family and friends. Good, reliable Internet isn't a luxury, it's a basic service, and it's a service that every single Canadian deserves.

MG: Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announcing new funding for high speed rural Internet across this country. If that promise sounds familiar, it's because successive federal governments have made similar promises over the years. And yet the issue of achingly slow Internet continues in many rural and remote communities in Canada. This is a problem that Andrea Brazeau knows all too well. She is a student at McGill University, and when the lockdown began last spring, Andrea moved home to her community of Kangiqsualujjuaq in Nunavik, northern Quebec. But she couldn't stay there to study remotely this fall. So she's back in Montreal. Andrea, good morning.

ANDREA BRAZEAU: [Indigenous speech] Good morning. Thank you for having me this morning.

MG: Describe what Internet access is like in your community. When you turn on the computer and you try to log on, what happens?

ANDREA BRAZEAU: It takes a really, really, really long time. And sometimes it doesn't even, you're unable to log in. So it's either it takes a long time or you just can't and you have to try later during the day.

MG: So can you I mean, you think of the things that that many people take for granted, not just, you know, streaming video and watching Netflix or something like that, but if you can't even log on, you can't read email, for example.

ANDREA BRAZEAU: Exactly. It's day to day things we take for granted, such as emails, online banking. And when I say online banking, you have to keep in mind that my community is very isolated and we have no physical banks we can go to. So we rely solely on the Internet to do our online banking. Yet my sister sometimes has trouble logging into her bank and this is an issue all across the region in Nunavik.

MG: Tell me more about what it would have been like for you as a student. You're studying at one of the great universities in this country at McGill, many classes are now virtual with video classes. If you were trying to participate in any of that, where would that have left you?

ANDREA BRAZEAU: It would have been impossible. Ultimately, it would have been impossible because I did try last semester when lockdown first happened, I went up north, but I couldn't load my Zoom classes. Loading documents was taking very long and it wasted a lot of time, so ultimately would have been impossible. So I had no choice to come to Montreal.

MG: What was that like for you? I mean, in terms of we're in the midst of a pandemic and we're trying to stay as close to family as we can, how has it affected you that you have to move so far away from home during the pandemic?

ANDREA BRAZEAU: It was definitely difficult on my mental health and well-being, especially because I'm in one of the hot spots in Canada. Montreal, where we're still on lockdown, everything's closed, so it was definitely hard on my mental health being away from family, but I make an effort to call them and keep in touch in any way I can. So, yeah.

MG: Mental health is a really important part of this because we know that in remote communities, you mentioned online banking, that's one, you know, reason that people use the Internet, but especially in a pandemic, we're accessing health services in different ways as well. So for your community, if people are trying to get health care, what does that mean?

ANDREA BRAZEAU: Oh, the pandemic as it is, we've always struggled to get mental health professionals up north because they usually come, but they don't stay long enough to provide the care required for the patient. However, the pandemic has proven that we can access mental health services via Zoom. And however, we're still unable to do this because of the lack of Internet in the north, the lack of stable, high functioning Internet in Nunavik. We can't and I'm speaking from experience, I have tried connecting with a mental health professional via Zoom from the North and it was impossible. We had to cancel our call and this is the reality for everyone in the North.

MG: So yesterday the federal government announces that 98 percent of Canadians will have high speed Internet by 2026. When you heard that, what goes through your mind?

ANDREA BRAZEAU: What goes through my mind? It's hard for me to trust them because, first of all, they didn't keep their 2016 promises. So I have a hard time trusting that they will implement that by 2026. And on top of that, 2026 is a long time. It's six years from now. And we need, the issue I'm talking about is right now. We are in a pandemic, I am studying from Montreal because I'm unable to study back home because the Internet is unstable. And it also makes me think about the children, the students in my community, in my region, and how they are forced to live with the lack of Internet. So if a case goes in one of our communities, it's locked down automatically because it's a very small, isolated community and we don't have the medical equipment to tackle a virus like that. However, if lockdown happens and they're forced to go home, they can't do online learning because Internet is too slow. So it's just very unfortunate.

MG: Do you feel like you've been left behind in some ways? I mean, we talk about a digital divide and we often talk about it in other parts of the world. Do you feel like you've been left behind in some ways?

ANDREA BRAZEAU: Oh, definitely. I feel like the entire, I feel like the entire region in Nunavik has been left behind.

MG: What would you say, just we're about to speak with one of the ministers responsible for the announcement yesterday, what would your message be to the politicians who make these promises and who have made these promises and past?

ANDREA BRAZEAU: I'm requesting for the politicians to be transparent with us, transparent about the progress they're making at the one point seventy five million dollars is a lot of money. And we have the right to know where that money is going as taxpayers, how it's being used. Give us updates. Be honest with us. What actions are you taking? What actions are you taking? And just clear transparency. That's what I'm asking. We have the right.

MG: Andrea, it's great to talk to you. I really appreciate it. Thank you.

ANDREA BRAZEAU: Thank you very much.

MG: Andrea Brazeau is a fourth-year student at McGill University. She is from Kangiqsualujjuaq in Nunavik. We reached her this morning in Montreal. Making broadband Internet, something that all of Canada can access has been a government promise for over two decades.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: Technology and youth are key parts of that. The initiatives on the information highway are an example of that.

VOICE 2: Bring high speed Internet to more rural communities and deliver so many other benefits.

VOICE 3: We've seen challenges with rural broadband and cell phone coverage across the country. We want to make sure as a government that Canadians can work and live wherever they want and that includes rural Canada.

MG: John Manley in 1996, Bill Morneau in 2016 and Bernadette Jordan from early 2019, trying to get has John Manley put it, all Canadians on the information highway, this has become a familiar pattern and a promise from both Liberal and Conservative governments. Now, Federal Minister of Rural Economic Development, Maryam Monsef, is the latest to make this promise and to take this file on. She joins me now. Minister, good morning.

MARYAM MONSEF: Good morning, Matt.

MG: As I mentioned, promises of reliable Internet in every home in Canada go back to 1996. Four Liberal ministers have promised this, yourself included. What is different about the promise that was made yesterday? Why should people take this any more seriously than than the promises that were made in past?

MARYAM MONSEF: 1996 is the year I came to Canada, Matt, and I can imagine the frustration and I've heard the frustration of so many, like Andrea's across the country, particularly during the pandemic. Yesterday and 2016, are different than previous commitments to broadband, because yesterday we launched the second program with money behind it, with the transparency that Andrea asked for, with the personalised support to help the smaller communities apply. It's not a promise. It's a program that is ready to go and w'ere accepting applications for a rapid response stream to get folks connected over the next year.

MG: But you heard Andrea, she said she doesn't know whether she can trust you. I mean, the CRTC declared broadband a basic telecommunications service in 2016. Why has it taken so long for people like Andrea and her community to be able to not just stream videos, but even get on the Internet to check email?

MARYAM MONSEF: When that first budget came out in in 2016 and we came up with a first plan to connect Canadians. We started moving right away, Matt. By the end of this year, there will be tens of thousands of households that will have access to high speed Internet. By the end of next year, there will be more than a quarter million households who will have access to high speed Internet because of the programms we introduced four years ago. These are complex programs. To be sure, we are talking about the hardest to reach communities across the country. But folks like Andrea have every right to be skeptical. They have every right to be frustrated. There has never been a greater time for us to stay connected and without this essential service. Students like hers are like her, are struggling mothers across the country who are working from home and trying to help their kids with online learning are struggling grandparents across the country aren't able to connect with their grandkids and loved ones, and they're particularly isolated if they're in long term care homes. This is a different Matt because there's going to be quarterly reporting of the progress we're making. But it's different because there's a separate component to support indigenous communities and it's different because it's no longer and nice to have, it is a must have and the government of Canada is putting its full force behind it.

MG: But again, it was a must have in 2016 when the CRTC declared this. It was a must have presumably in 1996 when John Manley talked about it. Just as you understand it, why is it so difficult to make this happen?

MARYAM MONSEF: I can't speak for other governments, Matt. I've been studying what they've done, particularly around the 2008 recession. The truth is, until we formed government, there were no real investments in broadband. If you add up all the investments made by all previous governments, they add up to about $670 million. What we've invested in rural broadband is close to 10 times higher than that. This is real money going to smaller service providers, bigger service providers, it's going to indigenous communities and we're not going to stop until we get it done.

MG: So realistically, when would people in Kangiqsualujjuaq, in Nunavik be able to get online?

MARYAM MONSEF: So at this point, if communities have projects that are ready to go, they can call 1-800-328-6189 and we will connect them with a concierge service, a Pathfinder, to navigate this complex process. If they have projects that are ready to go that will improve access to a community that doesn't currently have high speed Internet, we're willing to process those applications within days. And as long as the project can be complete by next November, that project would qualify for the rapid response. There's one hundred and fifty million dollars set aside for the bigger funds for the Core Universal Broadband Fund. Folks can call that same number today and we'll help them connect with engineers, with project managers. And we anticipate that 98 percent of households, by the time we're done, three million households by 2026 will have access, three million Canadians will have access to this essential service.

MG: 2026 is six years from now. I mean, you're looking at everybody by 2030. That's a decade from now. What are people supposed to do between now and then?

MARYAM MONSEF: Some projects will be completed by the next construction season. Some projects will take a year. The truth is these are complex infrastructure projects. They require environmental assessments, engineering and design, Indigenous consultations, and then the build itself, fifty percent of these projects take more than three years simply by the nature of the program itself and the needs and communities. We know that Canadians have been waiting for too long for this service. It's not right. It's not fair. It's it's hampering our productivity. It's going to create jobs once it's done. But we're putting our full weight behind it. And, you know, we're providing the clear reporting, but we're also offering a handholding service, if you will, so that those communities who don't necessarily have the capacity to make the applications on their own can have some support. And yesterday, Matt, I spoke with the Federation of Canadian Municipalities. I've spoken with folks in agriculture. I've spoken with folks who are Internet service providers themselves. What they say is that yesterday was a great day for the country. They, too, have been waiting for this. They, too, wanted us to move forward in the right way. And what they tell us, the experts who've been lobbying for this for decades, tell us that we got it right. We took the time and now the ball's in their court and they're working hard to bring forward applications to do just that. This is Canada. We can do better in Canada and we're there to support Canadians.

VOICE: And again, just finally, for people like Andrea who say, I've heard these promises before and I don't know whether I should trust government, what would you say to her?

MARYAM MONSEF: I would say, Andrea, this is for real. And as of yesterday, there's a tracker where the projects that our government's already invested in. The Connect to Innovate Project Tracker is providing that transparency to Canadians. And at this point, it is not a social imperative. Our economic recovery from the pandemic and those health services, those vital health services depend on it. So people like Andrea are top of mind for us as we move forward with this program. It's not an announcement, it's money with the program that's got the precision to connect rural Canadians at long last to this essential service.

MG: Maryam Monsef, good to speak with you. Thank you.

MARYAM MONSEF: Thanks Matt.

MG: Maryam Monsef is the federal minister of Rural Economic Development. Helen Hambly leads the regional and Rural Broadband Project at the University of Guelph. She has been listening into our conversations. Helen, good morning to you.

HELEN HAMBLY: Good morning, Matt.

MG: Is this project announced by the government yesterday for real?

HELEN HAMBLY: It is for real. There are some new and interesting dimensions to it, but it is also involving previously announced money with an additional top up, as the minister said, on this rapid response stream or this shovel ready projects of 150 million.

MG: Why is this, this is a question that I asked Maryam Monsef, why is it so difficult to get dependable, high speed Internet access to people all across this country? This has been promised by Conservatives and Liberals going all the way back to 1996.

HELEN HAMBLY: Yeah, absolutely. And in 2006 our research in Ontario saw that two thirds of rural Ontario lacked high speed Internet that was just marginal quality, better than dial up. And that was 2006. So this century, 10 years later, we still see an even a more densely populated area like southern Ontario, over 200,000 households below the basic service objective of 50/10, 50 megabits per second download, 10 megabits per second upload. So it isn't just the hardest to reach communities and we need to message that this is something affecting all Canadians and it's affecting even urban Canadians, certain neighbourhoods that are underserved. So it's a landscape issue and a geography issue, but it's also a complex issue, as the minister said, of technology and engineering and construction, combined with finance and economics, combined with politics and the fact that a lot of the communities also need capacity development to support their negotiation because these assets are typically privately owned. They're owned by the telecoms industry.

MG: So is it, we've spoken to people who I mean, they're just outside of the city of Hamilton, big city in southern Ontario, and they can't get high-speed Internet access because they can't convince the telecom provider to run a cable up the road so that they would have it. Are we as a nation reliant in some ways on those private actors to make something like this happen? The government can say we want it to happen, government can put money out there, but are we reliant on the private sector to do some of the work here?

HELEN HAMBLY: For the most part, yes. Although there are community and municipally owned utilities and assets in the broadband in the rural broadband area, but the large majority will be owned by the large incumbents as well as the smaller companies. So there's a lot of diverse stakeholders in this sector and the federal government and its work on the regulatory side has been also absolutely crucial and will be crucial to making sure that the UBF is successful. So we expect to see, you know, a comprehensive or a holistic approach to rural broadband moving forward.

MG: Where has this worked? Where have we seen smaller municipalities, you know, get online and be able to to to get successful high speed Internet projects underway?

HELEN HAMBLY: Yeah, it's quite exciting and I think one of the things that I've seen over the last, you know, almost 20 years of work in this area is that regional initiatives have been able to build a scope and scale of outcomes that have made, you know, I've been a game changer. So here in southwestern Ontario, for instance, the Swift Regional Initiative has tried to move this forward. It's been slow. It's been challenging, but at least it's it's still there and it's still making an impact into into this region. We also see individual communities organising community task force, getting communication, going with the members of parliament and their members of provincial parliament today. We haven't really talked about the role of provincial agencies, but this past week in Ontario, one billion dollars of funding for broadband, was also announced. We would expect to see other provinces and territories stepping forward now that the federal government has announced the release of the UBS. And as the minister said, this is interesting in terms of the process. The process has been more collaborative than I've ever seen before, more consultative. And I think Minister Monsef, who has this sort of rights orientation to the broadband work within her portfolio, is a very important step in the right direction. So keep that up and make sure that we're building transparency through better data and mapping, as well as ground truth of information in the communities where people live and use these technologies.

MG: Waiting for six years or waiting for 10 years, is that even feasible? I mean, it's hard to imagine what kind of technology would even exist six or ten years from now.

HELEN HAMBLY: You know, in retrospect, Canada needed to invest in this back in the late part of the 20th century and we're paying the price. We've slipped from being in the top 10 of countries in terms of connectivity to somewhere down in the, you know, the 20s or 30s, low 30s. And so this is not a good situation. It's a situation that that has a history to it. But moving forward, we need to make sure that all of the different components of connectivity work together and not just in the telecoms world. There has to be a connection with other crucial sectors like energy and water and housing and food systems, so that broadband actually is part of a sort of a multidisciplinary or an intersectional approach to sustainable development in the country.

MG: Just before I let you go, SpaceX, Elon Musk's company has this series of satellites, Starlink, where they are looking at providing broadband service to rural communities in the United States, but also in Canada. What role would that play in connectivity in this country?

HELEN HAMBLY: Yeah, this is interesting. There was $750 million allocated to big projects, including sat comm and satellite communications in the UBF. And I'm not a satellite communications specialist, but I can tell you that folks in my area of work are looking at this with a lot of interest. Communities are asking themselves, is this going to be our solution? Canada has a very rich history in satellite communication tools such as one company, for example, a real leader in the world. And I think we should harness all of our science and technology capabilities, including Satcom, to address rural and remote broadband access and ensure that that we also don't get carried away by the public relations or the mythology of any particular solution. We need to make sure that there's no one size fits all and that we always allow the communities and their needs to drive the solutions.

MG: This sounds like a little bit of good news, perhaps down the line for someone like Andrea, who is without Internet access in her community.

HELEN HAMBLY: I feel for Andrea, not just because she's a fourth year university student and I teach university students who are across rural and remote parts of Canada who can't come to class right now. And I'm optimistic, cautiously optimistic, and all Canadians need to get behind this agenda.

MG: Excellent. Helen, thank you.

HELEN HAMBLY: Thank you so much.

MG: Helen Hambly is a professor and leader of the Regional and Rural Broadband Project at the University of Guelph. What is life like for you if you do not have high speed Internet access? We'd love to hear from you. He says this knowingly. You can e-mail us, it might be slow, but email us thecurrent@cbc.ca. Coming up after your regional updates, Internet access is one thing, what about life without screens? The author, Don DeLillo pulls us into a world without screens in an era where, yes, we're trying to spend more time on them than ever. That's coming up in 90 seconds. I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current.

[Music]

Listeners write-in about their winter activities

Guests: Karin Marley

MG: Hello, I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current. Yesterday on the show, we heard about the joys of winter and the need this year to embrace winter like never before. Take a listen to Simon O'Byrne. He's one of the leaders of Edmonton's Winter City Initiative.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: It's critical for Canadians and for people anywhere in the Winter Belt to really embrace it, to not hibernate, but rather be outside. It's so critical right now, especially in light of COVID for mental health that we get outside, that we do things that are active.

MG: And so in light of that conversation, we asked you to send us your ideas in terms of how to stay active in the winter. You did send your ideas. Thank you very much. Karin Marley, senior producer of The Current, is here to sift through some of your mail. Karin, good morning.

KARIN MARLEY: Good morning. We are heading out of the city this weekend and getting our Christmas trees already, so I'm hoping we're going to get a little bit of snow up there. The kids are very excited.

MG: Goodness.

KARIN MARLEY: Fingers crossed.

MG: It's t-shirt weather in Toronto right now, so good luck with that.

KARIN MARLEY: Exactly. So we have a letter from Randy in Peace River, Alberta, writing, I have never had a problem embracing winter. It's my second favourite season after fall and I'm very active outdoors all winter long. I hope to encourage more people that I know to find an outdoor winter activity that they like and pursue it. As the Scandinavian people say, there's no bad weather, only bad clothing.

MG: Rebecca Collins of Calgary mentions the same saying about the Scandinavian people. She goes on to say, I have more than enough to weather some outdoor activity this year. We have breweries that have patios open. We have great pathways and provincial parks. Bottom line is you just need to do it. I have plans with friends to get outside together for book club and other activities. That's a neat idea. Sit outside and read your books in the cold.

KARIN MARLEY: Hopefully they have nice thematic reading. Here is one from Rona Currie of North Bay, Ontario. Sitting by a fire outside brings back memories of snowmobile excursions with our children and friends, enjoying hot dogs or whatever else we could warm up on the fire. We live in a cold winter climate and we really should embrace it, not avoid it. Bring it on. I will add another layer to my clothing and suck it up. My friend and I will continue to walk each day we can and perhaps have lunch every once in a while in a winter oriented outdoor patio.

MG: Speaking of patios, this came from Edward Chudak on a trip to Poland on a very chilly late September. Three years ago, we used outdoor patios extensively and they were in every city we visited. All of them had heaters and blankets. One memorable experience was experiencing mulled beer. Yes, beer, not wine, on a patio in Gdansk one evening when it was seven degrees Celsius.

KARIN MARLEY: Did you ever build a snow fort when you were a kid, Matt?

MG: I'm going to sound like a 100-year-old man and say yes, because I remember that it seemed like we had more snow back then than we do now.

KARIN MARLEY: That's true. However, Brenda Buchanan is giving it a try, nevertheless. She is in Manotick, Ontario, and she's created a COVID cave underneath her deck, which will be used to invite friends for short social distance gatherings. And she writes, in the cave, we have our lawn furniture spaced apart appropriately. We've purchased four electric blankets, a heat lamp and a small propane fireball with lots of candles burning at night. I have to say that our cave looks and feels great and is ready for snow to blow. Finally, I'm convinced my golf foursome to morph into a snowshoe club. The other three members of the club have purchased snowshoes and will be participating in the sport for the first time.

MG: Very interesting. You can move from golf to snowshoe quite easily, apparently. This from David Sparks. Newfoundland has a good combination of wind and snow that makes snow kiting perfect at times. This photo from 2016 at Pippy Park Golf Course and the attached photo looks like all sorts of fun. I've never heard of snow kiting before.

KARIN MARLEY: Me nither.

MG: The things you can do in winter, which you don't need to explain to people in Saskatchewan who got smoked by a big storm yesterday. Karin, thank you.

KARIN MARLEY: You are welcome.

MG: Karin Marley, senior producer of the current. One last thing we want to share with you, something that our producer in Halifax, Mary-Catherine MacIntosh, created. It might make some of you shiver. Have a listen.

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[Music]

VOICE: Here we go. Well, I'm certainly awake now. This is nice. Beautiful day. Fall colours on the shore and then the ocean just smells so fresh and invigorating and ugh, good way to start a day. Yeah, so my name is Boris Worm and I'm a marine biologist and during COVID of course, like everybody else, I'm stuck behind my computer all day in online meetings. And partway through this, I just felt I needed some more meaningful connection to the ocean, which is what I study. And I watched this documentary on Netflix called, My Octopus Teacher, of somebody who does cold water swimming every day in South Africa. And I thought, I could do this. I remember doing this years ago and you can get used to the cold and you can swim maybe way into the fall. So I started a few months ago and I just keep going and my body gets used to it. And it's just so life affirming to go right off my house and be with the ocean every day. And I've noticed it gives me kind of a new energy for my work because it relates to something real that I do every day and it's not just online or working with data or talking to people, it's actually about the real ocean. It's giving me just a better feeling of starting my workday. Just yesterday, for example, I was swimming with a seal that came alongside and didn't know what I was, and so I looked at it, it looked at me and then decided I wasn't trustworthy and dove away, but it was a sweet little moment of lots of us have these experiences in the ocean, typically in the summertime, but we may not realize that we can spend time in and around the ocean in other seasons as well. We just need to get used to it. The first two minutes is really cold, and then your body really heats up and you feel this really warm feeling all through your body and you're OK for five to ten minutes and then, you know, things start to cool down and you get out. But as soon as you leave the water, your body just fires up and you're like a furnace. So it's actually not that cold. The ocean has always been a huge part of my life. In fact, water was the first word I learned to speak because I wanted to be close to the ocean and I let my parents know that. Over time you forget these things and then sometimes during a crisis like COVID, we remember something we forgot and that's what it was for me. Like, I need to spend time in the ocean, not just talking about it or writing about it, but actually in the ocean. So for me, it's a huge inspiration. It's something that gives me a sense of being alive every day.

Author Don DeLillo discusses new book, The Silence

Guests: Don DeLillo

MG: This is The Current on CBC Radio One. My name is Matt Galloway.

SOUNDCLIP

[Clip from Twilight Zone episode, The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street]

VOICE 1: I understand the procedure now, throw them into darkness for a few hours and then sit back and watch the pattern. They picked the most dangerous enemy they can find and it's themselves.

VOICE 2: Then I take it this place is not unique.

VOICE 1: By no means. Their world is full of Maple Streets and we'll go from one to the other and let them destroy themselves.

MG: Two malevolent space aliens, manipulating the fears and anxieties of Americans by shutting off their electricity. That was from the 1960 classic Twilight Zone episode, The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street. 60 years later, those feelings of paranoia and anxiety over technology are even greater. Don DeLillo has captured the moral panics and mass anxieties of America in several best-selling novels, including Underworld, Libra and White Noise. His new novel, The Silence, looks at America two years into the future, and it has a familiarity to it that many readers will find deeply unsettling. Don DeLillo. Good morning.

DON DELILLO: Hello.

MG: That episode of The Twilight Zone aired as people were building followed shelters and fearing World War 3. Do you see any of those sort of Cold War anxieties today?

DON DELILLO: I see anxiety and it seems to be rising almost literally from the streets themselves as people wearing masks tend to avoid each other walking along a street. And there's a strong, surreal element and, of course, an element of anxiety as well. But people are doing their best to continue living, even if it can't possibly be as before. It's much more days of days than it used to be and there's a sense of people cloistered. We are cloistered in our apartments or houses and many people in New York have simply left New York to find more freedom elsewhere.

MG: The phrase in the word COVID-19 doesn't appear in The Silence, but it's all around it in some ways. Did you finish this novel before the pandemic hit?

DON DELILLO: I had finished it just before. I started in January of 2018, and I did not finish until March of this year. There's a reference to the plague somewhere in the novel referring back since the book is set in 2022, referring back to 2020.

MG: This starts with a couple on a plane, one of whom is watching the flight information on a screen, as we all do. Why did you want to start the story there?

DON DELILLO: Well, because I was on such a flight somewhere in Europe to the US, and I wasn't accustomed to seeing screens above the seats dangling from the overhead bin. It's not the screen right in front of the passenger, it's above. And for some reason, I became interested, took out a notebook and just started scrolling down what I saw on the screen, which happened to be in English and French, you know, time in Paris, outside air temperature, the time in New York, arrival time, speed, etc.. When I got home, I looked at it and it somehow encouraged me to keep thinking along these lines. And I have to add that this all became combined with an interest I've had for some time in Albert Einstein and his 1912 manuscript on thespecial theory of relativity. It's a huge, oversized book sitting on my floor for a very long time. I began to look into it and began to think of combining these two elements in what would become The Silence.

MG: I want to go back to the screen in a moment, but connect the dots between the idea of what you were writing down in your notebook and as you say, the giant oversized Einstein book that had been sitting on your floor for some time.

DON DELILLO: That's a good question. The connection is what happens I think in a fiction writer's minds. There should not necessarily have been a connection if I were working more logically, but these two And I understood at some point that one of the characters developing in my mind, a young man, a high school physics teacher, Martin Decker, would have an interest in Einstein.

MG: The screen suddenly goes blank. What happens then?

DON DELILLO: Well, the screen goes blank in the apartment in New York, the TV screen, and what happens is that there turns out to be an enormous loss of power, not just in this apartment. The blank screen in this apartment in New York is related to a huge power failure throughout the city and possibly much, much farther beyond. It's Super Bowl Sunday and this is a sort of catastrophic event, particularly for the character Max Steiner, who was an ardent football fan and gambler.

MG: When you're watching those screens in the plane and you see all that information, do you think we have become accustomed to conditioned to kind of having that that constant access to information to feel secure? I mean, you think of why would you need to know what the outside temperature is when you're flying on a plane, but we all watch that screen in some ways.

DON DELILLO: Yes, whatever technology is capable of doing becomes what we need it to do. And if technology can produce this, there it is, not only on a flight, but in our lives day to day, hour of the hour, on our phones and our TV screens, in our computers and so on. This is the way we've learned to live.

MG: There's a scene in the book in which one of the characters feels triumphant because she's able to recall a fact without having to look it up on the Internet. It's the name of the man who invented the Celsius temperature scale and it comes to a kind of out of nowhere. And there's a line that says there's almost nothing left out of nowhere. Do you miss that? Do you miss the fact that people, I can come up with whatever random fact I need to because I have a phone right in front of me and I can Google it up and it's there within minutes.

DON DELILLO: People depend on it. People need it. For most people, it's the gift of technology and it's the power of technology. We can't deny it. We live with everything in it. Yes it determines, the way we think and feel, how we eat, how we sleep, where we go, how we travel, everything, it's all technologically determined. Does this mean that there's a loss of human free will connected to this? Well, I don't have the philosophical means to delve into this too deeply, but our lives are different than they were 40 or 50 years ago.

MG: The Super Bowl is interesting in this because it's one of those events that it seems that not everybody, but a huge number of people watch. And we have very few of those events anymore. What's intriguing to you? Why did you use that as a plot device?

DON DELILLO: Because, as you say, it's an enormously required visual experience. People will do it even if they have no interest in football. And as far away as China, people are watching the Super Bowl. It's nearly a global phenomenon. Extraordinary because it's absolutely rife with a certain kind of sports technology. It's another language, the language of football that is untranslatable, except that people do want to watch.

MG: And when they can't watch, when that screen suddenly goes blank, I mean, you know, the neighbours have to go out and kind of introduce themselves to their other neighbours in the building. What happens in that moment when, again, the screens suddenly go blank and the thing that twas going to bring us together is suddenly out of our control?

DON DELILLO: It is a terrifically catastrophic moment. And yet speaking of the blank screen, that was one of the original titles for this book, The Blank Screen, and also Space and Time. And finally, I decided on The Silence. But yes, first, the game itself is fascinating and then to the character Max Steiner, the blank screen becomes a kind of fascination. It becomes an obsession. He has to keep looking at it. He can't take his eyes off it and he begins to invent a football game, a play by play in his own mind and to announce it to the people in the apartment.

MG: There has long been a history of anxiety around television and people and technology generally. First it was, you know, what various forms of technology were going to do to people's lives? Would television destroy the radio? Would the Internet destroy the radio or would it destroy television? Why do you think people keep building invasive technology when it causes these sorts of anxieties, when it feels as though we're slave to the technology in some ways?

DON DELILLO: Well, because it's possible to do. Technology renews itself and those capable of dealing with it will continue to advance it to the extent possible. It has its own momentum, so to speak. And here I am, a writer who uses an ancient second hand manual typewriter, which has large type, allowing me to look clearly at the letters on the page to find a visual connection between letters in a word and words in a sentence. And this is something that I developed when I was working on the names back in the 1980s, one paragraph per page, so that the eye as well as the mind becomes fully engaged in what I was trying to do and I was doing it ever since. It's such strong visual element that I suppose I began to develop a long, long time ago when I started discovering movies, foreign films first and then American films in the 1970s and 1980s. And I've had this visual sense ever since.

MG: And do you think you could not get that visual sense from a computer screen?

DON DELILLO: Not the same. It isn't the same. It's along these lines, I have to mention that just a couple of days ago, I watched a documentary film called Anthropocene, subtitled The Human Epic. And I believe that its origin in some way be related to Canada.

MG: It is.

DON DELILLO: Yeah.

MG: Yeah.

DON DELILLO: It's an astonishing movie. Fascinating. And it reminds me again, not that I need reminding of the power of visual technology and how much it has meant to me through most of my life.

MG: What's the role of I mean, you're typing on the manual typewriter, people perhaps have seen photos of it because it's become famous in its own right in some ways. What is the role of technology beyond that in your life? Do you have a smartphone? Do you use a computer?

DON DELILLO: I don't use a computer. My wife is the family technologist, and so I have access to whatever is necessary, but I don't use a computer and I don't have a cell phone.

MG: And is that by design?

DON DELILLO: Yes, by design. By, I suppose, a certain lack of capabilities concerning aspects of technology. I write about it and I can think about it, but I'm not adept myself dealing with it.

MG: Do you worry I mean, having written about it, not just in this book, but in other books as well, do you worry about what technology does in terms of eroding our sense of imagination? I mean, to your point, it's fascinating, when the TV goes blank and the Super Bowl can't be aired, he comes up with the Super Bowl in his own mind and kind of recreates it. Do you worry that technology has stripped of our, some of our imaginative ability?

DON DELILLO: Yes, I think that's possible. Another way to put it is that it has given rise to another level of imagination based on technology, certain inventiveness that depends on technology, as well as the fact that those who use technology for criminal purposes or disruptive purposes will use it because they're capable of using it.

MG: I was reading a review of this book and the reviewer referred to you as our laureate of paranoia and dread. Do you think that's appropriate and accurate in terms of describing not just the entire sweep of your work, but some of the themes that we've been talking about?

DON DELILLO: Well, I don't think in those terms, but there are certain novels, I guess, in which these elements are fairly well developed. This is what I take out of the culture. When I wrote Libra about the assassination of President Kennedy, I was writing in part because since the event itself in 1963, the country itself fell into a huge era of paranoia. It was unavoidable. It was everywhere. There was conspiracy everywhere. And I have volumes of the Warren Report, the 26 volumes of the Warren Report and many, many other books about that era of and it lasted for about 20 years, this sense of paranoia. And, yes, it did affect the work I do.

MG: What about this moment now? There are people who would suggest that. I mean, whether it's social media, whether it's American politics, there are conspiracy theories that that catch flight and are able to take off in ways that they couldn't have perhaps in years past. Is this a unique moment in your country when it comes to paranoia?

DON DELILLO: I think so. There's something that is yet to be determined about how we will think about this era in the years to come. This, the pandemic shows no signs of ending in this country and in many other places, it's getting worse. And of course, this affects everything, even affects those of us who spend most of our times just staying home. And iit has an enormous effect, first on one's physical well-being, on one's sense of being able to feel free and and, of course, the other effect is emotional and psychological.

MG: What was it like for you inNew York City during the pandemic?

DON DELILLO: Well, my wife and I took an occasional walk, but we we're very careful. We don't walk as we used to do. We walk cautiously. Like a broken field runner in football, avoiding certain people, people without masks and staying close to buildings and sometimes walking in the street because it's safer than walking in on a crowded sidewalk. So there is that element of a wary freedom and getting out and taking a walk. Yes, it feels good to get out, but there's a wariness involved that one has to be very, very careful to observe.

MG: And just the sight of people in masks, to your point, I mean, avoiding each other in a city where critical mass is I mean, that's New York is many things, but one of the things is that it's heaving with people all the time.

DON DELILLO: Yes, and the sight of people with masks is something I haven't gotten accustomed to. Of course, it's been happening for months and it will continue to happen, but it still seems surreal to me. And I feel maybe as a writer, as a fiction writer, I can separate myself to a certain extent and simply observe, almost as if I were watching a movie. Here they are, people with masks. Who are they? What are they thinking? Where did they come from? What kind of lives do they lead? See the mask, almost paradoxically, encourages this.

MG: Are you thinking that you would write something based on what you have seen in the streets of your city over the last several months?

DON DELILLO: Well, it hasn't occurred to me, to tell you the truth. I don't know what's next, but what you suggest is a possibility.

MG: One of the fascinating things about this book is that you don't actually say, we don't really know what's going on. And that's why in some ways it's it's really unsettling because we're never really clear about what's going on. It's a short book. 116 pages. Were you tempted once the story gets going to tell more, or is that in some ways the charm of this? That we in a time when we can know everything, we don't know what's happening?

DON DELILLO: I follow the narrative where it took me, as I always do. I just kept going page by page, word by word, and then it wanted to come to an end. I had no way really to contest this impulse. It had to happen this way.

MG: The novel is the thing that's in control?

DON DELILLO: Yes.

MG: Don DeLillo, it's a real pleasure to talk to you. Thank you.

DON DELILLO: You're very welcome.

MG: Take care of yourself. Bye bye.

DON DELILLO: Goodbye.

MG: Don DeLillo is a National Book Award winner. His new novel is called The Silence. That is it for The Current for today. Coming up next on CBC Radio One, it's Q. The Scotiabank Giller Prize, one of the most prestigious literary awards in this entire country, was announced last night. And today the winner, Souvankham Thammavongsa, talks to Tom Power about her fantastic collection of short stories, stories of the Laotian community in Canada. It's a great little book and you will hear all about it, coming up on Q. I'm Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening to The Current. We'll talk to you tomorrow.

[Music: theme]

Nov. 10, 2020 episode transcript

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