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 2016

The Current Transcript for June 16, 2016

Host: Anna Maria Tremonti

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Listen to the full episode

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

That's a question that almost every child has at some point - how many stars are there in the sky? Well sadly, I know that in the city that I live, the answer is 12. And one of those is probably an airplane.

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: They have captured our imaginations for as long as we have been on Earth: helped us navigate, fed our mythologies, our religions, and our very souls. And in return, we have pushed them away. Blinded their shining paths with artificial light so strong, so ubiquitous, that the stars of the night sky have all but disappeared for a significant number of people around the world. In a moment, the implications of so much artificial light at night and the push for Dark Sky Preservation Zones. Also today, reports of a man long gone.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: Prisoners come, say “we say Emad. We know him.” He is in the prison Tadmur. He is very thin. Not speaking with anyone.

AMT: Emad Abdullah was 20 years old when he left his Beirut home to see friends and simply disappeared. It was 1984: the height of Lebanon's civil war, and Syria was known to be arresting and jailing Lebanese. With the chaos of Syria today, there is speculation and hope among many families that those who disappeared might now come home. The story of one family that refuses to forget or to give up, in half an hour. And from the bombast files.

SOUNDCLIP

DONALD TRUMP: They want to raise the price of oil, because we have nobody in Washington that sits back and said, you're not going to raise that [bleep]ing price!

AMT: From rude, lewd language on the lectern to the references to female genitalia on the t-shirts, there is nothing politically correct about a Trump rally. What you don't hear about the coverage in the coverage of Donald Trump in an hour, as we follow up on the stories we've been tracking.

Back To Top »

Why 80 per cent of North Americans can't see the Milky Way

Guests: Dan Duriscoe, Robert Dick, Dr. Roberta Bondar

[Music: Theme]

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: I'm Anna-Maria Tremonti, this is The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

[Oohs and Ahhs]

AMT: Well, the wonder and jubilation of a group of star gazers catching a meteor shower at Quebec’s Mont-Megantic Observatory. Of course the night sky has been a source of wonder for people for as long as there have been people, but the simple act of gazing up at the stars is under threat. Thanks to light pollution, a new international scientific study reports that vast portions of the world's population now live in places where the stars are barely visible at night. In North America in particular, nearly 80 percent of us can no longer see the Milky Way at night, and in places such as Singapore and Kuwait, light pollution has obscured the dark of night entirely. Dan Duriscoe is one of the study's co-authors and a physical scientist for the U.S. National Park Service Night Sky Program. He's in Fort Collins, Colorado. Hello.

DAN DURISCOE: Good morning.

AMT: What are the highlights of the findings of your study?

DAN DURISCOE: Well, this new work utilizes up to date remote sensing data and is put through an enhanced model for the propagation of light in the atmosphere, which can predict what the server on the ground might see in terms of artificial sky glow at any location on earth, and I think the primary results is that it has shown that while there are still areas on land beyond the Earth where you can enjoy a pristine view of the night sky that most of us, most people who live in cities and towns, our view of the cosmos is really significantly obscured.

AMT: What are the percentages that you've come up with?

DAN DURISCOE: The atlas was used on analysis both on population and on land area and based on population. I think that something like 80 percent of us those of us who live in town, have some level of degradation of the night sky that is really making it less than inspirational, shall we say. As far as land area, I think there's still something like 30 percent of the land area in the habitable world that is available for really nice enjoyment of the night sky.

AMT: You're saying though, that 80 percent of North Americans can no longer see the Milky Way because of the light at night.

DAN DURISCOE: Yes, in terms of population, that's about right.

AMT: 60 percent of Europeans.

DAN DURISCOE: I believe that's what they came up with, yes. It's just a factor of the way our population is distributed all over the land.

AMT: You've been studying night skies for years, how do you react to these changes?

DAN DURISCOE: Well, for myself, I've been an amateur astronomer all my life ever since I can remember and I've always sought out the earth skies, and back in the 1960s and 1970s, it wasn't really very hard. I grew up in Southern California in a large metropolitan area but a half hour trip out of town was adequate to get away from the light pollution, but I think these days it's more like an hour or two, and I think that's really pretty much an unfair or unreasonable impact on the majority of people who live in cities; to deprive them of this opportunity or to make it really so hard to get to that most people just don't have time.

AMT: What's the biggest factor when it comes to the increase in light pollution?

DAN DURISCOE: Well, I think the causes are primarily just the growth of population and a little more ubiquitous use of outdoor lighting for advertising, and perhaps more pedestrian shopping areas where a level of light is expected; where you can function and see items on the shelf and so forth, but there is hope that there is this trend of increasing use of light could be reduced with new technologies and a little more judicious use of outdoor light.

AMT: And the lead author of this study called the inability to see the night sky a cultural loss of unprecedented magnitude. What are your thoughts on that?

DAN DURISCOE: I think he has hit the nail on the head as far as the entire world's population. Just about every culture we know of has some connection to the night sky. There is a real spiritual or intellectual connection from the beginning of time, and this light pollution phenomenon is really pretty recent in our in our culture when you think about it, and it's kind of a future shock. People are growing up now without even knowing what they're missing. As long as there are places where people can go, though, like the national parks of the western United States or Canada, I think there's hope you know, because then people will understand what they're missing if they can visit these places on a clear night.

AMT: The new world atlas of artificial brightness, artificial sky brightness, when you look at it you can see the places where it's the most acute.

DAN DURISCOE: Yes, as well as places where it's still dark and it's a good tool for people who are seeking out a place to go to observe.

AMT: Okay, well Dan Duriscoe, thanks for talking to me today.

DAN DURISCOE: Oh, it's my pleasure.

AMT: Dan Duriscoe is a physical scientist for the U.S. National Park Service Night Sky Program. He's in Fort Collins, Colorado and we'll actually link to that atlas on our site cbc.ca/thecurrent. There may be even more at stake in the brightening night sky than a sense of wonder and joy that comes at gazing at the stars. Losing the dark sky at night can possibly have a real impact on human health. Robert Dick is the manager of the Canadian Dark Sky Preserve Program and Chair of the Light Pollution Abatement Committee at the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada. He also has a company that manufactures low-impact outdoor lights. Robert Dick joins us from Ottawa, hello.

ROBERT DICK: Good morning, Anna Maria.

AMT: So you've studied this issue, what are the effects of light pollution on human health?

ROBERT DICK: It's a lot more than I would have thought. Just like Dan, my passion is for the night sky and watching, looking at the stars, and I went to a conference back in 2003 in the Muskoka district, north of Toronto, expecting to talk to a bunch of like-minded people and I found that there are only two of us that were essentially associated with astronomy, everyone else were biologists, biochemists, entomologists, cognition scientists, and so on, and I was overwhelmed by the impact that the artificial light at night has on both physical and mental wellbeing of humans and as well as animals.

AMT: So how well documented is the link between artificial light at night and the health side effects?

ROBERT DICK: I think it's very well documented. There have been literally thousands of papers over the last 15 years since it began to become an issue, and the one problem with it is that artificial light at night doesn't cause these problems, it exacerbates problems. In other words, when it comes to healing disease or infection, artificial light at night will reduce your body's ability to fight those. As a result of that you find throughout society, and not just the Western society but in the developing world as well, increasing levels of a number of different diseases.

AMT: Such as?

ROBERT DICK: It could be is odd as obesity and diabetes. There's an increase of stress and anxiety. It increases the results of dementia and so on.

AMT: It's affecting our circadian rhythms, is it? Is that the belief?

ROBERT DICK: It gets down to the basics that your body behaves, or your biochemistry doesn't happen all the time all, of it doesn't happen all the time, but rather it's scheduled throughout the 24-hour period, and this is called circadian rhythm. A lot of the repairs and rejuvenation of your body occur at night only when it is dark, and this is an evolutionary fact because when you're sleeping, sorry during the daytime, you have to be very alert and active and some of these functions that your body does to repair itself, really you have to be sedated and that occurs at night when you're sleeping.

AMT: Well, given what you know about these studies and what you also know about the growing abundance of light at night, how big of a public health threat is this in your view?

ROBERT DICK: I think it's personally a very dangerous path that we're on. To prove it, is another matter. It gets back to when it came to the impact that smoking has on human health, the connection required an awful lot of study and detailed work, and it was delayed because people wanted to have absolute proof and there's no real absolute proof of this, but the studies of humans as well as animals have shown that it does have a significant impact. However, trying to prove it is very difficult because you can't remove all the variables. One of the more interesting studies I found was out of Israel where they looked at the electrification of towns and villages, and the first thing that happens is when they put electricity into a place is that they put in outdoor lighting and once that occurred, he started having increases in these types of diseases.

AMT: So does the lighting industry acknowledge a link?

ROBERT DICK: Not really. They acknowledge a link in terms of your ability to see. For example, glare from light reduces your ability to see things. However, the lighting industry is a very old industry that's about a 50 billion dollar industry, and it's very slow to change. In fact, even the governing agencies or societies in the lighting industry have trouble making substantial changes and that's simply because when they recommend, or they develop guidelines, they develop these guidelines based upon what can be done or what has been done, essentially using best practice, but that's looking over your shoulder into the past rather than into the future. Frankly, the studies in into the biology and the effects on cognition, they're relatively recent. Only in the last 15 years or so, many of the decision makers simply are too old to have read this literature.

AMT: Is Canada doing anything to combat light pollution? Is there a way to work on lights?

ROBERT DICK: In Canada in terms of urban lighting, very little seems to be done even though we talk to a lot of people. They had do really want to believe what the industry tells them in terms of if you need high impact lighting to reduce crime, and to see, and to make your city look beautiful. However, when it gets into the country, this light that scatters off the atmosphere over cities can be seen for a hundred kilometres or more across the countryside, and this light is what's impacting the wildlife. Some of the illumination of the countryside can exceed that of the full moon, and even the light of the full moon can curtail the foraging patterns of many animals. So the animals move out further and further from the cities, or the urban areas, and essentially put pressure on otherwise pristine landscapes and there are winners and there are losers.

AMT: Fascinating. Robert Dick, thanks for your time this morning.

ROBERT DICK: Thank you very much.

AMT: Robert Dick is the manager of the Canadian Dark Sky Preserve Program and Chair of the Light Pollution Abatement Committee at the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada. We reached him in Ottawa. Our last guest on this topic has some experience with the stars of the night sky. She has gazed at them from her hometown of Sault St. Marie, Ontario here on planet Earth. She's also enjoyed the view of the cosmos from outer space during her mission aboard the space shuttle Discovery in 1992. Dr. Roberta Bondar is a Canadian astronaut and neurologist and photographer. She joins us from her home in Toronto, hello.

ROBERTA BONDAR: Good morning.

AMT: Well, I'm just wondering what you're thinking. Dan Duriscoe outlined how dire the situation is when it comes to our ability to see the Milky Way. What do we lose?

ROBERTA BONDAR: Your guests have very eloquently described some of the effects on most humans, and also the beginning talking about the past, the history, the creative part. My view, and I have a foundation in my name that is really about reconnecting and connecting people to nature and the natural light in the sky is part of our natural environment, so to be able to say hey you know you, we like to look up and see stars, we can't see them anymore and you have to drive an hour out of Toronto, but maybe more than that to get rid of the sky glow, is really a pressure on society to say hey you know, how can we reconnect individuals to something that has been free to everybody throughout time? That is, to be able to look up and not just be enamoured of the sky, want to be an astronaut, or want to figure out why the planets are the way they are, but to give us a more deep, philosophical insight into who we are as a life form. I think without that we become a society that's really just looking down all the time at our feet, and we become not much better than little moles running around the surface. We don't have that ability to look beyond the edge of our planet and really try to understand what this is all about.

AMT: You've been instrumental in creating a dark zone in Alberta, the Wood Buffalo National Park. It’s the largest in the world, is it not?

ROBERTA BONDAR: The Wood Buffalo National Park is the second largest protected land space in the world, only after Greenland. But it is the largest, really the largest national park and it is now classified as a deep sky preserve and it's really important that we understand in our country we have a number of these in the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada. Obviously it is instrumental in setting up guidelines and trying to define what should be a dark sky preserve, as opposed to an urban park, or a night park, so they they're really trying to pull Canadians together and say hey, you know there are areas you can go to and these areas have been set up and they are wonderful places to explore, both on the ground and at night in the sky. When we look at urban parks, it's very difficult in a big city like Toronto to even think of developing an urban sky park, and you'd have to travel beyond Toronto.

AMT: There is one north of Toronto called Torrance Baron.

ROBERTA BONDAR: That's correct.

AMT: And there's another called Kouchibouguac in New Brunswick.

ROBERTA BONDAR: That's right, and Kejimikujik, all on the East Coast there is the opportunity for people to be able to participate and look at the night sky. You know, I think that when people pick holiday times, it might be kind of a nice idea that they call it a time when you can also look at the sky and try to try to connect with things that are way beyond our understanding here on our planet. We're making baby steps to explore the universe with our satellites, remote sensing, our deep space probes, but all of these are way beyond what human beings are able to do physically with their bodies. We have to use instruments to do that, so wouldn’t it be wonderful to be able to look up and say hey, you know, I can connect with the night sky; I can connect with things that are that are beyond me. They have an incredible way of stimulating our interest in things beyond ourselves, which I think is a thing that moves society forward.

AMT: And you know as a photographer, what have you seen change?

ROBERTA BONDAR: It's quite interesting. If you have even a 35mm camera or regular DSLR, a digital reflex camera, any kind of point and shoot camera, if you want to take pictures of the stars, you have to have it sitting on a tripod and have to have it open for a little bit. As soon as the shutter is open for a little bit longer than you normally take a picture of your family sitting on the beach, it takes in this light from the surrounding sky and then you really have a hard time seeing the stars themselves. So, the light glow, the glow that we get because the light hits dust and particles in the atmosphere and scatters it so it basically makes the sky look like a big cataract, these are the kinds of things that you don't see unless you are deliberately trying to look for something. But people don't look up. The first thing you have to do is look up, and if you don't know to look up even to look for birds in the trees, how are they going to even be motivated to look up to see stars? And if you know there's a canopy overhead that's like having a big white cataract, you're not going to be moved. I mean, that's just the bottom line.

AMT: How much did the night sky growing up affect your choice of career, or your decision to go to space?

ROBERTA BONDAR: Well, it affected it very much. I can't remember a time being born in Sault St. Marie and camping on the shores of Lake Superior, where we were not able to see a plethora of stars. It was a gazillion stars. Once a person's eyes were light adapted and the retina was light adapted to see the stars, and then you could even do things like the missing star phenomena because the centre of your vision is not good enough in low light to pick out stars. You can see them in the corner of your eye and then you reset your eye and it disappears. All those magical things that really stimulate a person's interest in science, and asking questions, and what's out there, and even thinking about what might be in different planets, even science fiction, even doing poetry, writing, all the cultural things that give us substance as a life form, that gets taken away. If it's taken away from the majority of people, then it becomes-- I wouldn't call it a lost art, it would become a lost ability to think like a human being. You end up just doing things in a sort of a lighted area that doesn't feed into thinking beyond their own planet.

AMT: Roberta Bondar, we have to leave it there. Thank you for your thoughts today.

ROBERTA BONDAR: A pleasure, there is just so much more [laughs].

AMT: [laughs] Okay, well Dr. Roberta Bondar, Canadian astronaut, neurologist, photographer. She flew to space on the Discovery mission STS42 in 1992. We reached her at her home in Toronto. Let us know what you think about the stars and what we lose when we can't see them. We’re @thecurrentcbc. This is The Current.

Back To Top »

Decades after Lebanon's civil war thousands still missing

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: Hello, I'm Anna Maria Tremonti, and you're listening to The Current.

[Music: Theme]

AMT: Still to come, Piya Chattopadhyay, the host of CBC Radio's Out in the Open, this week's Friday host of The Current, joins me in half an hour to check in on your feedback on the stories we've been following. We'll also get into the language that Donald Trump often uses at his rallies, but which doesn't usually end up in the media coverage. It’s often bleeped; it's often four letters long. But first, long gone but never forgotten.

[Music: Theme]

AMT: Imagine a loved one going missing, at a time of war. Waiting day by day for any word of their fate. Then year by year. Then decade by decade. Hard as it may be to imagine such ongoing uncertainty, that has been the reality for many Lebanese families, including the one we're about to meet. What happened dates back to Lebanon's 15-year civil war. The conflict finally ended in 1990, but 17,000 people remain missing and unaccounted for today. Some of those are believed to be in Syria, but as that country's own civil war rages, it churns up moments of hope and despair that the Abdullah family will somehow see their lost brother again. We're bringing you now Rebecca Collard's documentary, The Unforgotten. And just a note, there is some strong language in this story.

[Sound: Turning pages in a photo album, Samia speaking indistinctly]

REBECCA COLLARD: In her home in Beirut, Samia Abdullah pulls old family photos from a drawer filled with plastic bags and family memorabilia. She points out her youngest brother.

[Sound: Samia speaking indistinctly]

REBECCA COLLARD: Emad Abdullah, on visit to Germany to see one of their brothers. Posing in a flower garden, wearing bell bottomed pants, his hair is long and curly, sticking out from the sides of his head. Another is of Emad at a beach closer to home. It was taken, she tells me, the same year he disappeared. It was 1984.

SAMIA ABDULLAH: He was very intelligent. He was 20 years old, but he was very intelligent.

REBECCA COLLARD: Samia stops on a Polaroid photo of Emad leaning back on a beige couch in dark blue shirt with white strips.

SAMIA ABDULLAH: When he disappeared, he was wearing this shirt.

REBECCA COLLARD: Emad Abdallah disappeared at the height of the civil war in Lebanon. Initially, his family didn't even know he was missing. Emad had gone to the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli. It was a trip he made often to see friends. He said he would be back home in Beirut in a few days. But he didn't return. Samia and the rest of the family waited. And then…

SAMIA ABDULLAH: After a week, someone came to my mother and said, “Syrians took your son Emad.” In that time my mother was crying, my father was alive.

[Music: Solemn solo guitar]

REBECCA COLLARD: In 1976, Syria intervened in Lebanon's civil war -- at the request of its Lebanese allies, it said -- in an attempt to stabilize the country. Soon, each part of Lebanon was controlled by a different group: Syrians, rival Lebanese militias, Palestinians, and Israeli forces. Through word of mouth, the family learned that Emad and two other Palestinian friends were pulled over at a Syrian checkpoint and disappeared.

[Music: fades]

REBECCA COLLARD: Emad is just one tens of thousands of people who went missing during Lebanon's civil war.

REEM EL-SOUSSI: Most of the families would say, “he went out to get a cigarette, to get some food, to visit someone, to bring something he forgot from the car, and that was it.”

REBECCA COLLARD: Reem El-Soussi is with ACT for the Disappeared. It's an organization that supports families of the missing. The Lebanese civil war ended in 1990 with the signing of the Taif Accords, but 17,000 people are still unaccounted for.

REEM EL-SOUSSI: People who were taken by a Lebanese militia, the warlords just went out after Taif and said we have no one.

REBECCA COLLARD: Leading many to conclude their loved ones - who'd been held in Lebanon - were dead.

REEM EL-SOUSSI: But then you have those who were taken by Syrian militia or Syrian army. There is a bigger hope for their return than those who were kidnapped by Lebanese militia.

REBECCA COLLARD: That's because since the end of the civil war, somewhere between 800 and 1000 Lebanese have been released from incarceration in Syria, giving some families hope that their loved ones could be next. That's why, Reem El-Soussi says, families like the Abdullah's are the "lucky" ones. Today around 600 captives from the conflict are believed to be in Syrian prisons. People like Emad.

[Sound: Skype dialling, ringing]

REBECCA COLLARD: For years, the Abdullah family kept piecing together the stories they heard. Emad's brother Suliman now lives in Egypt.

VOICE OVER SKYPE: Hello?

REBECCA COLLARD: By Skype, he describes what he was told by some young men in their neighborhood after Emad disappeared.

SULIMAN: Put him in the boots of the car and they took him. If it is right or not, I don't know. I followed that.

REBECCA COLLARD: Suliman followed that information into Syria. In 1987, he went to Damascus to try to find Emad. Suliman had some connections through work, people who knew people in the Syrian government.

SULIMAN: And we met a big shot in the intelligence and told him all we know, all we want to know is if he is in any of your prisons, if he's dead or alive. Just want to know.

REBECCA COLLARD: Suliman waited as the officer went through papers.

SULIMAN: Came back, he told me, we have the same name, but he's not your brother. An old man, above 60 years old.

REBECCA COLLARD: That's when Suliman gave up hope.

SULIMAN: Maybe those who arrested him, had killed him, at that time.

[Sound: solemn drumming]

REBECCA COLLARD: Then, in the year 2000, political change inside Syria would bring new hope for Emad's family.

SOUNDCLIP

REPORTER: When Bashar al-Assad took control of Syria, it was called the Damascus Spring.

REBECCA COLLARD: Bashar al-Assad took over the presidency. His father Hafez Al-Assad had died a month earlier. Back then, the new president was seen a potential reformer of his father's authoritarian regime. A regime that was holding thousands of political prisoners: Syrians, Lebanese and Palestinians, among others. Soon after taking office Bashar Al-Assad began randomly releasing Lebanese prisoners from Syrian jails.

ALI ABU DEHN: And by chance he put his hand it was our prison. We were in Sadnaya at that time.

REBECCA COLLARD: Ali Abu Dehn is a Lebanese citizen, who by then had spent 13 years in Syrian prisons.

ALI ABU DEHN: And I was lucky to be one of those who were liberated at that time.

REBECCA COLLARD: Ali was an opponent of the Syrian military presence in Lebanon and he knew he could be a target. But in 1987 - out of desperation - he risked going to Syria. He needed to get to the Australian embassy there in a bid to get asylum for his family. When he arrived in Damascus, he was quickly arrested and later taken to the notorious Tadmur prison in the Syrian city of Palmyra. He recalls the warning the guards gave him when he entered the jail.

ALI ABU DEHN: They said 'you are here in Palmyra. No one will help you. Here president Assad prevents god to come to Palmyra. So we are god. We are every damn thing. So whatever we do, we do. We are permitted to do whatever we want.'

[Sound: Sound of sleeve being pulled up]

ALI ABU DEHN: It's not straight here, you can see...

REBECCA COLLARD: Ali pulls up the sleeve of his coat and shows me his misshapen wrists, the bones jutting out under his skin. He explains how he was hung from his hands and tortured until he said he was spying for Israel. He tells of years of interrogation and abuse.

ALI ABU DEHN: They took your eyelashes. And eyelashes, okay. Also they cut it. So you can't sleep, you can't close your eyes, because it will be just like pins inside your eye.

REBECCA COLLARD: He remembers the screams of other prisoners. Beatings with metal sticks, sharing a boiled egg among five people for breakfast, watching a prisoner die from malnutrition right in front of him. And all the time knowing his family didn't even know where he was.

ALI ABU DEHN: And our names was taken and they give us numbers. I was 13. Number 13.

REBECCA COLLARD: At Tadmur prison, the prisoners in each cell were numbered off, 1 to 20 or 30, and isolated from one another. Then Ali was moved to Sadnaya prison, where prisoners were allowed to mix. It was there that he and other prisoners started smuggling out information. Notes about who was in the prison, so families like his - and maybe even the Abdullahs - would know how to find them. Taking thin cigarette rolling papers, one of the inmates wrote in tiny print the names of about 100 prisoners. Then he rolled up the paper and covered it in tinfoil from the cigarette pack. He stuck it in the cheek of another prisoner.

ALI ABU DEHN: And we collected money for him, so he paid 500 lira, Syrian lira to the warrant to kiss his wife. And when he kiss his wife, he just put it in her mouth. And we did it many times. So that's why all the people outside start knowing that their children are in Sadnaya or Palmyra and start asking about them.

REBECCA COLLARD: Emad Abdullah's name wasn't on those papers, but eventually the Abdullahs did get a sign of life. In 2003, they received a small piece of paper, a note, written with matchsticks, smuggled out of a Syrian prison. His sister remembers it clearly.

SAMIA ABDULLAH: He said please, my father, my mother. Please help me. I miss you.

[Music: Suspenseful]

REBECCA COLLARD: Emad Abdullah was a supporter of the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, whose men were fighting in Lebanon's civil war. But his family insists he was nobody important: not a political leader, not an organizer, no real threat to the Syrian government. Why would the Syrians want to keep someone like Emad Abdullah in jail for decades? Ali suggests it could be he became a victim of bureaucracy. One where people would simply be lost in the prison system, forgotten in the dark cells of Sadnaya or Tadmur.

ALI ABU DEHN: I will tell you about myself. When they wanted to liberate me, I went first to a very rude major, then to second one, third one, he said Ali, and he said, we are sorry. We lost your file. You shouldn't stay all the time here, that time. I told him “sir, what will I do with the 13 years?” He said “fuck you.”

[Music: Suspenseful]

REBECCA COLLARD: Nearly two decades after his disappearance, Emad's written plea gave his sister Samia and the family renewed hope.

SAMIA ABDULLAH: My sister went to Syria and ask about him. But they said no, we have-- Emad not here in our prisons.

[Sound: Indistinct shouting through megaphones, sound of protesting]

REBECCA COLLARD: At that point, Syrian military and intelligence services still controlled much of Lebanon. Then in 2005, amid massive anti-Syrian protests in Beirut, troops withdrew from the country. That same year, Samia and the families of others missing people believed to be in Syria, started holding regular sit-ins in the Lebanese capital. Each week, the group of mostly older women would gather, holding pictures of their missing loved ones, their names, and the year they disappeared. They pressured their government to do something to free the prisoners. Reem El-Soussi with ACT for the Disappeared says Lebanese officials aren't interested in digging into the past to find answers for families. She accuses many of those sitting in Lebanon's government today, with having been warlords and militia leaders, some allied with Syria at the time.

REEM EL-SOUSSI: The same people who committed these atrocities are in the government. Personally, I don't think they want to risk it.

REBECCA COLLARD: Despite the lack of action by the government, the protests in Beirut continued. And every so often prisoners would be released from Syria, and would come to the sit-in. Samia would be there, holding a picture of Emad in a blue jacket with Emad Abdullah, 1984 written in red letters. And some of the former captives recognized Emad.

[Music: Solemn solo guitar]

SAMIA ABDULLAH: Many prisoners come, say “we saw Emad. We know him.” He is in the prison Tadmur. He is very thin. He's sitting alone all the time and not speaking with anyone.

REBECCA COLLARD: Now, Samia was sure.

SAMIA ABDULLAH: And we know. We know that he is in Syria.

REBECCA COLLARD: But…

SAMIA ABDULLAH: Nobody, nobody in the government, nobody help us. Ten years in the tent. Nobody help us.

[Sound: Syrian protests, news reports]

REBECCA COLLARD: The uprising in Syria in 2011 brought optimism again, and the prospect that the government could be overthrown and the political prisoners in Syrian jails would be set free by rebel forces or even Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, ISIS.

[Sound continues]

REBECCA COLLARD: Last summer, local media reported that had finally happened. Militants from ISIS pushed regime forces out of the city of Palmyra and took control of Tadmur prison where Ali had spent years and where former prisoners told Samia they had seen Emad. Reports said that dozens of Lebanese prisoners had been released.

SAMIA ABDULLAH: Yeah, I feel happy and go and call my friends. “You hear this story? Maybe my brother with them.”

REBECCA COLLARD: Samia and other families waited for the names of those who had been freed. Waited for their return. But the reports turned out to be untrue. The Syrian government had emptied the jails before ISIS had arrived. There was no one left, just an empty prison:

inmates likely shifted elsewhere.

SAMIA ABDULLAH: Yeah, ah, feel sad.

REBECCA COLLARD: For Samia, it was another missed opportunity to know the truth, to know about Emad. Another disappointment. Angry, she did a television interview from their protest camp blaming the Lebanese government for not doing anything.

SOUNDCLIP

SAMIA ABDULLAH: [speaking alternate language]

REBECCA COLLARD: We have a right to know the fate of our children. Where is the government? Why don't they ask about our children? she says. The ministers did not even call us.

[Music: Solemn solo guitar]

REBECCA COLLARD: In December of last year, the families stopped the tent protest in central Beirut. After a decade of weekly sit-ins, numbers were dwindling. Little had been achieved and it became rare that released prisoners showed up with new information.

SAMIA ABDULLAH: We when we were got to the tent, every day we hear a story from Syrian. Now no, no.

[Sound: Rustling through drawer]

REBECCA COLLARD: Samia goes to her room and starts rustling through a drawer. She pulls out a cigarette lighter she's kept of Emad's.

[Sound: Lighter clicks]

REBECCA COLLARD: And his old, brown pajama top. Samia lifts it to her face.

[Sound: Samia inhales]

SAMIA ABDULLAH: If Bashar Al-Assad leave Syria, our sons, all the prisoners, will come. I hope that. I hope. I hope, I hope I see Emad. I hope. I don't know. I don't.

REBECCA COLLARD: Others speculate that even if opposition groups were able to take control of the country, many prisoners would likely would remain in jail, lost by the government and the bureaucracy, long forgotten in their cells.

SAMIA ABDULLAH: 31 years Emad in the prison. He was 20 years. For what? For what.

[Music: Solemn solo guitar]

AMT: We have been listening to The Unforgotten, produced by Rebecca Collard in Beirut. Joan Webber is The Current's documentary editor. We did contact the Lebanese government, in particular its Foreign Ministry. We were told the minister is travelling and not able to respond to our deadline. We also spoke with the former minister of state for Syria affairs. He would not do a recorded interview. He did tell us he travelled to the Syrian capital several times and asked about Lebanese prisoners, but he was told no one was being held. He, like many others we spoke with, believe no one is now in charge of the file. To see pictures of Samia Abdullah and of her brother Emad, go to our website, cbc.ca/thecurrent.

Back To Top »

How does Donald Trump get away with so much profanity in public?

Guests: Jay Newton-Small

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: Hello this is Anna Maria Tremonti, this is The Current.

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: Prior to this time, we have wanted to believe that once children were bullied were bullied at school, they sort of left all of it behind once they graduated from high school or college, but many many of the hundreds of people that I interviewed were left with scars.

VOICE 2: The range of health risks associated with rats is much broader than previously appreciated.

VOICE 3: I would resist and pivot away from the very sort of racist, and seductive call to somehow account for one man’s actions. I’m not responsible for one man’s actions.

AMT: A taste of the week that was on The Current and there is no shortage of reaction from you, our listeners. This week’s Friday host, Piya Chattopadhyay joins me now to read through your responses, hello.

PIYA CHATTOPADHYAY: Hello.

AMT: Let’s get right to it. Monday on The Current, we looked at the long-term effects of bullying and trying to deal with it in adulthood.

SOUNDCLIP

It was my editor at The New Yorker who finally said, Look, you need to fly out to California and confront him. And that one of the most challenging moments in the whole research project because I had to set a timer on my watch which alerted me during the course of the interview that said simply: defend the 10-year-old. And, so I did. I confronted him and much to my surprise, he had no recollection of who I was. No recollection that we even roomed together, completely denied, at least at first, any connection to the experiences I told him about.

AMT: That’s Allen Kurzweil talking about his bully, Caesar Augustus. He was tormented by the boy at their Swiss boarding school. Later in life, Mr. Kurzweil decided the only way to be free of his bully was to find and confront him. His new memoir is called Whipping Boy: The 40 Year Search for my 12 Year old Bully. After our interview, we heard from you on Facebook , Bet Bateman wrote: After 75 years, thanks to this interview, I now have a better understanding of my difficulties and behaviour all these many years. Thank you. Carmie Branco writes: I can relate to this. It was very hard for me growing up. I have lots of painful memories and this story explains a lot about my broken family with my siblings, thanks for doing this story.

PC: Christopher Batori writes: I was bullied by my Dad and some of the kids in primary school. As an adult, I have low self-esteem, and I've gotten into some bad relationships that are still haunting me today. Thank you, Anna Maria, for this particular program. I could very much relate to it. And Kate Mooney shared this opinion: I was listening to this interview while driving and was filled with mixed emotions. Though it is important to acknowledge the effects of any kind of abuse, it troubles me greatly that we medicalize and create an atmosphere of maladaptation. Calling the after-effects of bullying a syndrome implies that the victim has failed to adapt, cope, overcome and is permanently flawed.

AMT: Okay, well moving on to another story.

SOUNDCLIP

Rats can negotiate from a sewer up through the toilet system, the plumbing through your buildings, and it’s common for me to get a call where there is a rat in the toilet bowl, what do we do? Sometimes, even rats are even able to climb out of toilet bowls. It’s just like we heard, someone opens a door and there is a rat waiting for you in your bathroom.

AMT: And you thought it was an urban legend! That is Bobby Corrigan, a rodentologist, formerly working with the City of New York. These days, he consults on rat issues for cities around the world. He joined us earlier this week to talk about rat infestations, which just may be on the rise. After we spoke to Bobby Corrigan, many of you took to Twitter to express your squeamishness. @msopee tweeted: Okay, I did not need to know that the rat in the toilet is not an urban legend. Thanks for the nightmares! Lori Harito tweeted: You know what's not fun? Hearing how disgusting rats actually are and how they spread. I've been shuddering for 10 minutes.

PC: @raseemaalam added: This has to be the most hair-raising piece. I'm staying in bed! Yikes!! And Jennifer Dumore added: I'd just like to have you note you were talking about wild rats. Domesticated rats are sweet, intelligent, snuggly little pets. We have had a number of pet rats over the past few years and currently have 3. They are adorable.

AMT: Seriously? Okay, hug your pet rat for us.

PC: I want to tell you my quick mouse story. When I lived in Jerusalem, as you did, we had a mouse in our house and I was nervous about it. I never saw this thing but I had frayed nerves. I realized what that meant. We had one of those humane traps where it goes in the box and the door shuts. They were digging up a lot of Jerusalem at the time, an old ancient city, to put in an LRT—

AMT: Thousands of years old.

PC: Anyway, we hear this flap, flap, flap of the trap, and Peter, my husband goes to look. We’ve caught the mouse. Except that it is a giant, Anna Maria, a GIANT rat, like the size of a cat, in this trap. It was awful.

AMT: What did you do?

PC: He took it outside with a pair of jeans and kind of chucked. We didn’t know what to do. What do you do with a rat?

AMT: Put a tag on that rat, Piya. That rat will come home [laughs].

PC: Anyway, but I know someone who has pet rats and always tries to convince me to come see her rats.

AMT: Okay, hug your pet rat for us [laughs].Okay, moving on now to a story the whole world's been watching. It would be an understatement to say that Donald Trump has changed the rules of running a presidential campaign in the US. Today we are focusing in on Mr. Trump's language; how his choice of words enhances his appeal with certain voters. Donald Trump is, of course, the presumptive Republican nominee. Have a listen to a few excerpts of Mr. Trump speaking at rallies across America.

SOUNDCLIP

That is political bull-(bleep).

She said he's a p-(bleep).

They are ripping the F-(bleep) out of the sea

We can't get a F-(bleep) school built in Brooklyn.

You are not going to raise that F-(bleep)you understand me?

I'm gonna bomb the s-(bleep) out of them. [applause]

Listen to me mother-(bleep) because we are going to tax you 25percent.

What's the difference between a wet raccoon and Donald J. Trump's hair? A wet racoon doesn't have seven billion F-(bleep)dollars in the bank.

[Applause]

AMT: Just a few of the choice turns of phrase, and as you may have noticed, we had to bleep out a number of profanities, which have become a hallmark of his public appearances. While most other public figures would not dare to swear, it doesn’t seem to diminish Donald Trump’s appeal. Jay Newton-Small is a political correspondent for TIME Magazine. She’s been covering Donald Trump’s campaign. She joins us from Washington, DC. Hello.

JAY NEWTON-SMALL: Hello, Anna Maria.

AMT: When it comes to swearing, what is the difference between the Donald Trump we see in the TV interviews versus the one behind the podium at the Trump rallies?

JAY NEWTON-SMALL: Well, on television, he is very savvy, he has been on The Apprentice for 12-13 seasons now, so he understands that you can’t necessarily swear, but he absolutely swears all the time in his rallies.

AMT: What about the ones that are covered live, Jay? Do they bleep them out, what do they do?

JAY NEWTON-SMALL: That’s a great question because a lot of cable networks on this particular campaign, especially with Donald Trump, have taken his speeches live in their entirety. I know that there was some consternation, particularly in New Hampshire, when he used a swear word and they didn’t have time to bleep it out because it was live. So I think they just took a fine from the FCC.

AMT: Why do you think he does it?

JAY NEWTON-SMALL: I think it is partly his schtick. He tells people, look, I’m one of you. I’m not just a billionaire, I’m a regular guy and I talk like you and I sound like you, and it’s another way upending the idea that he is a regular politician. He’s willing to take on the politicians, he’s willing to say anything, do anything. He’s not politically correct and therefore, he swears. It kind of underlines that messaging form, SO it is actually something he does knowingly, and it’s part of the character that he portrays.

AMT: We heard his supporters applauding. Who is he appealing to?

JAY NEWTON-SMALL: It’s those supporters who really hate the establishment, like to see Donald Trump blowing things up, like to see him off-script and say anything. Those people love it when he swears. That’s not to say everybody does. I certainly know some mothers who were really upset at rallies where he did swear because they brought their children and they felt it wasn’t a safe environment for children. It is a bit of trade-off.

AMT: AT some of these rallies you pointe doubt that some of the T-shirts that are for sale pick up on that language.

JAY NEWTON-SMALL: Absolutely. There are T-shirts—I mean, if you think what he says sounds really insulting or delicate for your ears, don’t walk around a Trump rally. Some of the T-shirts that they have three are really offensive. I mean, they have all kinds of words I can’t repeat on the radio, but even the C-word, the P-word, things you really don’t want to see, calling Hillary Clinton a whore, all different kinds of things. That is funny too because they say, look, we don’t have any control over these vendors, we can’t control what they sell, and they think it is kind of funny, but they do have enough control over the vendors that earlier on, a few months ago, they did ban all sales of the Confederate flag, or hats or T-shirts that had it at his rallies. So, they have enough control that they will ban the flag, but they don’t make any effort to ban anything else.

AMT: In February, former Mexican President, Vincente Fox dropped the F-bomb in a statement about Mr. Trump’s plan to get Mexico to pay for that wall he wants to build along the US-Mexican border. At the time, Donald Trump sent out a tweet demanding that Mr. Fox apologize for swearing, and when he was interviewed about it on CNN, listen to what happened.

SOUNDCLIP

CNN: Have you heard anything from former president Vincente Fox?

DONALD TRUMP: Well I think he should apologise for his foul mouth. I think it's a disgusting thing that he said. And I can tell you I would not use that word. But if I did use that word, I probably wouldn't have even been allowed on the stage tonight.

CNN: You do realize there's a touch of irony in that, that you are saying someone is using foul language—

DONALD TRUMP: I’m just telling you. I mean, I don't know what the problem is. But I think he should apologise to a lot of people that heard that word. That was a very-- I heard it this afternoon, I could not believe it.

AMT: So Jay Newton-Small, he sounds almost pious in that clip.

JAY NEWTON-SMALL: [laughs] Donald Trump is really good at saying one thing and doing another. I mean, they call him Teflon Don because nothing really sticks to him. At moments he can say, well gosh, I can’t believe he is swearing, that’s so inappropriate and then turn around and go ahead and swear. It’s like, oh my goodness, I can’t believe there is gambling going on in here. That is very much Donald Trump, and he can do what others cannot.

AMT: What would happen if Hillary Clinton swore like that on stage?

JAY NEWTON-SMALL: People would freak out. It’s something that is not her, it’s not ladylike, imagine that, you know everyone in America would freak out. But, that is kind of the sexist box she is in, right? Every time she raises her voice, Bernie Sanders can yell at you for 40 minutes and everyone is like, yeah, yell at me for 40 more. When Hillary raises her voice, everyone freaks out and says, she’s so shrill, wht is mom screaming at me? That’s just part of the sexist box she is in.

AMT: SO interesting. Jay Newton-Small, thanks for keeping us up to date on what is going on at those rallies.

JAY NEWTON-SMALL: Thanks for having me on.

AMT: Jay Newton-Small, political correspondent for TIME magazine. She is covering the Trump campaign. She joined us from Washington.

PC: Let’s get back to you and our inbox for more of your feedback. On Tuesday we talked about how the Orlando shootings were affecting LGBTQ Muslims. We were joined by May El-Abdallah, a lawyer and queer Muslim woman.

SOUNDCLIP

You know, we have to focus on the fact that why is it so accepted in our society that two men in love, or kissing, or being sexual or romantic with each other, can provoke feelings of disgust or feelings of rage. We have to really examine that because not only can a violet incident like this really break that down, it happens in small ways in our everyday lives. You hear comments or ideas that this is not okay, or this is disgusting, and all of those things build up and build up to the point of violence.

AMT: After that discussion, we heard from many of you. Carolina de la Cajiga from Vancouver writes: How easily we turn to criticise Muslims and forget our own LGBTQ phobias here in the west. To stop further massacres we have to stop the weapons industry. Until then we are all terrorists. Bruce Holvick of Delta BC says: The recent death of 49 people in Florida is not about an "invasion of terrorists", nor about non-heterosexuals getting what they deserve, nor about Christian values,nor about Muslim values. It is about an emotionally ill nation, highlighted by one emotionally ill person, and his actions, supported by a national obsessive love of guns.

PC: Randy Boldt from Winnipeg had a different opinion: It is unfortunate that every time there is a major attack in the developed world, The Current feels it must immediately run a pro-Muslim program. I work in immigration. There is absolutely no question that a reasonable minority of Muslims hold views that are totally against ours. Some of the strongest and most amazing women I have ever met are Muslim women from Pakistan and Iran, but that doesn't mean we should pretend that problems aren't found in the Muslim community, particularly in the way it treats women, homosexuals, and those who have converted to other faiths.

[Drumbeat music]

AMT: Across the country, we've heard stories recently about teenagers in provincial care being put up in hotel rooms, rather than group or foster homes, in what's usually described as an emergency measure. Right now in Prince Edward Island, it is infants, and possibly even newborns, that the province may not have enough foster families to care for. The situation has grown so acute that cribs for infants are being set up in five group homes, four of which were originally meant for teenagers. Maureen MacEwan, PEI's provincial coordinator for child protection services, describes the emergency measure.

SOUNDCLIP

Our numbers of foster parents have been steadily declining over the last number of years, and so we are trying to be pro-active in preparing other options should a child need to come into the care of the director here on Prince Edward Island. We’re certainly seeing it as an emergency placement option at this point in time, so we are hopeful that within the first few days, or a week, we would have identified a foster home that either has a bed freed up or has capacity to take a child.

AMT: The shortage of foster families isn’t only a problem on PEI, provinces nation-wide are struggling to house children in care. Wayne MacFarlane is the President of the PEI Federation of Foster Families. He joins us from Charlottetown. Hi.

WAYNE MACFARLANE: Hello.

AMT: Infants in group homes meant for teens, how did it come to that?

WAYNE MACFARLANE: A shortage of foster homes. We currently have only 60 foster homes on PEI.

AMT: And where are all these infants coming from? Are they being apprehended from birth?

WAYNE MACFARLANE: The ones that are going into the group home are. They are being born in the hospital and when they leave, they are being apprehended by the director for child protection. It’s called child protection for a reason, and there are no foster homes, so they end up going—they haven’t gone yet, but we’ve been about an hour, an hour and a half from a child going into a group home.

AMT: What happened? How did that stop? How did that change?

WAYNE MACFARLANE: As you can imagine, we only have 60 foster homes so all of our foster homes have children. We don’t have any that are vacant, so what happens is they start calling us and they say we’ve got an infant, can you take this infant? AT the last minute, a foster parent does come forward because of the pressure on them. They don’t want to see this infant have to go to a group home and so they take it in spite their situation where they are probably already full.

AMT: The infants would be looked after by qualified child and youth workers, why do you not see that as being as good as a foster family?

WAYNE MACFARLANE: It’s not the same thing. They’re going to be on shift work, they will be working shifts and travelling in and out, where an infant in the first three months, will have the same foster mom that will be waking up with it in the middle of the night, or the foster dad. They will be able to bond.

AMT: You say there are 60 foster families on the island right now?

WAYNE MACFARLANE: That’s correct.

AMT: How does that compare to a decade ago?

WAYNE MACFARLANE: We’re down considerably, and we continue to drop even though the children are also down, but they are starting to increase now, the children coming into care. Eight years ago, we would have had 75.

AMT: Why is that? What is going on? What is the difficulty?

WAYNE MACFARLANE: Fostering is a special calling. For example, in 2014, Child Welfare of Canada did a study, Every Child Matters, and they interviewed some foster parents, or correction, some Canadians, and only eight percent could identify any organization that had anything to do with being responsible for the well-being of children or youth in care. Not one individual mentioned fostering. If you listen to American TV, the police shows and what not, every child that has a problem in the States, is a child of foster care. The stigma attached to it, in addition to people not being aware of it.

AMT: Even in Canada, we talk about children who have faced trouble. We talk about the number of foster homes they have been in, huh?

WAYNE MACFARLANE: Yes, and you can paint a thousand pictures and you are not a painter. You break one window and you’re a vandal.

AMT: How long have you been fostering?

WAYNE MACFARLANE: We’ve been fostering now for about 30 years.

AMT: And on average, how long would you have a child in your care?

WAYNE MACFARLANE: We’re a long-term home. We went to short-tern recently, but having said that, the current child with us has been over four years. This is the longest we’ve had, but we’ve had children in care up to three years, and as short as one day.

AMT: Foster parents, it’s not a job right? You don’t get paid like a job?

WAYNE MACFARLANE: No, it’s not. There is a stipend. We’re reimbursed volunteers and I think that is part of the problem. Most foster parents are doing it for altruistic reasons, and there are some foster parents out there who are actually taking money out of their pocket, looking after the children, and it shouldn’t cost us money. A foster parent doesn’t do it for the money, but they can’t do it without the money.

AMT: What is it, about $600 ta $1400 a month?

WAYNE MACFARLANE: We have a level fee here in PEI with Level 1 being—Level 1,2 and 3, with 3 being the more qualified home with more expectations. It’s $600 to $1000 to $1400, and that just got raised last year. It went up by $200 a month.

AMT: But you believe it should be a paid profession?

WAYNE MACFARLANE: I don’t think it should be paid, but I think we should be better compensated. We should be able to be—instead of being volunteers, we should be well-paid professionals. We need to be an integral part of the team, and unfortunately that is not always the way. Sometimes, we are listened to by certain workers and there are certain workers that don’t take our advice.

AMT: Social workers.

WAYNE MACFARLANE: That’s right. When I talk about workers, I’m talking about social workers.

AMT: So how do you think the shortage of foster care workers can be solved? By making it more of a monetary incentive?

WAYNE MACFARLANE: Not just that, I think we have to appeal to the demographic. For example, in today’s economic situation, there are double-income families, so if the mother wants to stay at home, it doesn’t even have to be the mother. We have two foster families where the male is the primary care-giver. Anyway, if one parent wants to stay home, it needs to be a livable wage. It needs to be something where they are able to do that and stay at home rather than go out to work.

AMT: Okay, Wayne MacFarlane, thank you for talking about this today.

WAYNE MACFARLANE: My pleasure.

AMT: Wayne MacFarlane, President of PEI Federation of Foster Families. He is in Charlottetown.

PC: Okay, we have a bit more time to get through some of your feedback. Yesterday we asked just how much influence the National Rifle Association has in the US today. In the wake of last weekend's Orlando shooting, the gun rights group has once again argued that stronger gun laws won't deter terrorists. But Timothy Johnson of Media Matters believes the tide is beginning to change when it comes to the NRA's influence.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: It’s an organization with a budget of hundreds of millions of dollars per year, so they are still getting a lot of revenue, but in their most recent tax forms, it did come out that their revenue is going down in the tens of millions of dollars from one year to the next. Actually, for the first time in years, they raised their dies this year, which could be a sign that they don’t feel they have enough money to do the type of political operations that they like to do.

VOICE 2: Well, I hope finally we get rid of these gun-free zones. Since 1950, with just three exceptions, every single mass public shooting has occurred where general citizens aren’t allowed to have guns for protection.

PC: That last voice was John Lott, the founder and president of the Crime Prevention Research Center. After those interviews, we heard from many of you. On Twitter @_shireenahmed tweeted: Mr. Lott's assertion that female victims of domestic violence would be helped by guns is out of touch with reality.

AMT:@LiveInFinland: Finland is awash with guns and we do not have the same issues as the US! Lori King on Facebook adds: I listened this morning and the delusion from John Lott was scary. He used the same terminology the tobacco and oil lobbyists use as far as trying to sow doubt about scientific studies that go against their bottom line. It was textbook to cast doubt and say studies are not peer reviewed.

PC:Mike Smith at @happyeffluvium added: We are not the United States. We don't need automatic rifles for hunting. Utter Madness! Lisa Comeau @Warriorlily: Just heard the guy about guns. More guns? More zones where you can carry guns? You have got to be kidding me. @Bundem27: I support #ConcealedCarry . Canadian criminals would think twice.

[Electronic Music]

AMT: That's all the time we have for feedback today. And, now it's time to give credit where credit is due. The week that is on The Current was produced by Idella Sturino, Shannon Higgins, Howard Goldenthal, Ines Colabrese, Lara O'Brien, Julian Uzielli.

PC: Sarah Grant, Pacinthe Mattar, Sujata Berry, Liz Hoath, Marc Apollonio, Willow Smith and Karin Marley.

AMT: And special thanks to our network producers Michael O'Halloran in Calgary, Suzanne Dufresne in Winnipeg, Anne Penman in Vancouver, and Mary Lynk in Halifax. The Current's writer is Peter Mitton. Our web producer this week is Lisa Ayuso. Our technician is Gary Francis.

PC: Our senior documentary editor is Joan Webber. Our senior producers are Richard Goddard in Toronto and Cathy Simon in Vancouver. And the executive producer of The Current is Kathleen Goldhar.

AMT: To add anything you hear on The Current, weigh in by tweeting us @TheCurrentCBC. And if you want to join the conversation about our season long project Ripple Effect, make sure to use the hashtag @rippleCBC. You can find all our Ripple Effect stories by going to our website and clicking on Features. That's at cbc.ca/thecurrent. While you're there, subscribe to our podcast or email us your thoughts by clicking on the contact link.

Back To Top »

Listen to some of The Current's award-winning programs

[Music: Upbeat]

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: Well, this season we at The Current are honoured to be the recipients of a variety of national and international journalism awards. From The Gracies to The RTDNAs, to The Gabriel Awards; some, we can't even share the news about yet. We have been recognized for our interviews, documentaries, our special on child refugees. Here are excerpts from some of those award-winning programs:

SOUNDCLIP

[Sound: Bell tolls]

AMT: I'm Anna Maria Tremonti in Paris, and this is The Current.

[Sound: singing in French]

VOICE 1: Well I'm 25, and it's clearly my generation that was targeted. I'm just, I'm just mortified for all the losses we… [teary] we've had.

[singing continues]

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: There's just a real lack of transparency and a lack of reporting, but when you talk to parents and you hear their stories of their brain-dead, vegetative child immediately following their vaccine, it really makes you wonder.

AMT: Well actually, I'm going to correct you on that because adverse effects on vaccinations are actually one of the most tracked things we have, and they are available through the Public Health Agency of Canada. You don't know that?

VOICE 1: Okay, no, I didn't realize that because--

AMT: But you told me you do research.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: Throughout this, I was encouraging him to go to a counselor to get this figured out, why was he so angry, what was going on and whatever.

VOICE 2: To her relief, Jim did take Sandy's advice. He began to see a counsellor, but she was in the dark about one thing.

VOICE 1: I didn't realize that the counselor he was seeing was a sex change counselor. I didn't know that.

SOUNDCLIP

AMT: How did you first hear about the shootings at Columbine?

VOICE 1: I was at work and I had prepared for a perfectly typical normal day. I was getting ready to go to a meeting…[fades] And then he got on the phone and just started blurting out, there's a shooting at the school, they think Dylan may be involved. Kids with trench coats are shooting people. And I just cut him off and I said I'm coming home right now, and I just hung up the phone and ran out of the building.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: and I'm struck by how young so many of the refugees are.

VOICE 2: The smugglers are, they don't care.

SOUNDCLIP

AMT: You tell a story of a woman who waited outside her children's school every day. What was she doing?

VOICE 1: Yeah, Mahmoud. After two massacres that happened last year in Aleppo, she decided to go and wait for her kids in front of the school so if a bottle bomb or a missile hit the school, she would be killed with them.

SOUNDCLIP

[Music: Solemn solo guitar]

VOICE 1: Along the border I have found clothing, backpacks, water bottles, tennis shoes: human artifacts everywhere. Ultimately, these are the objects that these people chose to bring with them to the U.S. Every one of artifacts has a human story.

SOUNDCLIP

AMT: As you were doing all of this, of course, in the wider world and not so wide world in your own community, a lot of people were blaming you and your husband for this massacre. They said you had given birth to and raised a stone cold killer.

VOICE 1: Yes. And it's taken me many years to be able to even talk about this in some…[fades]

SOUNDCLIP

AMT: You know, I can't even imagine how you move forward in the day with that much grief. Talk about a woman who loses not just one but more than one child. You talk about you losing friends and never knowing who's going to get hit. What goes through your mind?

VOICE 1: [laughs] Well, I don't think we are sane. I think we're all insane in a way, but we have each other.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: The thing is that with all of the hormone treatments, he's who he was way back when. That soft, sweet person; the sensitive guy, the thoughtful person. I mean, I love him more now than I did before. And we're probably closer now than we ever were. And I think eventually we probably will be two old ladies sitting in a rocking chair holding hands.

[Music: Romantic]

AMT: Those are excerpts from a few of our stories from the past year which have received national and international awards. To hear our programs, go to the website,cbc.ca/thecurrent. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti, you are listening to The Current on CBC Radio One, Sirius XM, and online on cbc.ca/thecurrent.

[Music: Sting]

Back To Top »

Provide Transcript Feedback

CBC would like to acknowledge the support of the Broadcasting Accessibility Fund.

June 16, 2016 episode transcript

More Stories Like This