Note: Transcripts may contain errors. If you wish to re-use all, or part of, a transcript, please contact CBC for permission. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting in print. Copyright © CBC 2021

The Current Transcript for September 29, 2021

Host: Matt Galloway

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

I think we're in the midst of an Indigenous renaissance. We have many elected Indigenous members of parliament, but we have a governor general for the first time in our history, an Indigenous person. We have a national day for truth and reconciliation for the first time ever.

MATT GALLOWAY: After a summer of reckoning when it came to Canada's treatment of indigenous peoples. What awaits MPs from Metis, First Nations and Inuit communities when they arrive in the House of Commons for a new session of parliament in 30 minutes? Two of them are here to talk about confronting racism in government, the urgent expectations of their communities and the heavy lifting of reconciliation. Still to come, also this morning, Mildred Harnock lived an incredible life.

SOUNDCLIP

Her husband, Arvid, urged her to go back to the United States. We're not going to survive. We will likely die. And Mildred refused. He bought her a ticket and that ticket was in her purse when she was arrested by the Gestapo.

MG: An American in Germany who led the resistance to the Nazis fed secrets to the allies and was ultimately killed on Hitler's direct orders. Her story is like something out of a spy thriller in an hour. Her great, great niece tells a tale of bravery and intrigue that she was destined to write. But we begin with a story of burnout and violence on nursing's front lines. Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway. This is The Current.

[Music: Theme]

Health-care workers report repeated violence from patients and their families

Guests: Sonja Bernard, James Brophy

MG: Code White is the hospital call signal for aggressive behaviour or a violent person on the premises. It's also the name of a new book that details just how much of a problem violence toward frontline workers has become in Canada's health care system. Verbal outbursts, sexual harassment and assaults and physical violence have become almost commonplace in hospitals and medical facilities across this country. And the pandemic has only made the problem worse. We'll hear from the author of that new book in a moment. But we begin with a frontline worker who has seen and experienced violence on the job firsthand. Sonja Bernard is a registered practical nurse at St. Joseph's Health Care Hamilton. Sonja, good morning.

SONJA BERNARD: Good morning. Thanks for having me.

MG: Thank you for being here. How common is this? How common are code whites

SONJA BERNARD: code whites across the organisation itself? I think our almost daily from psychiatry to medicine, from the front lobby. It can happen anywhere, unfortunately.

MG: When was the last time that you were involved in a Code White?

SONJA BERNARD: A little bit less than a month ago. There was a patient who was on a one to one observation for aggressive behaviour. Wanda was fairly confused, made it onto the secured elevators. And when we attempted to extract the extract this patient from the elevator, the patient began to strike out, claw, grab, hit, pull hair. So that was the most recent one. We also have what's called soft codes, or the code is not necessarily called overhead, but we do call all the supporting units and security to come and assist. We've had three soft codes in the past three weeks on the other unit that I work on.

MG: That situation in the elevator. I mean, were you injured or are you OK?

SONJA BERNARD: I'm OK. I mean, I was I got a little bruised up on my chin and it hurt like the scratches on my arm hurt. But all things considered, yeah, that's actually not significant injuries. Those are considered very minor. And those are things that unfortunately, as part of our job, we've just come to terms with and learn to accept

MG: what would be a significant injury, if you don't mind me asking,

SONJA BERNARD: if you require time off work or medical attention.

MG: And as that happened to you, I mean, if you take a look at incidents that you've been involved in and past, I mean, what's the most violent incident that you faced on the job?

SONJA BERNARD: We had a solve code on our unit support staff. The patient was attempting to harm themselves. Support staff were not able to get there fast enough. So we had to intervene. And in the process of that intervention, the patient managed to grab me and pulled me to the ground so that I was actually on top of them and then managed to launch me into the air. Where I actually landed on my back was quite jarring. I had whiplash and I was off, I think, for about a week for that one before I was able to return .

MG: And I mean, I don't want to put words in your mouth, but is there an understanding in some ways that violence ends up being part of this job?

SONJA BERNARD: Yes, absolutely. In fact, we minimise it. It's like, oh, he's only, like, grabbed us today. Or when, you know, if you're on some of the medicine units that deal with the more dementia patients, Alzheimer's patients that do sometimes have aggressive tendencies when we have to do care, sometimes there's four of us that are like have to go in there together to do cares. And even though the patient has resisted, if they're in a soiled brief situation, we cannot leave them, obviously in soiled clothes like you can't. And when we have to go and change them, there's multiple times where we get our hair pulled or we'll get scratches down our arms or we'll get struck in some fashion. And those ones, because the patient is not really necessarily at fault because of their condition, I think we accept those more easily than in other situations that we have to face.

MG: You were talking with how you were thankful that the situation you were involved in wasn't more violent. I mean, what's the most dangerous incident that your colleagues have faced?

SONJA BERNARD: So there's been several situations where you've had to have the police arrive on the unit because someone managed to break, you know, the big long fire hoses that they have on the units. Right. He managed to break the glass and start swinging that around. I was almost stabbed with my own injection. At one point, the patient managed to get me flat on my back before security could remove them. My colleagues for sure, we had one of the pregnant nurses that I was on shift with and a patient just walked right up to her and slapped her in the face. Some nursing stations are considered secured, so they have the glass in the door. So patients aren't as easily enter. Other nursing stations are completely open. And we have had to respond to codes where patients have actually jumped over those nursing stations to attack staff or to try and escape depending on the situation. I mean, I could go on forever on all sorts of different situations that have not resulted in injuries. But nonetheless, we're very lucky that it hasn't.

MG: After one of these incidents, is the patient moved out of the unit or are they ever charged with assault because of what's unfolded?

SONJA BERNARD: So it's always at the discretion of the nurse whether or not to charge a patient. And I think that's all very individual. Again, I think if we're dealing with patients that are geriatric in age and Alzheimer's, I don't really believe that there's going to be a lot of nurses that would decide to charge because we're not really sure what that would actually accomplish. However, and a lot of other areas where the attacks are more intentional. Nurses are absolutely allowed to charge and patients depending on the unit are not necessarily moved. We will redeploy the nurse to another unit if, let's say, a no contact order has been put in place. However, a lot of the nurses don't want to be moved to a unit that they're not familiar with, to work with a team that they don't know, to kind of have to have a whole new learning curve for a whole new unit. So instead of charging, a lot of times they just let it go because they think and in actuality, sometimes it's a lot more trouble than it's actually worth.

MG: Stay with us. I want to bring in James Brophy into this conversation, occupational health researcher, co-author of that book that I mentioned in the introduction code White Sounding the Alarm on Violence Against Health Care Workers. James, good morning to you.

JAMES BROPHY: Good morning, Matt.

MG: How does what you are hearing from Sonia compare it to what you have heard from frontline workers when you were putting together this book?

JAMES BROPHY: I actually have to say that as I was listening to Sonja, I was feeling almost triggered because when Margaret Keith and I started doing research on this, we would often sit after a focus group where we would hear stories very much like what Sonja just mentioned. And after everybody left, we would look at each other and say, what did we just hear? Because never in our wildest dreams did we imagine that such abuse was occurring in these health care facilities. And I think one of the things that I think it's very courageous of Sonja to come and speak like she is, is that health care workers are being silenced. The public is not aware of what is occurring in our health care facilities over the last 30 or 40 years. And this is well established in the scientific literature. The incidents of violence against health care workers has been steadily increasing this normalisation of violence, particularly in a profession where 85 percent of the workers are women. And in some areas, you know, like long term care, the majority of workers are racialized or recent immigrants. You can't help but see that this is violence against women that's been allowed to unfold and increase.

MG: Why is that happening? Why is that increase unfolding right now?

JAMES BROPHY: I think there's you know, it's a complicated issue. I mean, certainly the gross understaffing, underfunding of the institutions, the inability to respect and listen to the frontline workers that are facing these difficulties. And when they do try to talk about it, they're blamed their silence. And so the public just doesn't see what's happening. So if, you know, we address these issues, some systemic issues around funding and staffing and also the culture within health care we could get at this issue.

MG: So when you do feel as though there's a lack of a culture of safety in your profession.

SONJA BERNARD: Oh, absolutely. One hundred percent.

MG: What about the issue of being silenced? This is not new. Do you feel as though you're being silenced when people in your profession try to speak out about this?

SONJA BERNARD: Absolutely. But not in overt ways that you could easily recognise. Right. It's done in such a way. As like I said, you know, if the nurse decides, depending on the school, which is always within their rights, to charge the patient with that, well, now we're going to remove you from the units where like if you're out in general public and let's say a patron goes into a restaurant and assaults a waitress, for example, that waitress is not going to be told to go to a different restaurant while they continue to serve the patron. However, in the health care industry, it seems that despite the assaults, we have to leave the area. We have to change. We have to accommodate the needs of the patients, which to certain degrees. I understand. And and we can get behind. But overall, that's not really make for a supportive environment.

MG: This is a difficult time right now because of the pandemic. And we know that that interactions with patients and their families have changed because of what we've been through over the last 18 months. How do you think, Sonia, that that has influenced what you're describing?

SONJA BERNARD: There's just all these added stressors and pressures and that people don't know. People are unable to function and cope as well as maybe they would be without all of the pandemic issues, without all the scares, without all the worries. And so when your loved one, for example, comes into hospital and when they were having no visitors and all these other things, of course, the family members are going to be even more stressed out for a variety of reasons, most of them very valid. And we, unfortunately, are the front line workers. So we are the first person that they're going to see. They're not talking to the doctor right off the bat. They're talking to us. And we are going to be the ones to take the brunt of their fears, their frustrations, their inability to manage themselves. It's going to be us. We had a patient down in the E.R. on an escort just the other day in what I heard, one of the patients, how he was verbally berating this nurse for just trying to get blood work was absolutely shocking. I don't know how more nurses haven't fallen apart, to be honest,

MG: As part of this. Also just about an allocation of resources in the pandemic. I mean, hospitals have to get creative in terms of where they put patients because there's an increased demand for beds because of covid. And so does where you're putting patients contributes to the behaviour that you've been describing, the violent and aggressive behaviour?

SONJA BERNARD: I would think so. I would think that when you're having patients, let's say that you should be on honest seniors behaviour locked unit and you have them on a general medicine unit. You know, you're already running short staffed with nurses in general everywhere across multiple organisations. And now you have the added stress that they're trying to take care of a wandering patient, which is now going to make them less able to take care of the other regular patient lives that they have. It's the same thing no matter where you go, if you have one patient that should be in post OP or if you have one patient that should be on nephrology, or if you have one patient that should be on dialysis and they're being relocated to a different unit because of staffing issues, those nurses are not the same specialised nurses where they would be on their regular units. So it's it's it's impossible for them to be able to provide the same level of care, even though they're trying their best. Like they're we are giving everything we have and we are still coming up short. And we are aware of this and it's breaking our hearts. And it's it's making us become less sympathetic to the needs of our patients, which, of course, in turn is only going to make people feel more frustrated if they're not validated, not listened to or not being given the care that they need.

MG: Tell me more about that, about feeling less empathetic to your patients, given what's unfolding.

SONJA BERNARD: We're just seeing it all the time where, you know, the patients are expressing, you know, X, Y and Z about their care or their perceived lack of care. We're listening. But we're not really hearing them. You know, it's just kind of like just give me the facts. I just need to know what I need to do to keep you alive, because that's the only thing I have left to give, is making sure that you stay alive. And that's that, you know, we're all kind of in survival mode where we're doing what only what is required of us to get through our day and to make sure that our patients are safe.

MG: There must be really hard. I mean, that's not what you have promised to do in this job.

SONJA BERNARD: Absolutely, this is I don't know how many nurses I've spoken to here have come forward to me and been like I'm like I'm burnt out, you know, I'm done. Like, this is no longer the this is not the profession I entered into.

MG: James, what needs to be done to better protect nurses like Sonja?

JAMES BROPHY: Well, we need a major overhaul of our whole health care system. It would be a mistake, in my opinion, Matt, to think that, you know what we're witnessing the crisis in health care now is just really a reflection of the crisis of the covid pandemic. This crisis has been a slow moving train for at least two decades, and the health care workers are probably the main victims of what decisions by the government, both federal and provincial governments, have made about funding, about staffing. For instance, you Canada has one of the lowest ratios of nurses to patients in the industrialised world. Our wait times are in excess of almost all countries except for the United States, all the other countries that have public health care systems, because the kind of funding that is needed, the kind of staffing that is needed has been being slowly eroded and taken away. Our system is becoming increasingly privatised and long term care. Now over half the facilities are for profit. Money that should be going into care is going into private corporations. And we need to have a serious, very serious look at what is happening, because the health of the health care workers is a very important barometer for the health of the health care system.

MG: So if you want to remove this violence and aggression from the system, I mean, is it about money, what you talk about overhauling the system more broadly, what specifically can be done to ensure that the violence that Sonia described doesn't happen?

JAMES BROPHY: Well, I think Sonia brought up many examples where staffing was a major issue. The reason that there's so much frustration by so many people, patients and residents, is because of the lack of care and the lack of staffing and the burnout that the staff suffered before the pandemic. I mean, our title of our study on violence and long term care was about breaking point. That was with the title because even before the pandemic, the level of exhaustion, the level of inability to properly care for four residents was was on the tongue of almost every health care worker. But because they're not allowed to speak. But Sonia is an amazing spokesperson, but she is so rare. Every focus group that we did, workers were afraid to speak because the first signal about violence in health care for at least for me, occurred after a conference of nurses in Kingston in 2015, where one of the nurses from North Bay talked about violence in our health care system and how we need to deal with it. She was fired every interview that we did afterwards with health care workers. That story was brought up. A third of the people that we're supposed to speak to us about, the pandemic at the end decided they couldn't that wasn't safe enough for them to do so. So this is the environment we're in. We should be learning from the crisis that we're now experiencing. What's happened in the pandemic that the health of our health care workers and what's happening to them is a vital thing for our own protection.

MG: Sonja, what do you want to see put in place to protect you?

SONJA BERNARD: Mandated staffing ratios like as there should be for sure, better support systems like a more open, free ability to sort of be able to speak our mind on the concerns that we have, again, without having the fear that, oh, my goodness, if I speak out, what if I lose my job? We are a female dominated profession and out of the female dominated professions, I believe nursing and health care in general has the highest rate of single mothers as well. So at the very least, I think we should have mandated staffing ratios and I think that we should have less for profit organisations.

MG: You mentioned earlier, just finally, you mentioned earlier that when you speak with other nurses, they talk about what they're feeling and that they're broken and they're burnt out and they say, I'm done with this. Do you ever feel like that? Do you ever given what you go through, do you ever feel like saying, I'm done with nursing?

SONJA BERNARD: One hundred percent? I actually just had a conversation with my manager and I said, you know, we have three options here, are there? I have three options. Then I leave the profession altogether. I actually make a monumental error in my clinical judgement. Or I said, you know, I say something so out of turn that I am going to end up in H.R. and it's a legitimate concern because currently I am burnt out and it's hard to keep going to work and to support your team and some. The patients, when you are feeling like you're constantly in an uphill battle to fight for things, it's exhausting. I've given my career twenty two thousand hours of my life, twenty two thousand hours of my life. I'm exhausted and I'm actually moving forward in January to go part time because I need a break from the profession, because I. I can't. I just can't.

MG: Take care of yourself. I'm really- it's really important to hear from you, so I really appreciate it. And yeah, take care of yourself, Sonia. Thank you.

SONJA BERNARD: Thanks.

MG: And James, thank you very much for for the work that you're doing on this as well.

JAMES BROPHY: Thank you for hearing us both, MAtt. Bye.

MG: Sonja Bernard is a registered practical nurse at St. Joseph Health Care. Hamilton James Brophy is the co-author of Code White Sounding the Alarm on Violence against Health Care Workers. If you are in nursing, we would love to hear from you as those stories sound familiar? Email us thecurrent@cbc.ca. The CBC News is next. And then.

SOUNDCLIP

When I started off in this job, the thought of having a megamall member of parliament is a crazy idea. Now it's not. These are all glass ceilings that we have to break in Canada, and that helps us to decolonise the systems in the world that we live in.

MG: As Canada continues to reckon with a colonial past, 12 Indigenous MPs will be in Ottawa working to make a difference. We'll speak with two of them about reconciliation, resilience and what it means to represent a community. That's coming up in six minutes. My name is Matt Galloway and this is The Current on CBC Radio One.

Newly elected Indigenous MPs discuss the work that lies ahead

Guests: Lori Idloud, Jaime Battiste

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

[Music: Theme]

MG: Still to come, Rebecca Donner grew up knowing very little about her great, great Aunt Mildred, just that every time her name was mentioned, her family looked sad. It turned out that Mildred Harnock was the only American resistance organiser in Nazi Germany and she paid the ultimate price for it. Rebecca Dawna's new book follows Mildred Story, and I'll speak with her in 30 minutes. But first to Ottawa, where indigenous MPs are working towards reconciliation.

[Music: Theme]

MG: When parliament resumes, there will be 12 indigenous members sitting in the House of Commons, some returning, others entering for the first time, two of these MPs are with me now. Jaime Battiste is the returning Liberal MP for Sydney, Victoria and Nova Scotia. And Lori Idloud is the newly elected NDP MP for Nunavut. Good morning to you both.

LORI IDLOUD: Morning.

JAIME BATTISTE: Good morning.

MG: This is the first national day of truth and reconciliation to be officially recognised in this country. And Lori, I wanted to start with you. What does this day mean to you?

LORI IDLOUD: It is an important day for me, for sure. I have seen the impacts of residential schools and the colonial treatment to any individual, and I. I can see how harsh the intergenerational trauma is. I've got that experience personally. And during my campaign, I had a conversation with a non-indigenous person who was quite cynical about indigenous issues. So I know that it's still an important debate that raises awareness of why indigenous issues are not just for indigenous Canadians. It has to be something that more Canadians need to be aware of. So I think it will be an important day to make sure that conversations keep going about why we must respect and honour indigenous Canadians.

MG: I want to talk about some of those issues in just a moment. But Jaime Battiste, you spoke in the Mi'Kmaq language in the House of Commons in support of the creation of this day. Now that it's a reality, what's going through your mind?

JAIME BATTISTE: Well, I think that it's a step in the right direction. I've always said that reconciliation is a journey, not a destination. It's a journey that we must all take together. But I think, you know, when we look at things like Reconciliation Day, we have to realise a reconciliation begins with a raised awareness of the complexities and realities of the past. You can't it can't happen without having difficult conversations. It involves being prepared to be uncomfortable with the rules and privileges born of colonisation within Canada. We have a lot of decolonising to do, whether it's the justice system, whether it's the health system, whether it's our parliament itself. There's a lot of work that needs to be done. But I think that one of the quotes I like the best is the failures of one generation. Are the opportunities of the next. And I think that with education, with awareness, with this day, each and every year, that reflects on where we need to be as a country. This is where this is how we move forward and this is how we move forward together.

MG: Let me ask you about moving forward and the pace of moving forward. This is one day, but it has been six years since the treacy's calls to action were set. Many of those 94 calls have not yet been met. You represent your party in your community. But when you take a look at the pace, do you feel impatient with with how things are moving in terms of addressing those calls to action?

JAIME BATTISTE: I was until I got to Ottawa and saw how the pace of things and legislation unfolds. I mean, I was spent two years during the Cold War era. But, you know, I think indigenous people across the country are a bit frustrated and a bit impatient. But, you know, we have to realise that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission has only been around for six years. According to our government. We've on pace with 80 percent of those recommendations. Not all of the recommendations are federal government. Some of them are calling upon universities. Some of them are calling upon law society. Some of them are calling on provinces because they control education. And that's one of the biggest parts of Truth and Reconciliation Commission is moving forward with education and awareness. And I think that's the opportunity to this day brings. But, you know, if you look at some of the key things that we did in the last two years, I point out the Bill C15 or under, which is mentioned seven times in the truth and reconciliation calls to action. So and we were fortunate as a government to be able to have that passed for the first time. I remember on June 21st, it received royal assent. And now we're turning the page on the narrative of the Indian Act and moving towards a more just fairer and consensual relationships between indigenous people and Canadians that are guided by the principles in [unintelligible] and the implementation of that act over the next two years.

MG: What do you say to people who are frustrated? Perhaps they they have in their minds greater velocity when it comes to enacting those calls to action?

JAIME BATTISTE: Well, I tell them I understand the frustration I live on and the reserve I wake up to this every day. I'm one of the few, if not one of the only MPs who live in a big mall into a first nation's reserve. And so I totally understand where they're coming from. But, you know, one of the things, as I explained to them, how the House of Commons works with the debates and with the Senate and, you know, it's not always promised that a bill that you put forward is going to you know, it takes time. There's going to be goes through committee. It goes through the Senate to get can get amended in the Senate. These are things that are all part of a slow process. That is the House of Commons that I've come to realise. But hopefully in the in the next two years, we won't have a much covid delays and we can get on to the important work that's in the truth and reconciliation and the calls to action.

MG: Lori, what about for you, your. Heading to Ottawa for the first time, how do you hope to address the calls to action that still aren't implemented? And when you take a look at at the pace of things, what do you say to people who might start to become cynical because they don't see the pace moving at, you know, the speed that they think it deserves?

LORI IDLOUD: I think that parliamentarians and the Senate, they tend to want to address issues based on what their constituents issues are. And we need to start targeting more the regular Canadian citizens and making sure that within our education system that indigenous history is also provided as part of that may be social studies or what have you. But really, just to make sure that we're creating broader awareness by not only focussing on the parliament, really making sure that we're turning empathy into action, because when I was at school, when I've been down south, when I educate people about how indigenous Canadians have been treated, a lot of the non indigenous responses are empathetic, but they don't know what to do with that empathy. So we really need to start finding ways of earning that empathy into action.

MG: You saw that a lot this summer when the hundreds of unmarked graves on the sites of former residential schools were unearthed across the country. And to many people, this wasn't a discovery. This was confirmation of what people in communities already knew. We heard the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops recently apologising to indigenous people for abuse at residential schools. Lori, what is the role that you think government should take in getting answers and in holding those institutions to account for what they were responsible for?

LORI IDLOUD: We definitely need to make sure that political will becomes a will that isn't a four year mandate, that isn't a two year mandate. It's something that we have to make sure that all government parties show leadership and work with indigenous Canadians to ensure that we're all addressing the same issues that are important to indigenous Canadians. Really just making sure that we're being heard in the way that we're speaking, being ignored for too many years, being shoved down our throats, that our voice doesn't matter, does not work anymore. We just need to make sure that as indigenous Canadians, that our voice is heard and that as a part of voicing our concerns, that we're part of that decision making, that when solutions are being shared, that they're not being solutions, that they're heard on a one time basis. But that dialogue continues so that we can make sure that even if an idea doesn't work immediately, that dialogue can use to make sure that solutions are being approached in a collaborative way. We know that we need to work with allies. We need to make sure that we're working together to make Canada as a whole better for all Canadians. And we just need to make sure that we're reducing that disparity by increasing and improving our relationships that we have going either way.

MG: Jaime, what does that look like for you? I mean, I'll go back to the issue of the role of the church in just a moment. But when Laurie talks about the importance of ensuring that indigenous voices are heard and are actually part of solution making, what does that look like practically for you and how government can work?

JAIME BATTISTE: Well, I'd like to get back to your point about is, is these things does it seem like things are changing? And I'd say, yes, I think we're in the midst of an indigenous renaissance. We have many elected indigenous members of parliament. We have an incredibly talented Senate that has many indigenous people. We have a governor general for the first time in our history who's an indigenous person. We have a national day for truth and reconciliation for the first time ever. So I see I see us moving in the right direction. But one of the things that I was happy to be a part of was between the last parliament was trying to work across party lines and across parliament and Senate lines and bring all indigenous parliamentarians together and to see if we can come together on issues of importance and influence some of the things that we're doing within the budget. And, you know, I was a co-chair in those with former Senator Murray Sinclair. I would like to keep doing that with which whichever independent senator wants to take on that that role in the new in this parliament, because I think it's important for indigenous indigenous parliamentarians and senators to sit down and talk about the priorities that matter to us in a non-partisan and collective way that's based on, you know, respect and based on building and finding consensus, which is a lot of the times is more the indigenous ways than the debate and parliamentary the things that we do in the House of Commons. And, you know, that's what I see moving forward. And I think we were very successful in advocating that way over the past two years and making sure that we have it now, a national day of truth and reconciliation that we have under the act, that we have all of these things moving forward, that we have our first indigenous language commissioner. These are important steps moving forward. And I think that's what I will be hoping to build on from the previous successes of the last two years.

MG: How do you square the idea of using your language, the indigenous renaissance that's happening right now with the frustration that many people in many communities across the country expressed during the election campaign, suggesting that money is one thing, but action hasn't followed that money and hasn't followed the words of the government.

JAIME BATTISTE: Well, I think frustration is better than apathy, I think more than ever, indigenous people are aware of the issues they're learning about their history. We have some great examples of this. And Nova Scotia with Treva education, Nova Scotia, I've seen it in other places like the Oxford Street of Commissions in Saskatchewan that people are learning about the history. People are learning about their treaties for the first time in a very long time. And that's creates frustration with the understanding, the history of indigenous history in Canada and the role of government and the role of society in what has happened in indigenous communities. There's a lot of healing to be done. There's a lot of trauma to fix. But, you know, what I say is that we're making progress. And you're seeing that with the more indigenous candidates. You're seeing that with a first ever indigenous language commissioner. You're seeing that with the governor general who's indigenous. I mean, these are all things we can be proud of as a country without without necessarily going and saying that's, you know, we've done everything we needed to do. There's much more work to do. And I think that that's I'm looking forward to working with people on the steps that we need to address moving forward.

MG: Lori, I'd love to. You talked about having your voice be heard. You are serving in the same seat as Mumilaaq Qaqqaq. She decided not to run for re-election. She called out systemic racism in the House of Commons. She said it was a house on fire, one that she did not feel welcome in, that she was made not to feel welcome. And as you have been thinking about your journey to Ottawa, how have her words influenced you?

LORI IDLOUD: I'm having had to leave Nunavut to further education on two occasions in my life. I have experienced racism at both times and I've always made sure that I've stayed grounded and and taking advice from elders and loved ones. And having said that, I feel that I've done what I could to prepare for the extra challenges that I might experience and just really making sure that I'm always refocusing my election as a task given to me to make sure that my election benefits, Nunavut, and that I work hard to make sure that more benefits returning to Nunavut, including hopefully making changes in how some of the systems work, like addressing barriers to employment and addressing barriers to economic development and really just finding a way to make sure that I always refocus what those challenges might be to me, given to me personally, and making sure that I always find a way to think about the bigger picture and realise that being given this role, I have to work that much harder to be prepared mentally and to make sure that I have a support system when I do go down to Ottawa.

MG: Jaime Battiste, what about for you? You're returning to Ottawa as a second term MP when you hear the House of Commons described as a house on fire, how does that square with your experience serving in that government?

JAIME BATTISTE: Well, this is a difficult role. No doubt anyone who takes on this role has to understand that they're taking on public service. And it's not always easy. It's not always easy to find to convince people that about you, the issues that you're important about. I mean, that's why there's three hundred and thirty eight of us. And it's a very difficult thing for her. For many for me, I found the experience to be difficult, but it was a difficult transition because of the middle of a covid we were all sent home. And, you know, it took a little while for us to adjust to the technology. And I think many of us are still adjusting to the technology. But I wouldn't characterise it as a you know, as anything that in my time of working with 3D education or my time working at a university, you know, there's always challenges and there's always systemic racism and boundaries and and barriers and obstacles towards decolonising structures. And they won't do it willingly. So, you know, this is just all part of the journey towards reconciliation.

MG: Is that why it's important for you to be there? I mean, despite the fact that there is, as you said, barriers, there's racism, there are structural issues. Those are things that could turn people away from that. So why is it important for you to serve your community in government when you are facing those barriers and those restrictions?

JAIME BATTISTE: I think it's to show the next generation that it can be done. I think that the biggest thing is, you know, when I started off in this job, the thought of having a megamall member of parliament is a crazy idea. I mean, now it's not in our children will grow up in a reality that it's not a crazy idea anymore to be involved at the highest office. It's not a crazy idea for an indigenous person to be governor general of Canada. It's not a, you know, an impossibility for the Supreme Court of Canada to have. An indigenous person, these are all glass ceilings that we have to break in Canada, and that helps us to decolonise the systems in the world that we live in. But, you know, that's just part of it. And my overall job is to make sure that we're moving forward with, you know, the writing of Sydney, Victoria. And I will always know that. But it does. There is an importance of being one of the only first nations in members of parliament and one who lives on an Indian reserve. And so this is something that, you know, you want your government to represent and represent the way society looks. And I think that's why it's important to have more indigenous people that put their name forward and why it's important for us who are indigenous people to continue that journey and to make the strides that we need to make for the next group that come in.

MG: What about for you, Lori? Why is it important for you to be there, given what you may be facing and certainly what your predecessor faced?

LORI IDLOUD: And that it's such a good question, because we need to make sure that people like Mr. Battiste and I are not the last indigenous set of members of parliament, we need to make sure that we keep inspiring indigenous Canadians to achieve high goals, because to help realise that these possibilities are something to reach for, that they're not impossible to reach. Having lived a hard and difficult childhood myself, I know that I've had to work very hard to achieve a certain level of success. And I just want to make sure that more indigenous Canadians can realise that even if they have experienced all these different atrocities, intergenerational traumas, these difficult racism, that's very systemic, we need to make sure that we can show them that they can generate success for themselves. They could generate success by making sure that they're working on their mental health issues, that they can do it by creating positive coping mechanisms, that they can start moving towards making healthy choices and to generate a sense of inspiration by making sure that all indigenous Canadians can be successful. And that's the story that we need to emphasise in Canada.

MG: We've mentioned a couple of times the first indigenous governor general, Mary Simon. And I'll ask you this first laureate about what impact do you think her appointment has on how members of your community see government, but also, to your point, what members of your community see as as the possibility?

LORI IDLOUD: There was definitely a huge sense of excitement when Mary Simon was first announced as the Governor-General, and we've maintained that pride. So her role, I think, is such an important appointment because it really shows that we can take a strength based approach to working with indigenous Canadians, because realising that we do have these great skills, expertise, knowledge from our elders, using that as a foundation for working with us, will take us a lot further than focussing on the negative social indicators that has been brought upon us by forces against our own. So we just really need to start realising that we can focus on their strengths to make positive relationships, to work towards reconciliation.

MG: Give me an example of that. I mean, when you take a look at strength based relationships, how do you think that could change the community that you've been elected to represent?

LORI IDLOUD: So one of the suggestions that was given to me was very early on in my first community visit to my home community in Iglulik was it's always such a shame to see hunters and seamstresses on income support because hunters and seamstresses should be considered as professionals. They are the knowledge that they have about the wildlife, about the environment, about how to treat furs and sealskins. The knowledge is so vast. It's they were saying it's like they have a doctorate degree and yet they're being forced to be on income support. And I think those are the kinds of skills and strengths that we need to be focussing on. Then we could see improved conditions with the Nunavut for sure. And I'm sure that other indigenous Canadians would agree with me that if more of the systems that create barriers like employing only those that have university level education, which, by the way, is a very colonial education system that's still a lot of the time ignores indigenous knowledge, just finding ways to make sure that indigenous knowledge is the way to generate income, to make sure that using indigenous knowledge is a way to draught policies and legislation, because it's those indigenous communities that are going to be impacted by those policies and legislation. And we just need to find ways to ensure that we're incorporating that into our systems communities.

MG: Jaime Battiste, that seems like an opportunity in some ways a different way of governing. And you've mentioned, you know, the idea of decolonising, whether it's the House of Commons or. The country a couple of different times, what's that? What's the potential there, what's the opportunity to Laura's point? If you if you change the focus and you change the the approach to governing in particular indigenous communities to a strength based approach?

JAIME BATTISTE: I think that's a great approach. I mean, it reminds me very much of former Senator Mary Sinclair and the commissioner of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission who said, you know, starting now, we all have an opportunity to show leadership, courage and conviction and help healing the wounds of the past. We make a path towards a more just more fair and more loving country. And I think that's what we all should be striving for in this country.

MG: I hope we have the chance to talk again as this session of parliament takes hold and you both get settled into your positions. In the meantime, thanks for being with us this morning.

JAIME BATTISTE: Thanks for having us.

LORI IDLOUD: Thank you, Matt.

Homi Pettiest is the member of Parliament for Sydney, Victoria. In Nova Scotia, Laurie Adlard, the representative for Nunavut. We asked newly elected Conservative MP Adam Chambers to join us, but we didn't hear back. Coming up after your regional update,.

SOUNDCLIP

Speaker 4: I think we need a history lesson right now. It's important to hear the stories of those who stood up to bullies, who tried to preserve the democracy that Germany very much enjoyed until Hitler became chancellor.

MG: The author, Rebecca Dorner, is here to give us a history lesson that feels more like a spy novel. Her new book tells the true story of her great, great aunt, the only American to help lead a resistance group in Nazi Germany. The Life, Death and Lessons of Mildred Hancock. Coming up in 90 seconds. I'm Matt Galloway. And this is The Current.

Resisting Hitler: Canadian-born author tells the story of her great-great aunt

Guests: Rebecca Donner

MG: Hi, I'm Matt Galloway, you're listening to The Current. Of the many resistance leaders killed by the Third Reich, Mark Mildred Harnack stood out. She wasn't German or Polish or from any other Nazi occupied country. Mildred Harnack was American. And in 1943, she became the only American woman killed on Hitler's direct order. A new book tells the incredible story of Mildred Harnack and her fight against fascism. But it is not your typical biography. It's a family history written by her great, great niece. Rebecca Donner is the author of All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days. Rebecca, good morning.

REBECCA DONNER: Thank you, Matt.

MG: This is an amazing book. Thank you. You and Mildred Hancock are separated by three generations. When did you hear her name said out loud by a family member for the first time?

REBECCA DONNER: Well, I was about nine when I first heard her name. I was visiting my great grandmother, Harriet, in Chevy Chase, Maryland. And and Harriet asked me to stand up against her kitchen wall and put a ruler on my head and measured my height. This was done to my brother and other children in my family. And and I stepped back and I looked at the marks on the wall and some were rather faint. And I pointed to one and I said, Who's that? There was an M next to it. And my great grandmother said, Oh, well, that's Mildred. Now, she said it with there was something that, there was a bit of I can only describe it as her voice was clenched in a way that at nine I thought, oh, there's a story there. She seems sad or angry or both. And so I think the mystery of Mildred began for me right then when I was nine.

MG: And I mean, in that moment, I had this idea that you would tell her story in some ways.

REBECCA DONNER: I did. I mean, even when I was nine, I knew that I wanted to be a writer. And then when I was about 16, my grandmother, Jane, and she was my great grandmother's daughter, she gave me a bundle of Mildred's letters and she urged me to tell Mildred story.

MG: How much was your family able to tell you about Mildred? I mean, you do a lot of research and you build the story out from from those letters. But how much was your family able to to tell you about who she was?

REBECCA DONNER: My grandmother told me quite a bit because she had actually at the age of twenty one in 1937, gone to visit Mildred and to live with Mildred and her husband Arvid in Berlin. And so she bore witness to what Mildred was doing. Although I should hasten to add that that Mildred kept her activities in the underground resistance a secret from from her niece at that time. Gradually, Jane would come to understand what was going on. But so Jane told me a lot. And but of course, there were holes in this story. And and after she passed away, I was again, I felt tremendously fortunate that I did have Mildred's letters that I did. And there were really a portal into Mildred's heart and mind. And I also conducted extensive archival research and tracked down diaries and testimonials and date books left behind by people and memoirs left behind by people who knew her.

MG: How did Mildred end up in Germany? She was a scholar from Milwaukee. How did she land in Berlin?

REBECCA DONNER: Well, she came from a rather impoverished family in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and she declared her desire in 1919 to go to college. And and so she attended the University of Wisconsin, which accepted both men and women. And she received her bachelor's degree and she received a master's degree as well. And the same year she received a master's degree in 1926, she married another graduate student. He was a German and his name was Arvin Harnock. And he shared her passion for women's rights and for civil rights. And and so they, there was a, they had a kind of political bond, ideological bond. And she decided that she would pursue her PhD, as he was doing in Germany. So in 1929, at the age of twenty six, she crossed the Atlantic and enrolled in a German PhD programme. And it was there that she witnessed the meteoric rise in Hitler's popularity. She was quite aghast at the swastikas she saw wherever she went, and also at the University of [unintelligible], where she was pursuing her Ph.D.. Over 50 percent of the students there were members of a Nazi fraternity. It was around this time that Mildred and Arvid decided to begin holding meetings in their Berlin apartment and then invite people who were like Mildred, who wished to resist and oppose the Nazi party and oppose Hitler, who in 1933, of course, became chancellor of Germany.

MG: Berlin is in some ways a character in this book. Describe the city that she arrives in.

REBECCA DONNER: Oh, well, you know, in 1929, this was still during the the Weimar era, the Weimar Republic, and it was tremendously vibrant place. And there were over 90 daily newspapers in Berlin alone. When she would take that ribbon to teach classes at the University of Berlin, she would see a spectrum of political views represented by these newspapers everywhere from, you know, from extreme left to extreme right, communist all the way to the conservatives and and everything in between. It was also a time of, she was so energised by the art, the culture. She went to concerts. She wrote about this in her letters to her mother. And so and she she wrote about the literature, the art. And it was a very vibrant time. It was also a time of tremendous strife. And she wrote in her letters about fights that she saw on the streets and Nazis bludgeoning Social Democrats and communists, people who were unemployed and ragged, these ragged lines of people who were hungry. She was very moved by these displays of of of poverty. And she wrote to her mother about the very wealthy people who would attend the opera and then the very and then the impoverished people who were in rags. And there was one woman she wrote and said, I was reminded of you. She's the same age as you. And she said to her mother, I must do something about this.

MG: The rise of the Nazis happens in broad daylight and in Hitler's ascension happens in front of people's eyes. You talk about how many of the things that people take for granted. The parts of architecture society are tumbling like dominoes, as you say. Yes. How did Germans not miss what was happening? But but how did this happen in front of them without people realising or taking things as seriously as they could taking what was going on?

REBECCA DONNER: Well, that's such a great question. And, of course, I thought about it a lot as I was writing this book. I mean, I think it's important to remember that during the Weimar era, during this very vibrant time prior to Hitler becoming chancellor, Germany was a parliamentary democracy with a constitution that guaranteed freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of the press. You could protest in a public square against the Nazi party or against anybody else. And it was it was legal. Women could vote, women could hold political office. And so and Germans enjoyed these freedoms. And then and during this time, however, there was basically a meteoric rise in the popularity of the Nazi party in the 1928, just a year before Mildred arrived in Germany, just less than the Nazi party got less than three percent of the vote in the historic election. The Reichstag being the German parliament. In 1930, the Nazi party got 18 percent of the vote. And then two years later, in 1932, the Nazi party got thirty seven percent of the vote and for the first time it was the largest party in their iStock. So Mildred was there as an American bearing witness.

MG: What was her entry point into the resistance?

REBECCA DONNER: Well, it really began around 1932 when she was teaching at the University of Berlin and and she began holding meetings in her apartment and inviting students who she felt were shared her view. Then she was fired from the University of Berlin and the administration did not take too kindly to her the freedom with which she expressed her political views. I mean, this was still Hitler hadn't become chancellor. It was still a parliamentary democracy. But but still, the administration did not support her or her political views, it seems. And so she was fired. She got a job at an adult school and a lot of her students were unemployed, factory workers and other blue collar workers. And this was a pool of recruits for her and many of her most devoted members of her group of her resistance group she had recruited from these classes that she held. And these then they went on to to acquire codenames, Beemer, Worker, for example, and it and and I write extensively about their their acts of resistance as well. They began really their primary weapon against the Nazi regime at first was paper. They produced leaflets that denounced Hitler and called for revolution. But if you were caught with one of these leaflets, you could be sent to a concentration camp for a year. And this is indeed what happened to several of her recruits. And so in 1935, Mildred and Arvid and others decided that they needed to develop a new strategy. And so this is when they began to attempt to make contacts with people in the resistance outside of Germany. Are that got a job at the Ministry of Economics with the express purpose of gaining access to top secret documents about Hitler's operational and later his military strategies, which then he would pass on to Hitler's enemies in the Soviet Union as well as the United States. And Mildred assisted in doing this as well. And in passing this intelligence on. And in 1939, Mildred became involved with a family at the US embassy in Berlin that there was a man, Donald Heath, who was a diplomat there. And she basically, you know, they had an arrangement, an agreement that his son, Don Heath Junior would be Mildred's courier. And so between nineteen thirty nine and nineteen forty one, he would show up at her apartment twice a week, ostensibly for tutoring sessions. And at the end of the lesson, she would slip into his knapsack, a piece of paper which then he would bring back to his father and his father would type up reports which would have been shared with the Secretary of Treasury, Henry Morgenthau Jr., and the undersecretary of State, Sumner Welles, who had basically installed Donald Hayes, senior at the US Embassy in Berlin, and charging him with the task of obtaining intelligence from key sources in Berlin.

MG: And you got to speak with with Don Heath.

REBECCA DONNER: I did. I did. I tracked him down when he was eighty nine. I was actually at an artist residency and in New York. And I just while I was there, I discovered that Don Heath was still alive. And I was flabbergasted. I had been trying to track him down with with no success. And so when I learnt this, I called him on the phone and we talked for several hours. And then and then I jumped on a plane and flew out to Northern California, where he lived with his wife. And I interviewed him extensively. And he had such a vivid memory of his time in Berlin. And and after what we concluded our interviews, he looked into my eyes and said, well, Rebecca, now I can die. And it was very traumatic. Yes. And and indeed, he did die about a month later. And so then his family got in touch with me and said, well, Rebecca, would you like to come out to California again where we have 12 steamer trunk, some documents and photos? And if you would like to go through them with us, you may. And I jumped on an aeroplane again and flew out there and and it was a treasure trove.

MG: You write in the book that the recognition that many Germans supported Hitler often leaves little room for stories about those who opposed him in part. Is that what attracted you to this story?

REBECCA DONNER: Oh, absolutely. I felt I was attracted not only to this, to this to Mildred's untold story, but also the untold stories of. Those of the men and women who were in the resistance, the Germans who did stand up, the Germans who were not what is known as a lawful one, who follows along due to opportunism or cowardice. These were brave men and women who risked and nearly all of them lost their lives in opposing the Nazi regime. And I think it's tremendously important for people today to know that these people existed.

MG: She left. She was a privileged person. She had opportunities to go back to the United States to to take herself out of what was a very dangerous situation. She does go back to the states and then she returns to Germany. Why did she go back?

REBECCA DONNER: Well, yes, in n1937, her mother was ill and she decided that really this was probably the last time that she would that she needed to take a trip quickly before her mother died. This is her last opportunity. And so she took a steamer back and she stayed for part of the time with a friend, a college friend, and part of the time with her eldest sister, who, again, was my great grandmother in Chevy Chase, Maryland. And she, all of them urged her to stay. They couldn't understand why she told them that she had to return to Germany. And even when she did return and I met up again with Arvid, her husband, Arvid, urged her to go back to the United States. You were not going to survive. We will likely die in this fight. And Mildred refused. I mean, he wanted to leave. You know, he he bought her a ticket and that ticket on a steamship that was that basically she could use at any time. And and that ticket was in her purse when she was arrested by the Gestapo. And one of the documents that I found in a in a German archive was the questionnaire at the prison that she had to fill out shortly before her execution. And and that ticket is listed as one of her belongings.

MG: When she was arrested, her and her husband in 1942, they end up in prison. They had very different experiences in prison. How did her experience compare to that of her husband?

REBECCA DONNER: Well, Mildred was put in solitary confinement and she was not allowed to read, write or receive any visitors. Arvid enjoyed all of these privileges, even begin to write another book while he was incarcerated. And it's clear that that Mildred that she spent three and a half months incarcerated in this way as the authorities were basically planning a mass trial, a mass treason trial. She was interrogated daily. She was tortured. The reason that Mildred was being treated differently was indeed because she was an American and that there was a concern that if if the Americans found out that she was there, that they would try to intervene. We don't know whether that's true. Of course, that's just conjecture. But what we do know is that she was treated more harshly than others.

MG: She goes through a trial which is described as a witch hunt. And at the end of the trial, in some ways, her life is spared. Initially, what was the reaction to to that verdict?

REBECCA DONNER: Well, yes. So in December 1942 Mildred was walked into a courtroom and there she saw Arvid for the first time after three and a half months and others of her co-conspirators in the resistance and they were given death sentences, Arvid was sentenced to, to be hanged. But her life at that trial was spared. She was given a sentence of six years in prison. And two days later, Hitler found out about the verdict and he ordered her execution. So there was a second trial, which was really just just for the sake of appearances. And it was already determined what her fate would be. And at this trial, she was declared guilty of treason and sentenced to be beheaded by guillotine.

MG: And Hitler personally ordered that,

REBECCA DONNER: yes, he did. Yeah, we have the documentation of that.

MG: What do you make of that, that he himself would get involved in this decision?

REBECCA DONNER: Well, again, you know, a lot of these documents of the trial, the transcripts were all destroyed. And so there's no documentation. There's nothing that says this is what Hitler thought. This is why he ordered her execution. Again, we can only conjecture, but certainly, again, others who survived speculated that maybe he was so angry that it was this American who had infiltrated this group. And perhaps this is why he ordered her execution. But I think that, you know, it's interesting to me, too, that in that after the war, US officials recognised that she was beheaded on Hitler's orders. In 1947, The New York Times ran a story about Mildred under the headline Hitler Beheaded American Woman as a personal reprisal. And so nevertheless, even in that I should mention, too, in this article, Mildred is credited as being as playing an important role in the resistance. But US officials actually buried her case when they say there was an investigation into a war crime and then it was determined that her execution was justified. And that's one of the declassified documents that are discovered in US intelligence files. It's astonishing. But of course, this was after the war and this was now she was being viewed through a Cold War lens. So the fact that she, as an American, was affiliated with an underground resistance group in Germany whose members included communists, and she was sympathetic to some communist ideology, she was definitely was attracted to the ideas of Lenin and his views about women's equality and that she wrote about this extensively in her letters. But the fact that she was, there was a taint of communism and that that that that that basically encouraged the US officials at that time and journalists and historians to view her as a kind of traitor to the US.

MG: Why do you think we need to know her story now?

REBECCA DONNER: Well, I think we need a history lesson right now. I think that it's important to hear the stories of those who stood up to bullies and who basically tried to preserve the democracy that Germany very much enjoyed until Hitler became chancellor.

MG: She's a remarkable character in this story. And in doing this research and in telling the story, did you learn anything about yourself?

REBECCA DONNER: That's such a great question. I think I just I discovered that I that I too I've felt emboldened. And I've always been somebody who has been an outspoken person and who sort of has followed my own path, you know, and marched to the beat of a different drummer. I don't go along necessarily with what everybody else is doing. And I think that in researching this story that emboldened me, all the more people often say to me, oh, after they read the book, I don't know if I would have taken, you know, if I would have stood up to the Nazi regime, if I would have done what Midred would have done in her co-conspirators would have done. And I can say that I think I would I think that the fact that that my great, great aunt did demonstrate such tremendous courage is it is an inspiration to me. And I feel that I would only it would it would only be right for me to continue in that and in her in the spirit in which she lived as well.

MG: It's an amazing story. And I'm really glad to have the chance to talk to you about it. Rebecca, thank you very much.

REBECCA DONNER: Oh, thank you, Matt. It was absolutely a pleasure speaking with you. Take care.

MG: Rebecca Döner, Canadian author based in New York. Her new book is called All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days. That is The Current for this Wednesday. Coming up next on CBC Radio One, it's Q Tom Dulong is aware of many hats. He fronts the band's angels and airwaves and Blink 182. He's an author and a filmmaker and he founded To The Stars, which is an academy that studies UFOs. We'll talk about all of that, including UFOs, hopefully, when he speaks of Tom Power just a few moments on cue. Earlier in the programme, I was speaking with two Indigenous MPs, Jaime Bettys and Laurie Adlard, and both spoke about the need for Indigenous pride and indigenous representation. This is something, of course, that Buffy Sainte-Marie has been singing about for decades. I want to leave you with a song from her 15th album. It's called Ke Sakihitin Awasis, which means I Love You, Baby in Cree. When it was released, she wrote, I dedicate it to all the generations of indigenous people who keep Native America alive in our hearts and our cultures and in our actions toward our most sacred Mother, Nature. A little bit of a force of nature. Buffy Sainte-Marie for you on this Wednesday. I Matt Galloway thanks for listening to The Current. I'll see you tomorrow.

SOUNDCLIP

[Song]

Wednesday 29 September, 2021

Social Sharing

More from this episode