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The Current Transcript for November 18, 2020

Host: Matt Galloway

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

More people may die. If we don't coordinate, if we have to wait until January 20th to start that planning, it puts us behind over a month and a half.

MATT GALLOWAY: Joe Biden officially becomes president in 63 days. Donald Trump, the current holder of that office, has yet to concede. In 30 minutes, a conversation about what isn't being done right now from fighting a raging pandemic to dealing with national security threats. Also this morning, remember travel? Remember the smells of the places that you've been too salty? Whiff of the sea, the scent of flowers and a bustling street market exhaust from scooters roaring by baguettes in a French bakery. Later, how researchers are using our noses and artificial intelligence to build an encyclopaedia of European scents from the 18th century. Plus, Joe Murphy had it all, the Stanley Cup, tens of millions of dollars made in the NHL and then it all fell apart.

SOUNDCLIP

I've actually I've been living homeless shelters across Ontario in different areas for many years now.

MG: In an hour, how concussions reshaped the life of one of the most talented hockey players of his generation and why many are demanding the National Hockey League take hits to the head much more seriously. We'll start, though, with lessons from Melbourne, Australia on how to stamp out Covid. Could they work here? Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway. This is The Current.

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Is ‘COVID Zero’ possible for Canada?

Guests: Karen Percy, Dr. Andrew Harris, Dr. Martha Fulford

MG: Covid cases continue to rise in Canada, and the debate over what to do next is intensifying. Meanwhile, it is quite a different story on the other side of the world this week.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: The vibe is fantastic. Look at the amount of people out here. We haven't seen this many people since February.

VOICE 2: We're going to be doing some winery tours and yeah, just I mean, if he wants.

VOICE 3: It feels so good. The cinema feels great. The vibe is great.

VOICE 4: No beach no fun.

VOICE 5: From today onwards. Hopefully this is our new life.

MG: No beach, no fun. People in the Australian state of Victoria have just emerged from a period of extreme restrictions. And yes, they sound pretty happy about it. As of today, the state has gone 19 days without a reported new case or death of Vovid-19. Karen Percy as a journalist in Melbourne. Karen, hello.

KAREN PERCY: Hello there, Matt.

MG: How are you doing now that you're out of lockdown?

KAREN PERCY: Oh, I totally and utterly understand how those people feel. My husband and I last week spent a week outside of the so-called Ring of Steel of Melbourne. We weren't able to leave metropolitan Melbourne for weeks, weeks, months, months. We got in the camper van. We hit the open road and we had a marvellous time. It's fabulous to be finally kind of living again. We're still under some restrictions, but boy, is life good right now.

MG: What was life like under, as you say, the ring of steel? Just describe what the rules were in lockdown.

KAREN PERCY: They were pretty extreme and this was sort of a second stage of lockdown. It was August the second. It was a Sunday. We knew that tighter restrictions were coming in because we were starting to see a rise in cases back then. But nobody was expecting that there would be a curfew from 8:00 p.m. to 5:00 a.m. you could not leave your house. You know, most people were working from home. You could only leave for certain reasons, but suddenly it became a whole lot harder. You can only leave your house for one hour of exercise a day. You could go for caring responsibilities. You could go and pick up medicines and groceries. And also suddenly there was a five kilometre radius. You could not go beyond that five kilometres unless you were a permanent worker or had very, very good reason. So it came down like a ton of bricks to a large degree. But the numbers were just so, so frightening. You know, it was only three or four days later that we hit this peak of 725 Covid infections on a daily basis. Initially, I think people kind of going, oh, well, it's not going to affect me too much, but it really did.

MG: So were there armed guards kind of patrolling to make sure that you're not leaving the house or that you don't go beyond your five kilometres an hour?

KAREN PERCY: No, we're not North Korea, despite the fact that some of the politicians here tried to say that was the case. But this ring of steel that I'm talking about, essentially there were major roads in and out of Melbourne where there were police checkpoints where people were pulled over. What's your address? What are you doing here? Because at one stage, the regional part of the state of Victoria had very few cases and eventually they got down to zero cases, whereas they were still outbreaks happening in various parts of Melbourne. You know, we had pretty hefty fines here. 1600 dollars that went up to 5000 dollars if you were found to be doing things you weren't supposed to be. And they did find people doing silly things. So eventually it just almost got shut down because clearly people couldn't be trusted.

MG: How did this affect people financially? I mean, if you shut down an economy for 100 plus days, presumably people would think that there would be huge economic ramifications. So if you weren't able to go out, what did that mean for people?

KAREN PERCY: Absolutely. Basically, we had a number of sort of different programmes. If you were a salaried worker, your organisation could apply to the government for, you know, a pretty substantial job keeper payment, which was 1500 dollars a week. There were also huge investments in the equivalent of UI, our unemployment benefits. Businesses were getting all manner of grants or loans to try and keep them going through the idea that people still being able to pay their mortgages and pay their bills. But, you know, being downtown Melbourne today, just seeing the number of family signs and how empty it is as we see these federally funded income support programmes start to wind down in the next couple of months, the damage is going to be huge, no doubt about it.

MG: What about we're almost out of time, but what about the emotional impact of this, of being locked in your house for 100 days?

KAREN PERCY: Yes, look, I think people have called it the Corona Coaster, that emotional up and down. When the curfew came in, I was initially OK. I didn't expect this, but I understand it. And then we started to hear of breaches of quarantine and just a whole lot of failures by the government and no science and no health reasons for a lot of this to happen. And then I started getting mad about it. And I think my experience is probably similar to some people. And then we started to see what happened in Europe and the UK and America, and we realised that what we were doing was actually good.

MG: Just finally, as of Thursday, the state that's next to yours is going into a lockdown after going from, what, something like zero to 36 cases in just a few days. Are you worried that this could come back to bite you now that the lockdown has has been lifted, that this could end up being a resurgence of cases not just in that state, but in yours as well?

KAREN PERCY: Well, our premier has basically said that South Australia is a hotspot, and that means if anybody is coming out of South Australia, they would have to quarantine for 14 days. But they've had lockdown that we're seeing come into effect in South Australia is six days. People will not be able to leave their homes except to get essential groceries, cafes, a clothing that's something that stayed open. Here is the local cafe. I mean, if you took away Melburnians coffee, they would have rioted. But in South Australia, you're able to get liquor and groceries and not much more. Medical emergencies. No problem. People are being told they have to exercise inside their house. They can't take the dog for a walk. This is extreme. It's only six days. This is harsher than what we had to experience for a shorter period. But, you know, I'm not going to say this to my friends or family in South Australia, but I also hope that six days is enough, but I fear it won't be.

MG: Karen, enjoy your freedom. Good to speak with you. Thank you.

KAREN PERCY: Thank you, Matt.

MG: Karen Percy is a journalist in Melbourne, Australia, here in Canada. Health experts have been looking at how we can get our own cases and transmission down to zero. Dr. Andrew Morris is one of the people leading this charge. He's an infectious disease specialist at Sinai Health and the University Health Network in Toronto, and he's calling for a Covidzero strategy. Doctor, good morning.

DR. ANDREW MORRIS: Good morning.

MG: We hear a lot from public health officials as cases rise that we need to learn to live with this virus. Why are you taking a different tact? Why do you think that zero cases of covid should be our goal?

DR. ANDREW MORRIS: Well, I think we've already seen what happens when we pursue a living with Covid strategy, parts of the country already are in a lockdown. Many are facing a lockdown. And I think what we've seen in Europe is what we can anticipate we're going to have in Canada if we continue on this path. On the other hand, we've seen countries like Australia that have pursued a zero target. And you just heard from your previous interviewee what that's like.

MG: So how do you get to that goal here in Canada? How would we get practically to zero cases of covid in this country?

DR. ANDREW MORRIS: I think the first step, to be honest with you, is leadership, and that would be at both the federal and provincial levels to first recognise that we actually need a strategy with a target. We don't have that right now. But I think its target of zero and I don't, by the way, believe that we're ever going to have a sustained zero for any prolonged period of time. But that target and not tolerating middling numbers, which is what we had over the summer throughout the country, having a low target is almost certainly the way that we're going to get to the freedom that they're now enjoying in Australia.

MG: Leadership is one thing. I mean, what are we talking about? Practically like how long of a lockdown are we talking about here and what would that lockdown look like?

DR. ANDREW MORRIS: Yes, so I think that lockdown, first of all, will vary. It will vary according to the number of cases to, you know, local situation and tolerance. What lockdowns do is they drive the replication number down. And how aggressively you drop that number or how quickly you drop the number really depends on how aggressive your measures are. So if you have 200 cases, you may want to drop them down really quickly and you can have your cases every seven days. It will take somewhere between five to eight sort of replication cycles. And those replication cycles are seven to 14 days. The more aggressive at seven days, the less aggressive closer to 14 days. So you can get it down within a couple of months to really, really low numbers like we've seen in Australia, where you can be more gradual if you want to tolerate that. But it will take longer and it may take, you know, several months, three to four months.

MG: But in a couple of months, again, specifics mean we just heard about what's going on in Australia or what was happening in Australia. You couldn't leave your house. You can't go out beyond five kilometres, you know, if you're exercising. Is that what this lockdown would need to look like? Something as as intense, as severe, if I can put it that way, as what was happening in Melbourne?

DR. ANDREW MORRIS: Yes, I don't think so. Like I said, I think if you want to get at it, you know, as fast as possible, can you do it that way if it doesn't have to be that way. And we know that some measures are more effective than others. We know that putting rings, you know, what your caller referred to as the ring of steel or we refer to as cordon sanitaire, those kind of things are really effective because you don't migrate cases between different jurisdictions. Additionally, we know that reducing dramatically the number of especially non-essential gathering indoors is really effective. So if you're smart about it, you don't have to be, as I'm going to say, militant as they were in Australia. Yes, it worked for them, but it doesn't have to be that aggressive if you do that.

MG: I mean, when you lift the lockdown, however long it is, when you lift the lockdown, won't the virus just come back and spread again?

DR. ANDREW MORRIS: Well, I think that's the lesson that we can learn from not only Australia but other countries in the Asia Pacific region like, you know, Vietnam, Thailand, China, South Korea, is that once you get it really low, the difference between a covered zero strategy and what we've been doing in Canada is you don't tolerate the levels increasing again, because as we just heard in in South Australia, they've had just like a handful of cases and they're going to a quick and rapid lockdown that they'll be for probably a week, maybe a little bit longer possibly. But there's very little uncertainty around it. Everyone knows what to anticipate. They were the locals were anticipating that they'd be locked in and they're actually supportive of it because once they get this under rapid control, they'll rapidly also regain the freedoms. The difference here is in Canada, we have tremendous uncertainty. We have constant moving of the goalposts in terms of what measures will occur when they will occur. And we're almost certainly governments and public health officials are acting too late when it's already out of control. And in countries that are successful, they never let it get out of control. No second wave.

MG: What you hear from those government officials is about the real consequences of this, the financial consequences, as well as the emotional toll on Canadians. How do you mitigate that if this lockdown is going to last for six weeks, eight weeks, five weeks?

DR. ANDREW MORRIS: So I think we have a choice and the choice we have to make is whether we say we're going to aggressively deal with a second wave and not have a third wave or we say we're going to continue as we are right now, still actually being dramatically affected by the second wave. It's not like we haven't avoided the second wave. We have it. And then you're still going to be faced with a third wave. The best predictions are that we'll start in February and it will continue probably towards the end of April so we can decide to deal with this in a kind of final way, hopefully by the end of February at the latest, and then not have to worry about this third wave. So the impact overall to the public, to businesses, to the economy, that impact will be less if you deal with this one up front rather than letting the virus control.

MG: Just before I let you go and very briefly, we're learning this morning of news around Pfizer's vaccine, which apparently the trials are done. They're looking for immediate approval in the next couple of days. Is there less urgency now for a strategy like that, given the fact that the Pfizer vaccine seems to be, you know, on our doorstep?

DR. ANDREW MORRIS: Actually, I think the urgency is even greater now because, you know, one of the arguments against dealing with the virus aggressively and just learning to live with it is that we're just kicking the can down the road. We're just, you know, delaying the inevitability. Now, we don't have to worry about delaying the inevitability. What we have is a future that we can anticipate eliminating, if not eradicating the disease with vaccine. And what we want to do right now is save as many lives and as many jobs as possible. And the way to do that is to go with a COXIE Zero strategy.

MG: Dr. Morris, good to speak with you. Thank you.

DR. ANDREW MORRIS: My pleasure to talk to you.

MG: Dr. Andrew Morris is an infectious disease specialist at Sinai Health and University Health Network in Toronto. You can imagine not all of Canada's medical professionals are on board with the concept of COVID Zero. Dr. Martha Fulford is an infectious diseases specialist and an associate professor of medicine at McMaster University. Doctor, good morning to you.

DR. MARTHA FULFORD: Good morning.

MG: Why are you not backing this goal of getting to COVID Zero?

DR. MARTHA FULFORD: I think that when one looks at any strategy or any intervention, we do need to balance the potential benefit, the cost of the intervention, as well as the possible harms. We are not Melbourne, Australia. It was a very geographically contained area and as you heard, extremely draconian measures. This is all of our country that we're talking about. And we would need to get every level of government community on board with this. And it seems if that's our only goal and the only thing we care about, I suppose it's doable. The cost I think is huge and I guess when we look at this measure, what are we trying to achieve? And is it really to eradicate COVID or is it, in fact to flatten the curve, which was the original intent? Because we know that this virus is not dangerous to the vast majority of the people of our population. What we want it to do, and I would argue is what we still want to do is to ensure that our hospital capacity is there. And instead of spending that amount of effort and financial resources and all the harms associated with something like that, we should actually be looking at minimising the negative consequences to health care system. We should be looking at maybe creating alternate health care facilities, setting up a home programme.

MG: You've used the word harm a couple of times. Just briefly, what are the harms that you see coming out of a strategy like this?

DR. MARTHA FULFORD: Well, if we're going to protect the vulnerable, I think that means we have to protect all vulnerable. We have protect the vulnerable, the long term care facilities who are at risk from COVID. We have to protect people who are fragile from a mental health perspective. We can't have them isolated. We know that economic harms increase the risk of suicide. Increasing suicides are actually a very strong predictor or at least a very strong correlate with economic recessions and depressions. We need to ensure that we look after people at increased risk of opioids. I know that we have stories about this, but in 2020, this year, we have had almost a doubling of opioid overdoses. That's a huge number of deaths and they're equally important in our society. We need to look at the impact on children. And children are not affected by the virus directly. But what we have done to our children is their entire future. And that's the future of our country. Interrupted education as a predictor for not finishing high school, for not going to university, for not succeeding as well in life. And if you look at the predictions of the OECD, a significant predictor for never getting our national productivity up to the same levels, these are not insignificant harms.

MG: I guess one of the things that leads people to support an idea like this, and you saw this certainly over the last few days, is that people watch very closely kind of the case numbers, the rising cost in their province, in their region, in their city or their town. What do you make of the way that people track those numbers?

DR. MARTHA FULFORD: I find it somewhat unusual. It's one of the only times I've ever seen us track every infection by every positive PCR test as a as opposed to actually the symptomatic people in hospital. I'm probably much more interested in hospital capacity and ICU capacity, because if we have asymptomatic people in the community and we have, in fact the ability in our health care system to deal with anybody who requires hospital care, then that really should be for me, our priority, because that will, in fact, probably cause the least harm across the board.

MG: So just in the last minute or so that we have, if we're going to live with this and live with care, as Dr Veera Etches in Ottawa says, what does that look like?

DR. MARTHA FULFORD: I would like to see us start to look forward to what we can do. We should start to create safe places. We should start to say this is how you can co-exist with COVID instead of constantly telling people they can't do stuff. You can play outdoors. We can keep recreation centres open. We can start to build safe activities. We can have red, yellow, green systems in terms of what you can do. And we need to focus very much on protecting the people who are vulnerable from COVID at the same time protecting the rest of the vulnerable in our society, because it is a small group of us who are vulnerable to COVID. And that for me is where we should be focussing our energies are economic resources. That and that is sustainable because that will also help us with our next influenza season. Because what we're seeing right now is not new in our hospitals. We deal with this every single winter. And so if we put the investment into that, then we've built something that's sustainable for all future respiratory tract seasons, whether it be COVID, influenza or the next coronavirus that hits us.

MG: Dr. Fulford, good to speak with you. Thank you.

DR. MARTHA FULFORD: My pleasure.

MG: Dr. Martha Fulford is an infectious diseases specialist, associate professor as well of medicine at McMaster University. Your thoughts on this? You hear about what's happening in Melbourne. Is that. The strategy that you think we should take, stamp it down and be aggressive, draconian, as the doctor just said, or should we learn to live with this virus? You can let us know through email thecurrent@cbc.ca Or on Twitter @TheCurrentCBC, the CBC News is next. And then.

SOUNDCLIP

I am hopeful that the president will be mildly more enlightened before we get to January 20th.

MG: The countdown is on. In about two months time, the Oval Office will get a new occupant. But Donald Trump is yet to concede his seat at the Resolute Desk, a move that Joe Biden says will cost lives. We'll talk about the politics of transition coming up in a moment. I'm Matt Galloway. This is The Current. We're back in six minutes. Stay with us.

Concern over delay to White House transition, Odeuropa project aims to bring you the smells of the past

Guests: Martha Joynt Kumar, William Tullett

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

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MG: Still to come, sniffing out the past at the smell library. But first, a dangerous game transition.

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SOUNDCLIP

My advice to President Trump is, if you want at this late stage in the game, to be remembered as somebody who put country first, it's time for you to do the same thing. The president doesn't like to lose and never admits loss. I'm more troubled by the fact that other Republican officials who clearly know better are going along with this, are humouring him in this fashion. It is one more step in delegitimizing not just the incoming Biden administration, but democracy generally.

MG: President Barack Obama weighing in on the less than smooth transition at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. It has been two weeks since the U.S. presidential election. And even though Joe Biden is now the clear winner, President Trump is refusing to acknowledge that he lost and is still making big moves like firing the secretary of defence, Mark Esper, and Christopher Krebs, the man in charge of the agency, looking after election security. As you can imagine, all of this is concerning to White House transition experts who say this could put the country's security at risk. Martha Joynt Kumar is the director of the non-profit, nonpartisan White House Transition Project. She's in Washington, D.C. Martha, good morning.

MARTHA JOYNT KUMAR: Good morning, Matt.

MG: Just briefly, what would normally be happening in a transition two weeks after a presidential election? What would be happening?

MARTHA JOYNT KUMAR: Well, you would have, first of all, you would have a statement by the president wishing his successor well, even if, as in the case of George H.W. Bush. He lost his re-election. But he came out and said that he wished he wished Clinton well and that his team would do all they could to facilitate a good transition. And the next day, he talked to his core staff and told them he didn't want them to have to leave behind any land mines. They wanted to make it a good transition that was important for the nation and for the institution of the presidency.

MG: And so what concerns you most about what you're seeing right now after this election?

MARTHA JOYNT KUMAR: With this election, we've got we've got crises to handle the spreading of the virus and and no national leadership on it. And then you have the the economy, the faltering economy as a result of the virus. And then a third issue is it's racial justice. And those three issues are the ones that Biden focussed on in his election campaign and with the new staff that he's hired, that is beyond their focus to try to get hold of it. His first action was creating a task force on the virus that has professionals, scientists and others who have experience and in trying to deal with viruses. And in fact, his chief of staff, Ron Klain, in the Obama administration, dealt with the Ebola crisis. And that is important because he has an understanding of all the places in the government that have some stake in a virus and knowledge of it.

MG: It's internal, but it's also external. We were saying earlier that since the election, the president has fired his defence secretary. People say that in some ways there's a bit of score settling that's going on. What message does that send to the outside world?

MARTHA JOYNT KUMAR: Well, it does send a message of some chaos, internal chaos. And that actually has been something that is a thread throughout his administration and something he has in mind. At least he said that he sees chaos as energy. And so he is not worried about offending his staff. The key White House staff members or people that have the title of assistant to the president, and there are only 25 by law allowed and budget allowed at one time and then his now coming on to four years. He's had 80 people that have held that title. And so you have a lot of turnover. But for Biden, there is a there is one upside and that all those people he's firing can now talk to the Biden people. So Barchester work and give a very fresh view of what was happening in the Defence Department. And you have many other officials, too, who can speak. Scott Gottlieb, who is the head of the FDA and is on the board of Pfizer, can talk about very knowledgeable about the virus.

MG: He might thrive on that chaos and see energy that comes from it. But does it also present an opportunity to people outside the United States who might be enemies of the United States who see chaos as a chance to, you know, strike at the United States?

MARTHA JOYNT KUMAR: Yes, that's the concern. In 2009, there was a threat on the inauguration of President Obama and at the time of the inauguration. There's a tradition that around 10, 30 in the morning, the incoming president, vice president and their wives come in to meet with the outgoing and have coffee. And while they were meeting together in The Situation Room, the national security teams for both sides were meeting to discuss a threat that, as one official said, people would have been killed. And so the incoming and outgoing homeland security secretaries, the national security teams, discussed what should be done. And in their cases, they could have a good discussion because they knew each other and they had met to discuss the operations of their positions. And also they had prepared the outgoing head pair of materials that the incoming secretaries had read. So they were all at one on the information. And also they had gone through a tabletop exercise of a crisis and what the kinds of communications they're there were with it. So that those kinds of things that have not happened so far, there are no beginnings to that yet. And it's just unclear when the administrator of the General Services Administration, which handles the material aspects of the of a transition when she is going to, according to the law, ascertain that there's a winner.

MG: People have also pointed back to the attacks on September 11th, 2001, and say that in the wake of, you know, a very messy election result between Bush and Gore went to the Supreme Court, that some things perhaps were missed, that opened opportunities for those attackers. What lessons came out of the September 11th attacks in light of that, but also trying to ensure that those transitions went smoother?

MARTHA JOYNT KUMAR: Yes. One is the 9/11 Commission pointed to that is a problem that the transition was that they felt that there were vacancies and positions in the national security area that should have been filled by September. The appointment process is an arduous one here because there are a lot of requirements, financial disclosures and how to resolve conflicts of interest. And plus, that takes the White House a while to get its appointments together. And they recommended that security clearances be the given so that when the president comes in for a president wins, that the officials that he wants to work on his transition, the agency review teams, these are people who go into the departments and agency and pick up information on the programmes, schedules, budget possibilities, all of those kinds of things that they be cleared prior to the election so that both candidates can put in place of people and they will be given temporary national security clearances. And so right after the nomination of the party nominations, which would take place by September 1st, they can start putting in names. And the Obama people did use that that new provision that comes from 2004 and Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act and so that their teams were ready. And that's true in this case, too. And that is a matter of several hundred people there, over 500 people on the agency review teams that Biden has put together.

MG: Just finally, before I let you go, if the president refuses to concede, could those around him, I mean, senior civil servants and also people in his administration, could they lead the way for him?

MARTHA JOYNT KUMAR: Well, what will happen is that it would be after the Electoral College made. That's the point where I think that the administrators certainly couldn't go beyond that, and that's mid-December.

MG: So he'll have, by that time, he'll have to concede.

MARTHA JOYNT KUMAR: Well, he doesn't have to concede, she has to say to say that it's time for providing information to the president elect, and declares Biden to be the president elect. There's no requirement of concession and there's no requirement that Trump go to the inauguration either.

MG: Martha Joynt Kumar. It's fascinating to watch. I appreciate you walking through what is and isn't happening. Thank you.

MARTHA JOYNT KUMAR: Thank you. And we will all watch.

MG: We will indeed. Martha Joynt Kumar is director of the non-profit and nonpartisan White House Transition Project.

[Music]

MG: This is The Current on CBC Radio One, I'm Matt Galloway. Think back to big moments in history, say the moon landing, you can see Neil Armstrong stepping out of the lunar module and of course, you can hear it.

SOUNDCLIP

That's one small step for man on [unintelligible] for mankind.

MG: And we've brought back Moon Rock so we can touch wood. He touched. And of course, anyone can go and buy some Tang and taste what he tasted. One thing we can't do is smell that moment. I mean, maybe to be honest, three guys in cramped quarters doing one of the most stressful things ever done in human history. Maybe you don't want to actually smell that moment. But unearthing the smells of the past is the goal of a new project. It's called Odeuropa. It will catalogue old smells and eventually recreate them. William Tullett is a lecturer in history at Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge, England, and a member of the Odeuropa team. He also recently published a book called Smell in 18th century England. William, good morning.

WILLIAM TULLETT: Good morning. Thanks for having me.

MG: Thanks for joining us. I want to get to what 18th century England actually smelled like. But first, walk us through what this Odeuropa project is proposing to do.

WILLIAM TULLETT: So what we're doing is we're going to be using first machine learning and I can use techniques to read thousands and thousands of historical texts from the 16th and 17th century through the 20th century, as well as hundreds of thousands of historical images ranging from portraits to landscape paintings. And from those we're going to be gathering the kind of smells that seem to be key to European history, trying to figure out what the most important smells are, where they were and who was smelling them. And they're going to convert that into a kind of online historical encyclopaedia of smells that will be available by the end of the project, which is kind of the first of its kind, really. And then we're going to be recreating those smells and taking them into museums and heritage sites across Europe and really getting the public to actually smell some of the sense of the past.

MG: OK, so explain how you're going to do this. I mean, with the A.I. looking for historical references to smells. How is that going to actually work?

WILLIAM TULLETT: So what we're hoping to do is to get a computer to figure out where are the most likely places the references to smell occur and what the places that come most regulated, the people that the spaces, the objects, the emotions that seem to be most frequently attached to those so that we can map them into a kind of network of olfactory that is smell related meaning.

MG: And so once you've mapped that out, once you have those references to smells, what happens then?

WILLIAM TULLETT: So then we're going to potentially converting them into historical biographies of smells, trying to kind of write these potted biographies that try and track individual smells over the course of European history and how their meanings have changed. We're also going to be trying to, as I say, take those smells and bring them to the public. Essentially, it's obviously the public needs to be able to actually sniff what they smelled like. So we're going to be using synthetic chemistry to try and recreate those smells and using help from perfumes and fragrance experts as well.

MG: What did 18th century England smell like?

WILLIAM TULLETT: Well, I mean, a whole panoply, a real bouquet of odours. It really depends on where you were. If you were an 18th century coffee house, then you would be smelling the smells of tobacco, of coffee, probably of sweaty male bodies as well, you know, whereas if you were on the streets of of 18th century Birmingham, you'd probably be smelling coal and wood burning and the smells of of metals and industry. So it really depends where you go and where you take your nose as to what the pot smells like.

MG: Do you think that our modern sensibilities, if I can put it that way, would be shocked by what used to pass as a normal everyday smell in the 18th century?

WILLIAM TULLETT: I think all those years probably it would feel a bit insulted if we were suddenly transported back in to, say, 18th century London. That was simply kind of more muck and dirt and, you know, waste around us every day. But on the other hand, I think if somebody from 18th century London was to journey to 21st century Europe, they would find some of the smells around us today shocking the smells of pollution in cars, for example, and petrol, those kinds of odours. So I think, you know, one of the things that the project is trying to get people to recognise is that the past could smell very foul, but it could also smell very fragrance, but also that the people in the past not only were surrounded by different smells, but they used their noses differently. They might have become habituated to the odours around them and so focussed on smells in a different way.

MG: What do you mean they used their noses differently?

WILLIAM TULLETT: Take, for example, the case of smell and medicine. So in the 16th and 17th century, people genuinely believe that smells can be deadly. They can take disease. And when you breathe in those smells, you imbibe it into your body and you can get sick. So smells really are as dangerous as mustard gas in the 16th and 17th centuries. And that means that people use herbs like rosemary. They burn them and they use them to protect themselves against the plague. Now, today, you know, we don't necessarily believe that smells can communicate disease and, you know, we certainly wouldn't advocate bringing Rosemary around with you to protect from covid. So, you know, that's a real change in the way it smells have been used in the meetings that they've had for people.

MG: You use the word fragrant. What are some of I mean, you can imagine the nastier smells, but what are some of the nicer smelling odours that you might be able to detect in that you might want to recreate?

WILLIAM TULLETT: Well, it depends who you're talking to as to whether people think that certain smells are nice or not. Right. But for me, I think kind of tobacco is a really central scent and trying to recreate kind of historical uses of tobacco and historical recipes of tobacco using different scents. I think, you know, obviously perfume is a slightly more fragrant smell, but tastes for perfume and fashions for perfume have changed over time. So, for example, in the 17th century, a really common ingredient in perfume was ambergris, which is essentially kind of solidified whale [unintelligble] that washes up on beaches. But it's got a lovely smell today. We don't use that quite as much, but there are also continuities. So, for example, civet is a widely used ingredient in 16th and 17th century perfume, and it's still an ingredient that's used in a synthetic form today. So Chanel number five has synthetic civet as one of its ingredients.

MG: You're also hoping to recreate smell escapes or create smell escapes of historical events, things like the Battle of Waterloo. How are you going to figure out what the Battle of Waterloo smelled like?

WILLIAM TULLETT: So the Battle of Waterloo is a really interesting one, because one of the people on the project, Caro Verbeek, is in Amsterdam, has actually done some work recreating the smell of the Battle of Waterloo. What she's done is she's used visual evidence, so she's used kind of brand paintings of the Battle of Waterloo and also identify some of the key things that might have kind of hot smells coming from them that say that are in those pictures. So, I mean, obviously, things like the smell of gunpowder and blood and mud and grass, all of those kinds of scents. And that's a really nice example, because what people like Carrow sort Verbeek has done is they've then taken those smells into museums and got people to smell them while they're looking at the paintings that were used to help put the recipes together in the first place.

MG: Once you catalogue the smells and you figure out how to recreate them, how are people going to be actually able to smell them? I mean, those of us of a certain generation, remember, we used to be called scratch and sniff where you get a book and you'd kind of scratch and then you could smell something. And that allowed you to have some sort of connexion with what it was you were looking at. How are you going to let people actually smell these odours?

WILLIAM TULLETT: So we're going to be using various scientific techniques to analyse historical objects and books. And what we're doing there is we're extracting the volatile organic compounds that help make up smells and then using those essentially as a recipe for then recreating some of those smells. We're going to be putting those recreated smells into smell kits that will be sending out to museums and heritage institutions across Europe. And then they'll be used in museum exhibitions and galleries. And we'll also be doing the sort of thing that I described earlier, which is kind of recreating the smells of particular spaces or particular paintings and then getting people to smell them in the galleries where the paintings are. I mean, those heritage sites today. So, for example, the smells of of industries.

MG: So you'd stand in front of the painting and in addition to looking at it, you could take a deep breath and you would smell what you're seeing in some ways.

WILLIAM TULLETT: Exactly. Exactly. And what we're trying to think about there is not just, you know, what might the things in this painting have smelled like, but also how would people- what would be the smells that would have surrounded people at the time when they were looking at these paintings? Right. So we're trying to recreate the kind of smell experience of being in a gallery or a salon in the 18th and 19th centuries as well.

MG: Is there one historical event, historical scene that you would like to recreate from a sense perspective from the perspective of smell?

WILLIAM TULLETT: I mean, I think for me, one thing that would be really interesting to recreate is kind of a street in 17th century London during a plague epidemic. I think that would be a fascinating one, because it's a really a real variety of smells. So we've got the smells of disease and death and illness. We've got all of the kind of aromatics and perfumes and herbs that they're burning to try and actually prevent the plague. But it also would have been a kind of a period of time when the smell status of cities and towns would have altered because many people would have fled the town, people wouldn't have been going outside as much. And that's a bit like we've covid-19 in the pandemic. You know, during lockdowns, our smell escapes. The towns and cities have changed because people haven't been going out so much. They haven't been going to restaurants and bars and shops and things or using cars as much. So in 17th century London, you know, as today, epidemics and pandemics can actually change our small scale.

MG: Do you think just finally, do you think we appreciate our sense of smell enough?

WILLIAM TULLETT: I don't think we do appreciate your sense of smell enough. And I think one of the aims of the project is to get people to appreciate the smells around them more, and to engage and use their nose. I think one of the great reasons I think they're developing an online encyclopaedia of smells and they're doing this great work of museums and heritage sites is that hopefully people will go away after that and think, actually, what are the smells around me every day? You know, how can I engage with them or how can I train my nose a bit more to engage with the world? And I think if people go away from that from the project feeling that way, then we would have had a real success.

MG: That's fascinating. William, we will follow this along with our noses. Thank you.

WILLIAM TULLETT: Thanks very much.

MG: William Tallit is a lecturer in history at Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge, England, and a member of the Odeuropa team. As he said, I mean, smells can place you in a very specific spot. I remember looking at once at a smell map of a city and it mapped out the city based on what smelled like what in different parts of that city. What to you is not the iconic smell of Canada, but a smell that places you in a very specific spot in this country. I think of the moment in the summer when the lilacs bloom and I can be walking by and that kind of just grounds me in that moment, you think of where I live in Toronto, my neighbours smoking sardines in the back, and that to me is of the place that I'm in. What is to you a smell that places you somewhere specific in this country? Let us know on Twitter @TheCurrentCBC the strange question to ask, but yes, let us know on Twitter @TheCurrentCBC or you can email us thecurrent@cbc.ca. Coming up after your regional update, the story of a hockey life forgotten. Joe Murphy went from a top prospect to experiencing addiction and homelessness, all while the National Hockey League, where he was a star, turned away. You'll hear his story coming up in 90 seconds. I'm Matt Galloway. This is The Current on CBC Radio One. Stick around.

How former Edmonton Oilers player Joe Murphy went from winning the Stanley Cup to living homeless

Guests: Rick Westhead

MG: Hello, I'm Matt Galloway, you're listening to The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: Oh, you've been touted as the number one pick for about the last six months and I think they're going to expect you to come out like a Wayne Gretzky or something like that in those first few games.

VOICE 2: No, no, don't say that. The fans aren't expecting that.

VOICE 1: They're not.

VOICE 2: No. You know, I'm just going to go out and work hard and, you know, make the fans enjoy and enjoy the way I play and help the team best I can.

VOICE 1: OK, well, next time we talk to you, we'll probably be talking to Joel Murphy, the newest millionaire in the Detroit Sports.

VOICE 2: I don't know. We'll see.

VOICE 1: We'll see. Thanks a lot, Joe.

VOICE 2: Thanks.

MG: In 1986, Joe Murphy was the NFL's first overall draught pick. His 14 year career took him all over the league, including a Stanley Cup championship with the Edmonton Oilers. And yes, he did earn millions of dollars, but his life after hockey hasn't been easy. And by 2018, Joe Murphy was homeless.

SOUNDCLIP

I became a panhandler I had to make a little money and I've gotten small job with some very good people, doing stuff. And I had to pick up to three hours here, I put my application in McDonald's and A$W. I've had to adapt and live in a different place than you would [unintelligible] you live in a dumpster, right, for Nice or you live in a shed. You're living in the. I'm on the sidewalk.

MG: Joe Murphy's story of NHL success, followed by a hard fall, tells a bigger tale. One of brain injury, mental illness and public relations. Journalist Rick Westhead is a senior correspondent for TSN. He first told Joe Story in a documentary for CTV. W5 Ricks new book is called Finding Murph: How Joe Murphy Went from Winning a Championship to Living Homeless in the Bush. Rick, good morning.

RICK WESTHEAD: Good morning, Matt.

MG: Tell in reading this book, this is a story that has really affected you and there's a lot of different elements to the story. But at its heart, I mean, what was it about the story of Joe Murphy that really hit you?

RICK WESTHEAD: I think this is a story about much more than just Joe. Joe's story is obviously tragic. A player who was on top of the hockey world as a teenager who, as you pointed out, won a Stanley Cup, made millions of dollars playing for more than a decade in the best hockey league in the world. And so to trace his sharp, sharp fall from those heights was compelling. But the other reason that it was so motivated to do this was the bigger picture, pointing out that Joe is hardly an isolated case and that the NHL through the years has been put on notice about the risks to players long term health from repeated brain trauma. And time and again, the league has put its head in the sand. And I thought this was really important to document and really important to point out the different ways that the NHL could do better for its players and their families.

MG: Let's start with the story of Joe Murphy. Where's he from? And tell us a bit about his early years.

RICK WESTHEAD: Well, he grew up in a, you know, typical family in Newmarket, Ontario. They moved west to North Vancouver when he was an early teenager. And he had the gift. He could skate faster than most anyone else who was on the ice with him. He wound up playing junior hockey in Penticton, British Columbia, and was such a high prospect that search survived from the Montreal Canadiens flew Joe to Montreal to try to convince him to play his rest of his junior hockey career closer to the Montreal Canadiens and Joe says that would have happened had sort of art arranged for him to get a black TransAm back in the day. But as it was, he went to Michigan State and helped the Spartans win an NCAA championship and was the first pick overall in 86, the first time a player who was from U.S. college had ever been taken number one, overall.

MG: How big of a deal is that for people who don't pay close attention to hockey?

RICK WESTHEAD: Well, again, this is the NHL is the best hockey league in the world. There's only 700 jobs and every year and they have an entry draught. So this is where the teams would choose the next young crop of players coming up. And Joe was considered to be the best 18 year old at the time he entered the league. So there was a lot that the Detroit Red Wings, who chose him, hoped for him. He had a great shot. He was as fast as anyone out there. And he had this willingness to go to the dirty places in the rink into the corners would barrel in without a band. And I heard from so many of his team-mates that he just had no fear he would go a million miles an hour into the net to try to distract the goalie tip of puck, whatever was needed for them to get a goal.

MG: What kind of pressure was he under as the number one pick?

RICK WESTHEAD: He came into a Red Wings team with a new coach, Jack Demers, who was really trying to make his mark make an impression there. In the way Joe tells it, he got a raw deal. Imagine this 18 year old going into the NHL. And in Detroit, there's two airports. And so the team had Joe staying with a billet family. And on one of the team's first road trips that year, Joe went to the wrong airport and missed the flight and wound up becoming the target of Jack Demers and was immediately sent to the minors, and he just could not make things right with the team. You know, some of that is on Joe and some of that is on, I think the system, the system that just demands conformity, demands players to look and talk like one another, put the team first, not celebrate individuality. You know, there is a monoculture in hockey that's pretty obvious. And Joe, right from the start may not have fit into that.

MG: That's important because he was described by a lot of people as an eccentric. And when he played with the St. Louis Blues and with the Boston Bruins, displayed what I think most people would say would be some pretty bizarre behaviour. What were some of the things that he would do?

RICK WESTHEAD: That's right. We've heard in more recent times about NHL players standing apart because they do things like enjoying going to the library or to the museum. This is not something that most NHL players are known for. In his time, Joe would do things like read the Sistine Prophecies book and bring that on road trips with him and talk to his team-mates about the sheer strength of gorillas in the Rwandan rainforest and shave his entire body because he thought that it was going to help him go faster on the ice. One of my favourite stories that I heard about Joe during his playing career was from a player named Harry York who played with Joe in St. Louis. And Harry told the story of how his mother and his aunt were visiting from out of town. Imagine it's game night around midnight and these two older ladies are settling into armchairs and a couch, cold cream on their face, big glasses, hair in curlers, you know, house coats on and the door to the apartment burst open and Joe walks and goes to the kitchen, doesn't say anything to anyone, rummages through the fridge, comes back into the living room and sits down between these two ladies and says, Hey, ladies, I'm Joe. What are your names? It strikes me as something like Kramer out of the TV show Seinfeld might do. But it also I think, you know, it's a little bit revealing because Joe just on one hand, was so friendly and so full of life, but he had such a hard time fitting into the social norms of the NHL culture.

MG: How did the teams deal with his behaviour?

RICK WESTHEAD: Well, as long as you can put the puck in the net, there's teams willing to look the other way. When he went from the Blackhawks to St. Louis as a free agent, he did so because the team was willing to pay him ten million dollars over three years at the time, a huge sum for a free agent. So there was a period of time during his NHL career when he was one of these coveted players.

MG: The NHL is a rough league, and when you play, it doesn't matter whether you're an enforcer or whether you're an elite player, there's a good chance you're going to get hit. And those hits can be, you know, mild ones or they can be devastating hits. There was a hit that he took that he thinks in part was it was a contributor to his erratic behaviour. Tell us about that head.

RICK WESTHEAD: That's right. In January 1991, Joe was playing with the Edmonton Oilers as a forward and they were actually playing a game against the Detroit Red Wings, his first NHL club. And he picked up the puck on one play behind his own net and was looking down at the puck to make sure he had control of it and skated out from around his own net. And a player with Detroit named Schonberg, who has since passed, came in and levelled Joe. Joe's head was down. He wasn't brazed. He wasn't ready for it. And the video that we were able to obtain of this hit shows Joe flying back through the air several feet and hitting his head right on that 90 degree angle where the plexiglass of the the rink meets the boards and we, again, were not able to get the medical records from that incident. But Joe says that that broke his skull.

MG: The bench was totally shaken up when this happened.

RICK WESTHEAD: Yeah, it was for good reason because he didn't come off the ice right away. You know, he didn't leave the game and go to the hospital and have a scan or see a neurologist or a neuropsychologist. Joe wound up getting a breakaway later in that same game. And instead of shooting the puck at the goalie or on the net, he fired the puck 30, 40 feet wide into the corner. And then as he came back the other way, one of his team-mates actually leaned over and grabbed him and pulled him off the ice. And again, the team was on a road trip and Joe didn't leave the team. He kept playing, you know, and how many times have I heard of players getting painkillers to fight their way through these things, these injuries?

MG: You get your bell rung, as they used to say.

RICK WESTHEAD: You get your bell rung. Yes. And self medicating both with alcohol and with painkillers and the toll that that takes on players after doing that year after year after. A year, not to mention the drugs they're taking to try to come down after games because there's so much adrenaline and energy going, you know, all the Ambien that players have told, many players have told me that they take to get through that long, tough NHL season full of jetlag and travel, that can take a toll on the body. Joe is not the only one.

MG: When did the NHL first become aware of the toll that concussions were taking on the brains of hockey players?

RICK WESTHEAD: Well, if the medical teams who and doctors who work for the NHL listen to CBC or read the Globe and Mail or read the Toronto Star or The New York Times, then they would have been on notice even before World War two, because the concept, the idea that repeated brain trauma can lead to some very bad consequences is not a new thing. And this is the narrative that the league has tried to further that brain injuries are only a recent phenomenon in terms of our awareness of the dangers.

MG: What do we know about what happens if you go through a series of concussions? What do we know from evidence about what that does to your brain?

RICK WESTHEAD: Well, we know that it can lead to symptoms like impulsiveness and, you know, symptoms that are related. And this is this this disease, CTE, which has become so topical. But repeated brain trauma can lead to dementia like symptoms, including memory loss, depression, impulsivity. And again, these sorts of symptoms have long been associated with repeated brain trauma.

MG: How seriously did the NHL take evidence of CTE?

RICK WESTHEAD: Well, first of all, the NHL doesn't even acknowledge that, that there's a connexion between repeated brain trauma and CTE doesn't even acknowledge that CTE is actually a disease. This is this is one of the biggest polarising discussions in hockey. You have the National Football League, whose executives have admitted a link and have talked about how they acknowledge that football players, pro football players, will tend to have a higher rate of issues like personality disorder and depression because of the repeated brain trauma they have suffered. The NHL is not willing to do that. This is still a league that denies any kind of link between those injuries that players receive and long term consequences.

MG: You say that the NHL has become the big tobacco of the 1990s. What do you mean by that?

RICK WESTHEAD: Yes, I'm not the first one to point out the similarities there. Ken Dryden, Hall of Fame goalie, former Montreal Canadian player in his book Game Change about Steve Monsignore, made that comparison. And I think it's a great one because for decades, Big Tobacco had argued that the science wasn't there. And any time a study would come out that showed that there was a link between smoking cigarettes and cancer, the response of the tobacco industry was, yes, that's worth looking into more. We should definitely take a look at that. I talked to some people at the American Cancer Society about the NHL experience, and they were like, this is literally out of the same playbook that big tobacco used in the 90s. And, you know, they haven't responded to me on this, but they have responded to Ken Dryden in a proposed class action lawsuit filed against the NHL by a number of former players. The deputy commissioner, Bill Daly, was asked about Ken Dryden and about his views. Member Ken Deyden talking about big tobacco. Ken Dryden calling for a ban on all hits to the head in the NHL. And the deputy commissioner of the league says that while Ken Dryden may have some good thoughts from time to time, he's also prone to grandstanding.

MG: What about doctors you talk to and hear from a number of doctors, including Dr. Charles Taylor, who is a concussion specialist in Toronto, and he loved hockey. He was a ball boy and Maple Leaf Garden?

RICK WESTHEAD: That's right. For photographers who were there back in the day when it took a shot and had to change your light bulb. And it Charles, Dr. Taylor told me that he wound up as a team doctor for the Toronto Maple Leafs, which I didn't know. But he said that his tenure with the Maple Leafs was very short because he urged the team to let players recover fully before they were put back on the ice. When the head of the Canadian Medical Association wrote an open letter to the NHL several years ago asking the league to do better when it comes to treating injured players, NHL employees emailed one another about how to respond to this publicly. And one of the emails which we were able to obtain from the courts shows the head of the NHL PR department, Frank Brown. This came late in 2013. And I'll tell you what, Frank Brown's email. To his colleagues, he writes, There's 13 hours of hockey day in Canada to watch tomorrow perfect white sound for the creation of deep thoughts about imbecilic rants by dumb arse doctors who have no idea what they're talking about.

MG: That's the PR response to the head of the Canadian Medical Association, raising awareness around concussions.

RICK WESTHEAD: Yes, and this is not, again, not isolated. You have other former players who become management in the NHL complaining that the league is over doctored and that doctors are interfering too much. You know, one of the things I was able to get that was copies of the meeting minutes of general managers and other NHL team officials. And it was shocking that you'd have former players who become management, you know, one in one case in a meeting, a former player wondering, hey, are we bringing stretchers onto the ice too early when a player is injured? It looks awfully dramatic. Or a former player turned general manager saying maybe players who are clutching their heads, maybe they're just looking for a vacation for a couple of weeks in the midst of a season. Maybe they're faking it.

MG: What's the role of Gary Bettman in this? Gary Bettman is the commissioner of the National Hockey League and he has faced a number of pointed questions around the link between concussions and CTE and the number of concussions in the game. What's his role in this?

RICK WESTHEAD: Well, Gary Bettman works for the owners of the teams, so his role ultimately is to help the NHL to group to make more money. He testified last year in Ottawa about concussions in the NHL, and I was there for that, I watched it and it was very interesting, he said that the NHL is a family and that was his public view of how they approach this. And it just struck me the number of people who feel like they've been left abandoned. We're talking about Joe today. But, you know, there's another story of a player named Matt Johnson. Matt Johnson and his family are from southern Ontario. His parents, Lee and Brenda, are apple farmers. And I visited them to talk about Matt being homeless in California. And they shared with me a story that when Matt's NHL career was done and he was in trouble, he went to rehab. He was having issues with self medication and substance abuse. And there was a period of time when Matt, this big hulking former enforcer, moved back in with his parents. And he started staying awake throughout the night and he would sleep through the day and his father told me that he woke up one night in the middle of the night and there was Matt, standing at the foot of his parent's bed staring at them while they slept. And it scared his father, Lee, so much that they wound up putting a lock on their bedroom door. And I thought the NHL says it's a family, and yet you have parents like this just feel like they don't matter anymore. Like once the players make their way through the NHL and are retired, they're a commodity that's been discarded.

MG: Well, let's talk about Joe Murphy again. I mean, is there evidence he had psychological problems? He also had drug addiction concerns. Is there is there evidence that what he was going through was connected to the concussions that he had from hits on the ice?

RICK WESTHEAD: That's a great question. And there's so much about this that's still not known. We talked about CTE earlier. Why do some players get it and some players don't Stan Mikita had CTE, you know, not an enforcer, which says that not everyone who has this sort of brain withering disease is going to get it from fighting. In Joe's case, in in early 2014, he had filed a worker's compensation lawsuit against the NHL. And as part of that, he went to California and was examined by a neuropsychologist named Dr. Sorina Hoover. She diagnosed him as suffering from depression and anxiety and said that the problems that he had were as a direct result of the numerous head injuries that he suffered playing in the NHL.

MG: There was a lawsuit that was brought on behalf of NHL players who suffered injuries playing the game. What happened in that lawsuit?

RICK WESTHEAD: Well, it was interesting. It also came at the same time that NFL players were filing a lawsuit against the NFL. In the NFL's case, there was a settlement and that came about because thousands of former players signed on. The NHL is very different. The lawyers who were leading that case were not able to build up this huge group of former players. And the question they would ask time and again was why? Why can't we get more former NHL players? We know they're suffering to join up with this lawsuit. And the answer was because I think there's several groups of former NHL players, the former players who work for the teams and the league. And a group of former players who want to. Many players worry that if they join that lawsuit, that they would become blacklisted and pushed to the side and not invited to be part of alumni events and, you know, this was part of their identity, that that lawsuit ultimately was dismissed because the judge in the case said that all of these different players of different ages, some of their 87, 60s, 50s, living in different U.S. states and provinces, that you could not argue that they formed a common class. So at the end of the day, it does not have to defend the class action lawsuit, although it the NHL does have to defend several lawsuits which are ongoing, including those filed by former players like Dan Carcillo and Kelly Ewin, the widow of Todd Ewing, a former NHL enforcer who's filed the case for wrongful death against the NHL in California. Todd died by suicide several years ago, and the father of Steve Montador is also suing the NHL. And so these individual cases will go forward even though that class action has been settled and we could see the NHL on trial as soon as next year.

MG: Did Joe Murphy get any compensation for his injuries from the league?

RICK WESTHEAD: He did. Joe Murphy got about 21,000 dollars us when the class action was not going to go forward. The league did agree to give some amount of money to former players involved in it. What Joe actually has done with that money is anybody's guess.

MG: The book is called Finding Murph. And you found Joe Murphy living in Kenora, Ontario. What is day to day life like for him?

RICK WESTHEAD: It's a life of survival, and I went back many times through the course of the next year and a half to talk to Joe and interview him for this book. And I asked him time and again, why? Why would you want to be back in the spotlight? Why are you comfortable telling your story? And Joe said that it made him feel relevant for the first time in many years and that he really hoped that by telling his story and might also serve as something of a cautionary tale for other players who are thinking about playing through injury and self medicating just to stay in the game.

MG: I mean, the scenes of you meeting him and finding him are heartbreaking.

RICK WESTHEAD: Yes, they are. They are. And it was an eye opener as well, not to some of the issues that we have right now in Canada with opioid abuse. I remember, you know, walking through Kenora and talking to parents who helped to run the Little League Baseball there. And they told me that when their kids come to the field, they're not allowed on the field until the parents do a sweep of the field and dugout to look for needles. I spent a little bit of time talking to people in the homeless shelters there. It was an eye opener for me about the different paths that people travel before they become homeless. And, you know, my behaviours changed from this. I try to talk more with people who might ask for change or, you know, just check in; how are you feeling today? Take a little bit more time with them.

MG: He's I mean, again, twenty million dollar salary wins the Stanley Cup, the number one draught pick, and you find him on a patch of grass where people are coming up to him and giving him twenty dollars and saying thanks for the memories. How does that happen?

RICK WESTHEAD: Yeah, again, the Joe is not- let's remember, he is not an isolated case. Derek Sanderson was on top of the hockey world in the 1970s. The star with the Boston Bruins who wined and dined with Hollywood. He wound up homeless, sleeping on a park bench in New York City, getting advice from people around him who are homeless about how to position the newspaper so he'd have a more comfortable sleep at nighttime. You know, there was another player in the 1941 NHL Rookie of the Year. I'd never even heard of him before. A player named Grant Warick. He wound up in jail in Vancouver in the 60s for five days because he didn't have enough money to pay his two dollar bill at a cafe. So on one hand, yeah, the NHL, there's a lot of great people who are involved in hockey. I've met a lot of them, but there is something wrong with the system that this is happening. You know, that the divorce rate is going hilly, the head of the NHL Alumni Association tells me is approaching 80 percent and that there are still players out there who feel abandoned. And on one hand, you could say, yes, the NHL is helping players. That's true. But there's never anything wrong, I don't think, with being a little more reflective about it and asking yourself, OK, how can we do better?

MG: Well, as I say, what should Canadians think from this? I mean, hockey has such a place in many Canadians minds and the NHL in particular, and the stories of someone like Joe Murphy, who is, you know, a small city kid who ends up living the dream that so many kids want to achieve. What should Canadians who who have those thoughts about hockey take from the story?

RICK WESTHEAD: That the NHL can do better and that I hope that another thing that comes through is just the role of journalism. Our job is to hold powerful people to account. The NHL is powerful in good times. This is a five billion dollar industry. And what could they do? There's a lot that the NHL could do. They could treat Ken Dryden with more respect when he suggests that all hits to the head should be eliminated. The NHL could actually listen to a Hall of Famer like Eric Lindros. In 2017, Eric Lindros went to Los Angeles to the NHL All-Star Game, along with David Moulder, who has been the Montreal Canadiens top doctor since the 1960s. And Dr. Moulder and Eric Lindros sat down and asked the NHL to commit one million dollars into brain injury research, one million dollars per team, excuse me. It's three years ago. Eric Lindros and Dr. Mulder are still waiting for an answer. That doesn't make sense to me.

MG: Just finally, where's Joe Murphy now?

RICK WESTHEAD: That's hard to say. This past summer, he was in in Regina. He had moved west from Kenora to Saskatchewan. And I imagine he's still living the same hardscrabble day to day life that he was when I talked to him and met him.

MG: It's a really powerful book, Rick. Thank you.

RICK WESTHEAD: Thank you, Matt.

MG: Rick Westhead is a senior correspondent for TSA and his new book is Finding Murph How Joe Murphy Went from Winning a Championship to Living Homeless in the Bush. And we will follow up with the NHL as well and invite them to respond to what Rick had to say, particularly around the impact of brain injury on players. That is The Current for today. Coming up next on your CBC Radio One, it's Q Topower speaking with Kate Winslet. Star Power. She has a new film. It's called Ammonites, and you'll hear all about it coming up in just a few moments on CBC Radio One. I Matt Galloway thanks for listening to The Current. Take good care and we will talk to you tomorrow.

Wednesday November 18, 2020 Transcript

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