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The Current Transcript for October 27, 2016

Host: Anna-Maria Tremonti

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Listen to the full episode

Prologue

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DONALD TRUMP: My administration will stand side by side with the Jewish people and Israel's leaders. Together we will make America and Israel safe again.

ANNA-MARIA TREMONTI: Donald Trump sent a pre-recorded video message to American-Israeli supporters rallying in Jerusalem yesterday, vowing to protect the Jewish state. Even as his alt-right supporters at home churned out Holocaust themed slurs. The Anti-Defamation League says in the space of a year it has identified 2.6 million tweets containing anti-Semitic language and those messages have had a combined reach of 10 billion. Hundreds of journalists have been targeted and the ADL worries it's become a threat to free speech that will not disappear after the election. We've got that story in just a moment. Also today, medical success stories for patients with brain injuries.

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This is life again. This is life. And that's what it gave me. It gave me back life.

AMT: Doctors are finding that traumatic brain injuries once considered permanent can be treated with non-invasive techniques such as light and sound therapy to help the brain realign its signals and at least partially heal itself. It's all thanks to the discovery that the brain is plastic or pliable rather than rigid and mechanical. Dr. Norman Doidge explains in half an hour. And..

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I grew up in a neighbourhood that is usually portrayed in negative way. But people in my community supported and encouraged me so that I wouldn't become another statistic. My name is Lindell Smith and I am running in the upcoming municipal elections to represent District 8.

AMT: Lindell Smith won that election less than two weeks ago, becoming the first black councillor in Halifax in 16 years. We'll hear from him in an hour as we check in on the stories we've been tracking. I'm Anna-Maria Tremonti, this is The Current.

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'Alt-right' Trump supporters attack journalists online

Guests: David French, Marilyn Mayo

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DONALD TRUMP: It’s l-y-i-n apostrophe, lyin Ted the Bible held high. He’s put it down and then he lies.

DONALD TRUMP: Written by a nice reporter, now the poor guy you gotta see this guy, oh ah ah [imitating disabled man], I don’t know what I said, ah, I don’t remember.

DONALD TRUMP: Hillary Clinton, through her incompetence directly and indirectly created ISIS.

DONALD TRUMP: Such a nasty woman.

ANNA-MARIA TREMONTI: Insults and abuse have been, it's fair to say, a hallmark of Donald Trump's presidential campaign. Earlier this week when The New York Times attempted to chronicle every person, place, and thing Mr. Trump has insulted on Twitter in this campaign, the list ran two full broadsheet pages. But the attacks have not stopped with the nominee himself, online a loose knit army known as the alt-right has embraced Donald Trump and unleashed a torrent of abuse on his perceived enemies, especially journalists and opinion writers. Racist, anti-Semitic, sexist, and threatening violence, the venom they've let loose is hard to stomach and so a word of warning before we hear about the experiences of David French. David French is an attorney and staff writer at The National Review. He's speaking out about the high price he says he's paid for opposing Donald Trump. David French is in Columbia, Tennessee. Hello.

DAVID FRENCH: Hello.

AMT: How did you first become a target of the alt-right?

DAVID FRENCH: [chuckles] Well, it kind of came out of nowhere honestly. It was September 2015, and Ann Coulter, a prominent supporter of Donald Trump and a longtime adviser of Donald Trump on a number of issues, was tweeting out during a Republican debate a number of themes that were consistent, a number of statements that were consistent with alt-right thinking. For example, anti-Israel sentiment and, you know, other comments like that. And I wrote a very short piece critical of her, basically saying you're using the alt-right’s language, you know you're using the alt-right’s language. It's dangerous, it should stop. And then the next thing I knew my Twitter feed began to melt down. I had pictures, my youngest daughter is African-American, we adopted her from Ethiopia. I saw pictures of her seven-year-old face photoshopped into makeshift gas chambers with Donald Trump in an SS Nazi uniform pressing the button that would kill her. I saw pictures of her photoshopped and modified to look like she was a slave working in the fields. I saw the worst possible language used to describe her. And this is a seven-year-old girl, this is my youngest daughter. All because I had criticized Ann Coulter for appealing to this group of people, the alt-right. And so, the next day my wife and I both wrote about what was happening because we're both writers and we wanted to expose this, and when we wrote about it The National Review and in The Washington Post the attacks just really redoubled and they got even more ominous. Alt-right posters found my wife's blog on Patheos, which is a religious web site, and they filled it with images of African-American men, mostly African-American men, being brutally killed. I mean, the kinds of things that once you see you just can't unsee. And had I not been to Iraq and seeing brutality in real life, seeing those images would have been the kind of thing that would really deeply impact a person. And so that was last year, you know, we reported the images, we blocked people on Twitter, we reported accounts on Twitter. We did everything that we knew how to do to to stop the influx. But it never really stopped and then it just started to get worse this year.

AMT: Worse than what you've just described?

DAVID FRENCH: [laughs incredulously] Yes. Much much worse actually. So--

AMT: [interposing] Well, let’s just, like, stick to what you were just telling me though. How did you react, to see your little girl brought into this like that?

DAVID FRENCH: You know, at first you're scrambling so much to try to get rid of the images, try to report, so you're very busy trying to tamp it down at first. But then, you know, when we got through that first wave of it all and it sunk in what we'd just seen, it was tough. My older two kids who are a senior and a sophomore in high school were deeply disturbed.

AMT: They saw it? They saw it obviously.

DAVID FRENCH: They saw some of it. They didn't see all the worst of it, thankfully, but they saw some of it. They were deeply disturbed. Our neighbours were fearing for our safety. Our neighbours were actually fearing for their own safety because we're in a small tight-knit community out here in rural Tennessee. So it was a tough experience and it motivated us to oppose even, you know, more vigorously this movement, but it was a tough experience and it deeply impacted my family, it still impacts my family. And as I said it was far from over.

AMT: Why would you draw so much ire from the alt-right? You are a conservative.

DAVID FRENCH: [chuckles incredulously] Right. Well, you know, that's the thing the alt-right, I even hate to use that term but that's what they call themselves, reserves particular venom for conservatives that they don't like. They call people like me this term called cuckservative, short for a cuckolded conservative, or essentially they act as if we've sold out the nation, sold out western civilization, sold out white identity for the sake of this sort of globalist multicultural enterprise that we're accommodationist with. And so they turn on us with absolute venom.

AMT: And these are people who support Trump, and if you don't support Trump this is what you get right?

DAVID FRENCH: Right. In particular, if you critique Trump on very specific issues. So for example, journalists who've critiqued Trump for his stance on foreign policy, or his ideas about Israel, even though Trump has made a number of very pro-Israel statements, but if you support Israel online, the alt-right will come after you. If you're a Jewish journalist, the alt-right will come after you. If you critique Trump on racial issues, the alt-right will come after you. We did adopt a young girl from Ethiopia and they have a particular hatred for that. That's race mixing in their views, they call it racecucking your family, that's the actual phrase that they use. You know, they've told me my own daughter will kill me when she gets older. You cannot imagine how vile it is.

AMT: You're not alone in getting these kinds of, this vitriol.

DAVID FRENCH: No.

AMT: These attacks.

DAVID FRENCH: No no. If it was just me, you know, I would deal with it quietly through law enforcement deal, with it through the social media companies. But there's an awful lot of people. In a piece that I wrote that got widely shared, I pointed out several, my friend Ben Shapiro who is Jewish, who's received more anti-Semitic hate that I think maybe any living journalist, my friend Jonah Goldberg who’s my colleague at National Review, a number of left-leaning journalists. And the one thing that I think is unfortunate is an awful lot of people who've been receiving this hate have not talked about it publicly. And one of the reasons why is they don't want to give the trolls any sense that they're disturbing them, they don't want to give the trolls any satisfaction. But at the same time what ends up happening when people are kind of keeping this experience to themselves, it means that people are not aware of what's actually happening out there. So I wanted to write about it, and I wanted to talk about the effect of it, because I wanted people to know and to know it's not just me, that there is a movement out there that is intentionally and explicitly trying to threaten and intimidate those who oppose Donald Trump and those who depart from their white identity politics.

AMT: Now you say it got worse than what you described, what happened after that?

DAVID FRENCH: Right. Well, you know, a couple of things happened. I've been very opposed to Trump for months and months, and against Hillary Clinton. And I briefly considered mounting my own independent run at the presidency. So when that happened, my name was out in public much more and so the attacks really redoubled. My wife is a sexual abuse survivor. I'm not telling stories on her, she has to disclosed this publicly and talked about it publicly. But they began to come after her. You know, we would both get an avalanche of Twitter claims from men, claiming that while I was away that they were having sex with my wife. And then we received an actual, you know, a viable emailed death threat, and then most strangely and disturbingly just a couple of weeks ago my wife was on a phone call with her father and someone actually apparently hacked into the call, broke into the call, started yelling about Donald Trump to my wife and her father, screaming profanities at them. And we to this day don't know how that happened, it triggered an immediate search in my father-in-law's home as he looked around to see if someone had picked up another line. We contacted law enforcement, they were stumped by it. So, you know, it's gone beyond Twitter, it's gone beyond postings on blogs and into, you know, direct threats and interventions, you know, into a phone call. And I still that stumps me to this day, I have no idea how that happened.

AMT: Wow. Do you worry about your physical safety then?

DAVID FRENCH: You know, I would say it's on my mind. You know, I'm much more aware of the safety and security of our home than I ever was before. You know, and you don't want to have to live like that. But, you know, I'll say this, I mean, although it's been a miserable experience and I won't deny it and I'll say that even though I know it gives the trolls satisfaction that they have caused pain in our family, it hasn't deterred us in the slightest bit from speaking out. And in fact it's motivated us because this cannot be the new future of American politics. This cannot be the new way in which journalists are treated, even if you disagree with journalists. And I write about controversial things all the time and I have strongly held opinions, but, you know, even if you disagree with me, even if you think I'm wrong, you still treat them with the dignity and worth that they're entitled to as human beings created in the image of God. And when we depart from that we're unlocking something very dark and dangerous.

AMT: Has Trump distanced himself from these kinds of--

DAVID FRENCH: [laughing] That's a joke, right? No. He has embraced some elements of the alt-right, I would say. Now, he has retweeted some basement dwelling alt-right accounts, which is scandalous in and of itself, but, you know, one of the worst things that he's done is wrapped himself with both arms around Breitbart.com. Which is not just an enabler of the right, it is been probably the leading site empowering the alt-right. And the CEO of Breitbart or the head of Breitbart is now deeply involved in the Trump campaign, Steve Bannon, he's the CEO of the Trump campaign. So it's disturbing on every level.

AMT: And we've seen a real polarization, I'm seeing it from afar. I'm wondering, you even say, I can quote you, you say, is this the beginning of the end of our troubles or rather the end of the beginning? Where does this go after the election?

DAVID FRENCH: That is an excellent question. You know, I think we're going to face a real choice here. And a lot will depend on how the election actually turns out. If Trump fans believe and perceive that he was robbed, it could be not the beginning of the end but just the end of the beginning and that really concerns me.

AMT: I want to go back to your seven-year-old who you are protecting from obviously this kind of thing, but one day he's going to be old enough to look at what her dad has worked on over her childhood and one day you're going to talk about this. What will you tell her?

DAVID FRENCH: Well, you know, that's [chuckles] a great question. You know, to tell you the truth, I haven't figured that all out yet. We've done a very good job of protecting her from all of this. She has no idea at all that this has occurred. But, you know, she's going to have access to Google and she's going to understand. And, you know, one thing I want her to know is that her parents defended her at every turn, that her parents fought hard for a future and a society that accepts her and loves her and cherishes her. At the same time, you know, every one of us has to learn about the existence of evil, every one of us. And none of us sort of learn about that in a way that's easy and she might have it in a way that's harder than most.

AMT: David French, thank you for speaking with me.

DAVID FRENCH: You're very welcome.

AMT: David French is an attorney and staff writer at National Review. And he joined us from Columbia, Tennessee. The Anti-Defamation League has been monitoring the alt-right movement and its members. Last week the ADL released a report about the hundreds of journalists that have been targeted for abuse. Marilyn Mayo is a research fellow at the Anti-Defamation League’s Centre on Extremism. She joins us from New York. Hello.

MARILYN MAYO: Good morning.

AMT: Well, you're tracking the alt-right in the US. Who are they?

MARILYN MAYO: Well, the alt-right is a very loose network of people on the extreme right who basically promote white identity and they reject mainstream conservatism in favour, really, of a politics that embraces implicit or explicit racism or even white supremacy.

AMT: And how big is that movement in the US?

MARILYN MAYO: Well, it's a movement that's been growing, it probably has thousands of people. There are a lot of people who self-identify as part of the alt-right, it's hard to track the exact numbers because a lot of the people who identify as alt-right are anonymous.

AMT: So David Fr--

MARILYN MAYO: [interposing] Particularly on places like Twitter.

AMT: Mm. So David French mentioned a few colleagues, but you've been counting. How many writers and journalists have been targeted online by the alt-right?

MARILYN MAYO: Oh, it's a tremendous number. We in our report, we found that there were about over 19,000 tweets directed at 800 journalists. And 83 per cent of those anti-Semitic tweets were directed just 10 journalists, all of whom were Jewish. So it's been, there are more than 800 who have probably been targeted but that's the number we saw that were receiving the anti-Semitic tweets.

AMT: OK and the anti-Semitic tweets are both language and images, am I correct?

MARILYN MAYO: That's right. What we saw is that many of the tweets were very disturbing, had very disturbing images of mostly Holocaust related imagery of people and putting journalists in ovens or pinning the yellow Jewish star with the word Juden in it, on their clothing and in a picture. Very disturbing and horrifying images.

AMT: And the journalists who are targeted, can you can you see a link to why these specific journalists are being targeted?

MARILYN MAYO: Well, we think it has to do particularly with their coverage of the Trump campaign. A lot of the people who are carrying out the harassment online tend to identify as Trump supporters. And whenever these journalists have been critical of Trump in any way they've been targeted. So that seems to be the factor that really gets to make them the target.

AMT: So, you know, yesterday Donald Trump was sending messages to Israeli-Americans looking for their vote. There was a rally in Jerusalem, this message was played. So even as he's vowing to protect Israel, his alt-right supporters are sending Holocaust themed slurs and anti-Semitic messages via Twitter.

MARILYN MAYO: Yes, but, you know, we can't we can't blame Trump really for what his supporters are doing, even though he probably could distance himself more from that, from, you know, from their anti-Semitism. But we believe that he may have contributed to the environment in which reporters are targeted, but there's no evidence to attribute the causation to him. So we can't really assign blame to him. But it is disturbing that his supporters are anti-Semitic and this is something that has been a very disturbing development over the election cycle.

AMT: And so there were 10 journalists that received the bulk of these tweets. How has that affected them, their lives, their work?

MARILYN MAYO: Well, different journalists have dealt with it in different ways. You know, a lot of them because they need to be on social media for their work, to get their work disseminated, to get feedback on their work, they stay on Twitter. But there were some, in particular, Jonathan Weisman from The New York Times, who actually stopped using Twitter for a while, he removed himself from Twitter. So, you know, we are very very concerned about something like that. We're concerned about self-censorship, we're concerned about the impact on public discourse that could happen when people are harassed to the point where they feel that they need to remove themselves from social media.

AMT: And what do you think the goal of the alt-right is then when they do this to journalists? Is this what they want, they want them to pull themselves off?

MARILYN MAYO: Well, I think their goal is actually to get a rise out of journalists, to actually intimidate them. The idea is to talk about journalists in such a way that they, ought to target them in such a way that they will somehow be intimidated. But it's also a lot of people on the alt-right, they think that they're being funny and mean and that that's sort of like an attitude on their part, where they believe that this is part of their goal is to just make people, just make journalists intimidated. And this is a very disturbing trend on their part and it's something that we see directed at us as well. But it's mostly journalists who are who are the target.

AMT: So you've obviously got concerns post-election then?

MARILYN MAYO: We do, I don't think the alt-right is going to go away at all. They've been energized by this campaign cycle. They existed before the Trump campaign, they're going to exist afterwards. I think they've seen that they've gotten tremendous media attention. They've gotten a lot of play. So they are not going to go away, they're going to try to harness whatever energy they've been able to engender, just by continuing with their campaigns. I think they're going to continue to attack journalists online if there are other issues outside of the campaign that they feel they want to comment on. So I don't think they're going to go away at all.

AMT: OK, well, Marilyn Mayo, pretty disturbing stuff, thank you.

MARILYN MAYO: Thank you.

AMT: Marilyn Mayo, she's a research fellow at the Anti-Defamation League's Centre on Extremism. And we reached her in New York. Stay with us. The news is next. Then, new ways of thinking about how the brain works have led to some new and pretty exciting methods for treating everything from brain injuries to autism to Parkinson's. Canadian psychiatrist Norman Doidge is going to explain where the science is at and what it's doing to help people. When we come back right after the news. I'm Anna-Maria Tremonti, you're listening to The Current on CBC Radio One, Sirius XM and online on cbc.ca/thecurrent.

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How 'plastic' brain can heal from traumatic injuries

Guests: Norman Doidge, Jeri Lake

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

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AMT: Well, still to come, The Current’s Friday host Dave Seglins joins me in half an hour. We'll check in on your feedback to the stories we've been following. Everything from our special last Friday on living with disability to the hot button question of whether it's OK to swear in front of your kids. But first, a new type of treatment that isn't exactly brain surgery and that's the point.

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First of all, I was coming in a walker and when I wasn't coming in a walker, I was using a cane, people were helping me. I certainly couldn't get through the revolving door.

AMT: That is Gabrielle Pollard describing how hard it once was for her just to enter her doctor's office. After surgery for a brain tumour, she was left with a brain injury which affected her mobility. But that doctor, whose office she was struggling just to walk into was able to provide some relief.

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Through the various stages of progress, one day I noticed myself walking through the revolving door. So for me to even start the door and continue the door and especially if someone came behind me and they'd be like, quick, I’m like oh my God, oh my God. So I'm living in a completely different place. It's much closer to being a normal person, whereas before it was almost like being dead.

AMT: Well now Gabrielle Pollard’s recovery is remarkable in itself, but especially so when you learn that she wasn't treated with another surgery or pills but with light. Light therapy is just one of the non-invasive therapies being used to treat neurological conditions from autism to brain injury, even Parkinson's disease. You could call it the brain's way of healing. That's the name of the latest book by Canadian psychiatrist Norman Doidge. Dr. Doidge is on staff at the University of Toronto and Columbia University. He's also the co-writer of a new documentary that airs tonight on The Nature of Things on CBC Television. Norman Doidge is with me in Toronto. Hello.

NORMAN DOIDGE: Thanks for having me.

AMT: I want to hear the stories of people like Gabrielle in a moment, but first tell me about the thinking behind these therapies. What is neuroplasticity?

NORMAN DOIDGE: Neuroplasticity is a property of the brain fairly recently discovered in labs or demonstrated in labs that allows the brain to change its structure and function in response to mental experience and activity. So the mind can literally change brain structure and that's neuroplasticity.

AMT: And how is that different from the usual way or from the older way we used to think about how a brain functions?

NORMAN DOIDGE: For 400 years we've thought of the brain like a machine with parts and each part performs a single function in a single location, and if it's damaged there's nothing that can be done to change it. And we thought it was hardwired, the circuitry couldn't change from birth to death in a significant way. And neuroplasticity shows that not only can the brain change its structure but that's what it's doing in a day to day way. And what we're trying to do now is to harness that to help people with, you know, pretty significant neurological psychiatric conditions.

AMT: So what happens in the brain when it's disturbed?

NORMAN DOIDGE: Well, here's what we used to think and here's how I've put it together. We used to think that, for instance, if you had a stroke and you lost 90 per cent of function in your right arm that 90 per cent of the cells that govern that function or the tracks from those cells were dead. But by reviewing lots and lots of the literature, what I found is I think it's a different story much of the time. Some of the cells are dead, some of the cells that were getting signals from those dead cells now go dormant. Some of the cells are sick and so they're firing off signals at an irregular rate and some of the cells are healthy but they're getting junk data in, so they put junk data out. So it's often, in many conditions, a brain that's out of sync. And what we are doing now, increasingly, if we're working neuro plastically, is resynchronizing the brain. So a person may come present with a loss of 90 per cent of function but if we can resynchronize those sick cells, we can improve them and also improve the healthy cells, and get some of these very dramatic results that I report.

AMT: So tell me about the woman we just heard in the introduction, Gabrielle Pollard. She talks about using light therapy to recover from a brain injury. How does that work?

NORMAN DOIDGE: You know, light therapy has been around since 1960 and 61, 62, 63, when lasers were discovered. But there are two kinds of lasers. There are lasers that destroy tissue, and we've used those in medicine for a long time. But there are other light frequencies that actually heal tissue and remember all life, all growth in some way indirectly depends on light. And what we can do, what we've known we could do for a long time is heal things like musculoskeletal problems. You may have heard that you can grow hair, you can heal wounds with this kind of light. It does it several things, it increases the amount of DNA in cells, it changes the chemicals in the body, it unblocks chronic inflammation, it can even cause cartilage to grow back and skin of course to grow. And what happened with Gabrielle was she had this tumour, her life was saved, but a lot of tissue had to be cut out in the deepest part of the brain, the brainstem, and she was left with what we call an acquired brain injury. There's so much that happens in the brain stem, she couldn't multitask, she couldn't concentrate, her energy was affected, her balance was affected, her movement was affected and she initially got the light on the back of her neck, which is close to the brain stem and then other places. And she went from being really significantly disabled, her life was terrible, she was just withdrawn, people had to take care of her, it was just agonizing. And she improved, you know, radically now she's taking care of other people and, you know, she's doing some work and so on. So that was the first case I saw of someone who had been dramatically transformed with light.

AMT: Well, she surprised even herself going through that revolving door, as she talks about. Amazing.

NORMAN DOIDGE: Oh yeah. And, you know, really everybody's different. And every traumatic brain injury is different, people are hit in different parts of the head and so on. The classic approaches to traumatic brain injury were very very limited, rest and restore was one of the big ones, recently we were looking at brain exercises. But in the book and to some degree in the film we talk about a number of different approaches that are emerging. I know of nine now that we can use.

AMT: There's another device that one attaches to the tongue. Tell us about PONS. What is it?

NORMAN DOIDGE: Yeah. That is basically, again it was discovered through a series of accidents, just as light was put on the neck for sore necks. It was originally meant to be a balance, something to help people with balance. So it's about the size of a stick of chewing gum, and it's got 144 little electrodes that stimulate, make a particular wave. So remember that our neurons work by sending signals to each other and in a number of conditions we have what I call this noisy brain that's out of sync. Now the thing that's so cool about the tongue is it's about an inch, the back of the tongue is just about an inch away from the deepest part of the brain, the hardest part of the brain to get to. If you were doing neurosurgery you'd have to crack open a skull and cut through lots of tissue to get deep down there. And there's 25,000 fibres coming from the tongue going into the brain stem. And what they found was if a person has one of these noisy brains, particularly in the brain stem area, which is an essential part of the brain for survival in life, they can reset it or neuromodulate it so that the noise goes away and it can perform its function again. It's now being examined for multiple sclerosis at the Montreal Neurological Institute. The US Army is using it for traumatic brain injury in a study. But I've spoken to people who've had stroke who were improved by it, other kinds of balance problems. It's helped some people with Parkinson's who have balance problems and other problems. So this is just a new fantastically non-invasive way to talk to the brain in its own language. And if it's firing irregularly you can restore the firing without implanting anything.

AMT: Well, I've got lots of questions about how that actually happens. But before you go any further let's bring Jeri Lake into this conversation. She's recovering from a traumatic brain injury, a bicycle accident, she is using this therapy. She's on the line from her home in Champaign, Illinois. Hello Jeri.

JERI LAKE: Good morning Anna-Maria.

AMT: Now, before you started using PONS Jeri, you had a traumatic injury from a bike accident. What was life like for you?

JERI LAKE: Well, life was pretty challenging. I had actually had the injury almost six years before I got into the PONS research and had done several years of traditional rehabilitation with some improvement. But I still had significant difficulties with balance and gait and processing difficulties with sound and light, just enough issues, depth perception and vision, that it was really difficult for me to navigate the world and I spent a lot of time at home.

AMT: What changed when you started using PONS?

JERI LAKE: It was a pretty remarkable change. When I went to the lab in Madison for the initial work with the PONS device I noticed a profound difference after the first 20 minute session with the device in my mouth. I think I expected that this therapy sounded very promising and I was very hopeful that there would be some result, but I was not really prepared for that immediate kind of change in my balance.

AMT: And when you say a dramatic change in balance, what had your balance been like?

JERI LAKE: Well, when I got into a straight upright position, I would fall backwards. I didn't have any control over where I was in space. So I could walk then but I walked in a very hunched forward, rigid kind of position to keep my balance. They told me after some testing that nothing really was moving when I walked except below my hips, I was just moving my feet and knees basically and kind of in a locked position. I just didn't have any normal motion in my body. When I had the first PONS session, I was very exhausted from a morning of testing and not functioning well at all, even for my usual because of the fatigue. And when that 20 minutes of standing balanced toes ended and I was asked to come out of that room into another room, as I came through the doorway someone to my left said how are you feeling. And I turned my head to look at her and answer and I suddenly realized that I had moved, I had turned my head freely for the first time in almost six years and I didn't fall, I didn't lose my balance. And it struck me in that moment that something had just happened that hadn't happened in a very long time, by just being able to move my head without falling.

AMT: And how long have you been using PONS now?

JERI LAKE: I've been in the research for six years. Since September of 2010.

AMT: And how often do you use this device?

JERI LAKE: At this time I use it about twice a day. I guess for maintenance would be how I would describe it, to rest my brain with meditative sessions or to, first thing in the morning, to kind of challenge and alert my brain. During the most active part of the therapy, I was doing six to seven sessions a day. It was pretty much a full time program for a while there.

AMT: Jeri Lake, how are you doing now?

JERI LAKE: I'm doing remarkably well compared to my time before this research. My balance is almost always quite good. I'm a little affected by stress and fatigue at times and my cognitive function has improved dramatically. I'm not at the same level of function I was prior to the injury, but this research and this device have given me back a recognizable life where I can navigate the world and participate in amazingly more than I was able to prior to my entry into this research. So it's been a very good process for me.

AMT: Can you ride a bike again?

JERI LAKE: I can ride a bike again. I do most of my traveling about town commuting and so forth by bike. Frankly, that has been marvelous because I'm happy on a bicycle.

AMT: Jeri, thank you for sharing your story.

JERI LAKE: Thank you for inviting me.

AMT: That's Jeri Lake, she's recovering from a traumatic brain injury. She joined us from Champaign, Illinois. Dr. Norman Doidge, now she had had the injury six years before this, she had kind of plateaued at three years, that's significant, right? The fact that it was an older brain injury and you actually saw real movement.

NORMAN DOIDGE: Yeah. And that's common in the kinds of things we describe. That people, two of the women in the movie were disabled I think for about five ish years and then we were able to see them break out of that plateau, and I mean she was really disabled. And she was an incredibly resilient woman. And just one of the things that sticks in my mind is her visual processing was completely messed up, so she had a granddaughter, but she could not recognize human faces. And shortly after she used the PONS, she could now recognize her granddaughter's face.

AMT: You feature people with other mobility problems like Parkinson's disease with the idea of neuroplasticity being used in treatments. How successful is it?

NORMAN DOIDGE: There's just a wealth of data coming out now that, you know, patients with Parkinson's are caught in a noose, they can't move. But the problem is for the brain to stay healthy you have to move. When you move, when you go on long walks you trigger these growth factors, brain growth factors that actually consolidate connections and protect brain health. And what I describe in this book is a way of getting a person with Parkinson's who has a lot of trouble walking, walking so that they can benefit from those growth factors. And the trick is this, in Parkinson's there's a part of the brain called the substantia nigra in the basal ganglia, which normally knit together all the different movements that go into something as complex as walking, you know, raising your foot, shifting your weight, swinging your thigh forward and so on. It knits them together into an unconscious involuntary sequence. So that's what Parkinson's patients have trouble with. I describe the work of a man named John Pepper who developed what he called a conscious walking technique. He doesn't just say I'm going to go for a walk. He concentrates on each individual movement very very precisely and he ends up using another part of his brain that's not damaged in the frontal lobes to basically initiate these movements. And he's gotten very very good at it. Think of someone who's learning tai-chi and they sort of slow down and they pay attention to each movement. So he does that with normal walking and he's actually been able to walk and now he walks about an hour, an hour and 15 minutes every other day. He's much much faster than I am. He was able to go off medication actually. And he's healthier now than he was. And I've since met other people who are using this technique and he trains people in these techniques. And I'm not saying people should go off their medication, the number who've gone off is small. But we are just learning a number of key things about movement. First of all, people who are more active in a huge Scandinavian study have a lower incidence of Parkinson's. People who can maintain movement do much much better in terms of their, you know, just staying healthy overall. So what John has done is he's accessed one of the mechanisms by which brain plasticity is nurtured if you will, that's these growth factors that are like Miracle-Gro in the brain and consolidate connections.

AMT: What other non-invasive treatments are being used right now?

NORMAN DOIDGE: Well, I spent a lot of time talking about how sound can be used for certain kinds of learning disorders and autism. And in Toronto here we have a place called the Listening Centre, which is just a fantastic place. And in the movie, I have two, now they're young men but who went through this intervention, they had autism. Now there are many different kinds of autism and causes of autism, but the majority of children with autism are hypersensitive to sound. They often cover their ears, they're extraordinarily tormented. And we used to think that, you know, that's just one of the many symptoms in the package that we call autism. It turns out to be an incredibly important symptom. So their brains can't modulate sound. When you walk into a room that's noisy for instance at a party, it's a booming buzzing confusion and then after a certain point your mind or your brain just sort of focuses in on certain conversations because you have an auditory zoom in your brain ear connection, like a like a zoom lens on a camera, but it focuses in on key frequencies. That is not working in many autistic kids. And so they hear this booming buzzing confusion which is very very upsetting. A lot of it is very [lowers voice] low threatening sounds like you hear in a movie about aliens. Those low sounds trigger our fight flight system. So these kids are often in survival mode. And the other thing is that our brains are set up that when we are in survival mode a whole system of circuitry called the social engagement system shuts down. So we don't look at people our voices may become somewhat monotone, and you can see that with autistic kids.

AMT: You look at the story of Jordan Rosen.

NORMAN DOIDGE: Yeah.

AMT: And what was he like before therapy?

NORMAN DOIDGE: Jordan Rosen had been diagnosed with autism by three physicians. Two of them were specialists in autism. And he, sometime in his second year of life, changed. He started screaming and raging all day long covering his ears. No contact with his parents, he just lost the ability to form relationships. Did very unusual stereotype things, listening to certain tapes and then if they stopped he would freak out. And he went to the Listening Centre in Toronto. And what happened was his malfunctioning auditory zoom was retrained by modified music that was designed to help him develop one. And I mean, you know, his parents were told he would probably have to be institutionalized. Anyway, he's a case, he's a great case. Not everybody does as well as Jordan does. But Jordan today has a gentle wonderful wit. He has a job, he did extremely well in school, he went to university, he has friends. Like, he fell off the autistic spectrum, there's no way anyone would ever guess.

AMT: How old is he now?

NORMAN DOIDGE: He's in his early 20s. So he had several years of intervention at the Listening Centre and then I think he had some, he went back, you know, a few times for maintenance. That's a wonderful example.

AMT: You know, there are no doubt parents listening right now with autistic children and they know that there is a spectrum and they know that. But how do people get in on that kind of treatment, how do people find out about it? How accessible is this to the average Canadian who could benefit or might benefit from this kind of treatment?

NORMAN DOIDGE: Well, something like this particular one, I think there's only one Listening Centre in Canada, there might be something in Calgary. So the good thing about this intervention is that it's usually you do two weeks and you go back home and you need a number of weeks to consolidate the gains and then you come back. I mean, we're really incredibly fortunate in Toronto to have a few of these wonderful centres.

AMT: What do you think needs to happen for these treatments to reach more people?

NORMAN DOIDGE: Well the first thing is to get the word out. And of course, we're in a new world where, you know, parents are very increasingly well organized in communicating with each other.

AMT: When you have the information you can actually start to ask your own medical professionals about getting access.

NORMAN DOIDGE: I encourage people to find medical professionals who are open minded and if you hear about something that they will contact these people and speak to the clinicians involved and have a conversation. Not say I've never heard of it, next. Because, you know, a number of these things are cutting edge. So by definition they are not going to be, you can't be cutting edge and be widely distributed throughout the world. That doesn't happen. So it requires an attitude in a health professional of my learning days are not over. You know, it continues it's ongoing and it's wonderful and, you know, some health care professionals are just so delighted to learn about something that will help a patient or, you know, a child. Some take the attitude, you know, I don't know about it so it couldn't be important because if it was important I’d know about it. And well, that's kind of tautological in some ways because it's a big world out there and there's lots of things we don't know about, that we weren't trained in. And so things are evolving.

AMT: Norman Doidge, thanks for coming in.

NORMAN DOIDGE: Thank you.

AMT: Dr. Norman Doidge is a psychiatrist on staff at the University of Toronto and Columbia University. He's the co-writer of the documentary The Brain’s Way of Healing and that is airing tonight on The Nature of Things. His latest book is also called the Brain's Way of Healing. So tonight on The Nature of Things CBC Television. Stay with us. Coming up, our Friday host Dave Seglins joins me to check in on some of the stories we've been following. And I'm going to speak with Lindell Smith, the first African Canadian Halifax city councillor in nearly two decades. I'm Anna-Maria Tremonti, this is The Current on CBC Radio One, Sirius XM and online on cbc.ca/thecurrent.

[Music: Extro]

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

SOUNDCLIP

[Music: Checking In]

VOICE 1: Even though I was six I was in control of my own narrative. So since then I've been perpetually aware that, like, I'm the one defining what my disability looks like to people around me.

BENJAMIN BERGEN: I guess my interest is in discovering how humans are able to transmit their thoughts through time and space to other people. Profanity is one of the most revealing ways that we do that.

NORA LORETO: This isn't really a new situation and it's only news because the finance minister said it but for many job seekers this has been a reality for a while.

OSSIE MICHELIN: I just want to make that clear first of all that we're not opposed to dam, the dam has been built. But we want to make sure that the province does this right, that the provincial energy company does this right.

AMT: Well, some of the sounds of the past week on The Current, and as always we received lots of feedback from you about the stories we are covering. Here to help me go through some of your emails, tweets and posts is this week's Friday host of The Current Dave Seglins, who is an investigative reporter with CBC News, you're familiar with his voice. Hi.

DAVE SEGLINS: Good morning.

AMT: I see you just tweeted us. [laughs]

DAVE SEGLINS: I did, I thought I'd give you some early feedback.

AMT: Well, we're getting all sorts of early feedback. On our first half hour we talked to David A. French about how he's being harassed online--

DAVE SEGLINS: Ah hah.

AMT: With all sorts of Holocaust themed slurs. And already we're getting--

DAVE SEGLINS: Twitter loves you.

AMT: Well, Twitter doesn't love us. But yeah, everything from people supportive of him to people who say we are biased or boased as somebody wrote. I guess they were just writing too fast.

DAVE SEGLINS: Well, the truth is in Twitter, no?

AMT: Well, yeah let's get to it. Last week The Current’s Friday host Ing Wong-ward. She is a former CBC radio producer who is currently the Associate Director at the Centre for Independent Living in Toronto. She hosted a special program exploring the challenges and possibilities faced by people with disabilities.

SOUNDCLIP

ING WONG-WARD: When it comes to disability there's a whole lot of diversity, which is something society and the media sometimes seemed not to get. We're aiming to change that a bit today by changing the conversation.

DAVE SEGLINS: Well, after that program we heard from many of you. Nancy Hensen from Winnipeg writes, “thank you for such an informed and thoughtful program. As a disabled female academic, it makes me feel proud and hopeful. It is 2016 and it is time to recognize that people with disabilities no longer have to make the case for being here. We want full citizenship and substantive rights legislation.”

AMT: Also from Winnipeg, Kate Grisim shared these thoughts, “I hope listeners realize just how different a show discussing disability is with a disabled person hosting it rather than relying on Jerry Lewis-type motifs that to live with a disability means to live a tragic life. As disabled people we need to be the ones shaping our narrative and Ing did such a good job of that.”

DAVE SEGLINS: Kate Candy from West Vancouver, BC writes, “my son was given a diagnosis of Asperger's syndrome in grade 8. He has an amazing gift, not a disability. He now has a computer science degree from UBC and is a partner with a company that matches charities with funds. His passion is computer programming and he's turned it into a job that helps society. If society was more accepting of difference, we would all benefit.”

AMT: And the listener calling themselves Lovley Jubbly had this comment on Facebook, “just finishing listening to the disability activists. I'm so inspired that they chose to step up and advocate for themselves and others. Now we as a society need to step up too.”

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Talking to strangers is good for us — and for politics, says author

Guests: Kio Stark

[Music: Tracking the Story Theme]

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AMY ANDERSON: When you get my age you don't have many friends left. They’ve all passed away, your relatives are gone. You don't have people that you can phone and chat when you feel a little lonely. With older people their children have a life too and they don't like to give up their interests.

AMT: Well that's 93-year-old Amy Anderson of Calgary. Last month, we heard from experts who say that loneliness is an epidemic among seniors. In the UK the Silver Line is a helpline where seniors can call any time night or day just to chat with a stranger and drive away loneliness, if even for a little bit. Writer and researcher Kio Stark argues that talking to strangers is something we should all be doing more often. On the street, in the subway, wherever we pass each other. She says that the benefits go beyond addressing the feeling of being alone. Kio Stark is the author of When Strangers Meet: How People You Don't Know Can Transform You. And we've reached her in New York City. Hello.

KIO STARK: Hello.

AMT: So when it comes to loneliness, what do we gain from talking to strangers that we wouldn't gain from talking to friends or family?

KIO STARK: Everyone has this need for intimacy, for a sense of being heard, for a sense of community and we do get those things, obviously very deeply, from our friends and our family. There is also a special form of intimacy that you can think of as fleeting intimacy, which are these moments of connection with someone you don't know and may never see again. The sense of connection that you get from those brief moments still counts. It counts in your stack of daily feelings of intimacy.

AMT: Is there a difference if we interact face to face instead of online or over the phone?

KIO STARK: Definitely. I think that having the body in the interaction is really important. Definitely online interactions have their own kinds of pleasure and even sense of communion. But when the body is in the equation, when you are in the same space as someone, there are all kinds of ways that we communicate. We align ourselves, we align our voices, we adjust our cadences and that's part of how you feel connected. Is that this person's body and physicality and sensory information is responding to you, as well as their words.

AMT: And as we heard, loneliness is a particular problem among the elderly. How do they benefit from talking with strangers?

KIO STARK: There's just the ability to talk to a person. It doesn't have to be the person's children or their friends, any kind of interaction is helpful. And I think it's something that you can pay attention to if you're walking around in the world and you're trying to give more acknowledgment to the strangers you see. It's a special gift if you can also do that with an old person. And they may not be looking you in the eye. They may be someone who's having to really focus on moving around or walking with a cane. You know, you can stop and say good morning as you pass them by moving faster than they are. You're doing somebody a really good turn.

AMT: Mm. Have you always talk to strangers?

KIO STARK: Yeah. [laughs] I grew up in a family where it was just, that's kind of what people do. My father was a city planner, so he was in city politics. My mother was an emergency room nurse. So they were people who not only talk to strangers professionally but were accountable to them in a pretty significant way. So I think that was part of it is I grew up with a sort of respect for understanding other people's situations, but also just the pleasure of it. It turned out that not everyone does that. I discovered that probably not until my mid-20s.

AMT: How did you learn that, what happened?

KIO STARK: The moment that really sticks in my mind is I had been in college in the south in the United States, which is reputed to be very friendly and in a college town, I would say that it is. And then I moved back north and I was walking around where I was just newly living and passed by this guy, and I just said good morning. And he stopped and he looked at me and he said you must not be from around here. And I just thought, OK, I'm not from around here but maybe in a slightly more existential sense than what he meant.

AMT: Interesting. What's your favourite encounter with a stranger?

KIO STARK: One of the ones that is very emblematic to me and also has a sort of magical realist quality to it is I was starting to cross the street once in the city, and New Yorkers are always in a hurry, so we're always standing in the street waiting to cross. And this old guy who seemed just like out of a movie, he's wearing a long overcoat and a sort of fur stole and a hat, turns to me and he's very bossy, and he says don't stand there, you might disappear. And I thought, OK, well that's weird. So I stepped back onto the sidewalk because what am I going to do? And then he was so gentle and he said good, you never know in this city. And I just thought well, this guy really cares about me, he doesn't even know me but he really doesn't want me to, you know, perish into the storm sewer, and that's so sweet. And then I crossed the street never saw him again.

AMT: So interesting, huh? First of all, it's very friendly.

KIO STARK: Yeah.

AMT: You know, even if he was a little bossy but it's friendly. If you say something to someone, you kind of right away get rid of a barrier.

KIO STARK: Absolutely.

AMT: I guess if you wait for them to say it, maybe they won't. People are shy. People think no one wants to talk to them. But if you do it.

KIO STARK: I think that it's sort of underestimated.

AMT: The aversion to talking to strangers isn't necessarily the case everywhere in the world. Is it stronger in countries like Canada, the US, the UK?

KIO STARK: In terms of Canada, I was told that everywhere in Canada people are very amenable to talking to strangers except Toronto, where nobody wants to talk to strangers. I was told this by five or six people, obviously. That's anecdotal.

AMT: Were they Torontonians? Because I talk to strangers.

KIO STARK: Yes. Well you’re on radio. [chuckles]

AMT: I say hi to, I know, but, you know, back in the day when I was a real runner I said hi to every runner who I passed.

KIO STARK: Yeah. Acknowledging somebody who has something in common with you is a little bit different. So particularly if you're in the minority in a place you're probably going to say hello or somehow, you know, visually recognize a person who is also in the minority in that situation. For example, if you are a dad on a playground where most of the caretakers are women and you see another dad, you're going to do this sort of like, hey other dad, we're in this together.

AMT: Oh, OK, I get what you mean.

KIO STARK: And that may be the case with running.

AMT: But why don't people talk? Is it because of technology, what is it?

KIO STARK: Well, I think there's a lot of reasons why people won't interact. And they vary by situation. So some of it is people are in a hurry, some of it is they're shy, some of it is they may think that it's inappropriate, you know, they may be observing a sort of thing called civil inattention, which is where we barely acknowledge each other to be civil and then really give each other space because we're in a crowded city and, you know, you don't necessarily want people in your business.

AMT: Beyond the warm and fuzzy feeling for ourselves, what larger benefits can come from starting conversations on the street, on the subway?

KIO STARK: I think there is a really significant political benefit to this, a public good. So the more that you talk to people who are different than you in any way, whether it's gender or age or race or ethnicity, the more you get a sense of who they are, of what it's like to be them. And that's a kind of openness and understanding that we need a lot more of these days, particularly in America right now. It seems like a very small thing if I talk to a stranger or if I talk to someone who isn't like me and learn something about them, well, that's just me. But it stacks up, it's incremental and it accretes over time and that can really change things and it can change people's feeling about the communities they live in. Kia Stark, thanks for your thoughts on this.

KIO STARK: Thanks so much for having me.

AMT: Kia Stark, author of When Strangers Meet: How People You Don't Know Can Transform You. She's in New York City. I don't know Dave, do you talk to strangers?

DAVE SEGLINS: I will on occasion. I like the idea of it. You know, when it goes well it's good. But--

AMT: Now you're inspired.

DAVE SEGLINS: And now I'm going to try harder.

AMT: OK. Your turn.

DAVE SEGLINS: OK. Moving on to another story that we've been following. On Monday, The Current spoke with Benjamin Bergen. Now, he's a linguist, cognitive scientist, and the author of What the F: What Swearing Reveals About Our Language Our Brains and Ourselves. He believes that there's nothing wrong with swearing in front of children if it's done in the right context.

SOUNDCLIP

BENJAMIN BERGEN: I would say on a daily basis there's probably a run of the mill profanity in our home. I mean, there are lots of things that are frustrating when you have a two-year-old at home. For example, naptime or the absence of naptime. You know, I don't censor myself, my wife doesn't censor herself and we don't censor the kid as long as it's just these run of the mill profanities. We don't really allow slurs in our house and that's a different issue and we don't allow abusive language, calling people by names and so on. We do explain to him what the invisible social rules are that he might not get because the social world is really complicated. I think it's actually giving children too little credit to say that they can't learn, that there are different behaviours appropriate for different contexts.

DAVE SEGLINS: Well, we certainly heard a lot from you after that interview at @TangoDown tweeted, “shame to see little kids running around cursing like a drunk longshoreman.” And John David Franks tweeted, “is this really what our civilization needs: less restraint - verbal or otherwise? Explain, don't cuss.

AMT: Richard Stevens replied, “he who first verbally abused his fellow man, instead of knocking out his brains without a word laid the basis of civilization.” And Lisa Thornbury also stood up for swearing tweeting, “personally I really enjoy a well placed F bomb.”

DAVE SEGLINS: And then Catherine Dallen of Newmarket Ontario wrote, “as a teacher of 35 years I have to disagree with the comments that young people can differentiate when to use these words. They've become so common that they can no longer know when it is inappropriate. In job interviews and other such social events, it puts them at a disadvantage.”

AMT: On Facebook, Kathryn Giesbrecht commented, “swear words are like spices. When used sparingly and in appropriate circumstances, they can enhance the overall experience. When piled on top of everything, it becomes nauseating.”

DAVE SEGLINS: And we're going to give the last word on swear words to Sarah Warford who tweeted, “as someone without kids I will continue to enjoy when yours drop F-bombs loudly in the grocery store.”

[Music: Tracking the Story Theme]

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Meet Lindell Smith: Halifax's first black councillor in 16 years

Guests: Lindell Smith

SOUNDCLIP

QUENTREL PROVO: Basically, we lost three young men under 30 in six days. That's heartbreaking. We are in a state of emergency because we're losing our young men. They are supposed to be the future and we're losing them at a rapid rate. We're only four months in here in Nova Scotia and we got seven deaths.

ANNA-MARIA TREMONTI: Well, that was Halifax community activist Quentrel Provo speaking on the show in April. We spoke to him after three young black men were killed in gun violence in the space of just six days. During that conversation we spoke about ways to make changes in a city where racial tensions have run deep for a long time. Today we're talking to one young man who's hoping to make a difference as the city's first black councillor in 16 years. Lindell Smith was elected to Halifax City Council this month. At 26 years old, he's also one of the youngest ever. And he joins us in our Halifax studio. Hello.

LINDELL SMITH: Good morning Anna.

AMT: Congratulations on your win.

LINDELL SMITH: Thank you so much.

AMT: Why did you decide to run for council?

LINDELL SMITH: Wow. [laughs] You know, it's kind of a long story. But to shorten it, it was really because our current counsellor Jennifer Watts, who is an amazing counsellor by the way, she decided that two terms was enough and also it's important to have different voices and perspectives and diversity on council. And when she announced that she wasn’t reoffering the first thing I thought in my head was we need to find somebody to take her place. And who going to represent the community and the city and really think about the residents? And I was going to folks and trying to figure out who that person was and everyone would turn around and say you need to think about yourself. And fast forwarding, I realized that you know what, I think I would be that person. I had conversations with family and friends and supporters, and came down to the fact that you know what, let's do it, and took it serious and I guess we made history.

AMT: Mm. Yeah, you're the first black councillor in Halifax in 16 years?

LINDELL SMITH: Yeah, it’s kind of sad to say.

AMT: You're also 26 years old, so you're one of the youngest, eh?

LINDELL SMITH: Yes yes yes. Second youngest ever. [laughs]

AMT: How young was the youngest? [laughs]

LINDELL SMITH: 26, but Bob Sepels or Robert Sepels, and his birthday was a month before mine. [laughs]

AMT: Oh, OK. Pretty close then, eh? But you were already engaged in issues then, clearly.

LINDELL SMITH: Right.

AMT: You were concerned about what's going on in your community.

LINDELL SMITH: Mmhmm. So yeah, at a young age about 13, 14, I kind of really took community work seriously and, you know, at a young age at 14, you don't really truly understand the importance of how your community works and the things that impact it. But I kind of realized that and figured out that, you know what, let's see if we can make a difference. And got friends and other people together and really tried to do some different things around and like, shooting a video at 14-years-old about all the terrible things with all our playgrounds and how rusty they were and we need them fixed now and doing things like that. Kind of putting forward, that we want to see change and then, you know, just being able to start non-profit recording studio in the community for young people and helping other communities start their own recording studios. And be an advocate for many issues and trying to build relationships with businesses and residents throughout the district and the city. So really I take community work very serious.

AMT: You talk about recording studios. You're an advocate for, like, recreational facilities and things for youth to do.

LINDELL SMITH: Right, yeah.

AMT: Talk to me about why that's so important.

LINDELL SMITH: Well, growing up in a community that is service heavy but still under resourced. And when I say that, we have a lot of community centres, we have a lot of services for people with addictions and daycares, childcare facilities and whatever else you can think of. But at the same time, there's not a lot of supports put into these places. We have community recreation centres that have been here for very very long time, for years, and they’re still at a state where they could be better. And for me, recreation is one of those things that kind of kept me out of trouble, that kept a lot of my friends out of trouble, and actually builds more community. When you’re doing recreations, you’re building team building, you're meeting new friends and new families. So for me, recreation is one of the things that I like to focus on and try to just see how we can do it better and maybe support more young people to be able to work in recreation or do whatever they think.

AMT: And so you’re District 8.

LINDELL SMITH: Yes.

AMT: And that's the north end, around Gottingen street?

LINDELL SMITH: So it covers, so all the way down by Africville, and north and all the way up to Cornwallis street, going up to Quinpool and little bit of the west end. So it's a pretty vast district.

AMT: And a good section of that district is predominantly black.

LINDELL SMITH: No, actually. If we were going back in time, in a time machine, yes. So Gottingen street, Uniacke square, Mulgrave park, and the history was yes, it was very predominantly black. But as of now it's very very mixed, very diverse. And there's not as many African Nova Scotians in the district as there used to be. So that's one of the milestones of the election, was that me having a majority of the vote, so every second person casted a ballot for me knowing the fact that it wasn't just black voters that voted for me. It was the whole community, from seniors to people of all different races and heritages. So that was one of the biggest milestones of the election, to realize that.

AMT: And of course, you'll be representing that district on issues that affect the whole city. What has it meant to African-Canadians in your community and in Halifax not to have any person of colour on the council?

LINDELL SMITH: It means a lot and there's like the bittersweet aspect of it. Because yes, it’s been 16 years since there’s been an African Nova Scotian, but there's never been anyone of Aboriginal descent on council ever, which to me that needs to be something that we talk about as well. And the fact that Nova Scotia has some of the oldest, if not the oldest, black communities in Canada and we are saying that I’m the second African Nova Scotian person to represent our city on council which makes decisions about how we operate. That's another, that's not progress. Yes it's great that I'm here today, but for me what really would show that we're progressing as a city is when we have more folks, in the next time around we're not calling it history, we're looking at it as oh, this is what it should be.

AMT: Mm. Well the very fact that you're engaged in politics and you're young, like, people have been dismissive of politicians.

LINDELL SMITH: [laughs]

AMT: So are you hoping, well no, are you hoping that you'll be more of a role model for people to take another look at what you can do through politics, through city government?

LINDELL SMITH: Yeah and, you know, when I first started this I was saying I'm not a politician, I'm not a politician, I don't want to be a politician, it's not what I want to do. But I think when you look at what the status quo of a politician is there's a stigma attached to it. But for me and what really resonated with a lot of residents and a lot of people just all over all over the country at this point is that I am a regular Joe. There's nothing bout me bleeds politician, I care for my community, I have a young child, I do regular things. Politicians should not be someone that lives in an ivory tower, it should be someone that you see on the ground.

AMT: And is in your community, in your grocery store.

LINDELL SMITH: Is in your community. Exactly.

AMT: OK, well Lindell Smith, good luck.

LINDELL SMITH: Thank you so much.

AMT: Thanks for talking to me.

LINDELL SMITH: Alright, have a good day. Lindell Smith, elected to Halifax City Council earlier this month. He was in our Halifax studio.

[Music: Tracking the Story Theme]

DAVE SEGLINS: And now it's time to give credit where credit is due. The week that was on The Current was produced by Idella Sturino, Shannon Higgins, Howard Goldenthal, Ines Colabrese, Lara O'Brien, Josh Bloch and Willow Smith.

AMT: Pacinte Mattar, Sujata Barry, Liz Hoath, Karin Marley, Kristin Nelson, John Chipman, Julian Uzielli, our intern is Jacqueline Mackay.

DAVE SEGLINS: And The Current`s writer is Peter Mitton, our web producer is Lisa Ayuso, our technical producers are Gary Francis and Jennifer Rowley, our senior documentary editor is John Webber.

AMT: Our senior producers are Richard Goddard in Toronto, Cathy Simon in Vancouver. The executive producer of The Current is Kathleen Goldhar. So Dave Seglins we're out of time, but you are here tomorrow in the chair.

DAVE SEGLINS: Looking forward.

AMT: Well, I'm looking forward to hearing you.

DAVE SEGLINS: Thanks for having me.

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Sweat lodge honours missing and murdered Indigenous women

Guests: Marcel Gagnon

AMT: Dave Seglins, investigative reporter with CBC News. You know his work and tomorrow he is The Current`s Friday host. That's our program for today. Finally today, when I was in Prince George two weeks ago, I was invited to take part in a woman`s sweat lodge by the Lheidli T'enneh elder Marcel Gagnon. Now, Indigenous sweat lodge ceremonies are traditionally for men, that's changing. We are not allowed to record inside, but we do will leave you today with a bit of what it sounded like from the outside. Next to the roaring fire where the stones are used to heat the lodge, where it is warmed. I'm Anna-Maria Tremonti, thank you for listening to The Current.

[Sound: Crackling fire]

MARCEL GAGNON: So the sweat we're doing here today, it's called a humble sweater. And it’s for prayers for the families of missing and murdered women and men. There are men too. I think it's going to be a very very powerful ceremony today. So what we want to do first is we're going to light the smudge here, and we'll smudge out here and then we'll show you where we want you to sit and we'll make our way in. And when you go into the lodge, do it clockwise, go to your left and make your way around.

[Sound: Metal clanking]

AMT: I've never been in anything like that. It was a beautiful ceremony.

[Sound: Drums beating]

AMT: There was singing. There were prayers.

[Sound: Fire crackling]

AMT: The stones that go into the middle, the hot stones are the grandmothers.

[Sound: Indigenous singing]

AMT: Or the grandfathers.

VOICE 1: Grandmother.

[Sound: Metal clanking]

VOICE 1: With me being in the sweat, I feel all my emotions, I feel, everyday stress, people that I love and their health issues and people that are missing. And it's kind of hard to explain how it is when you're in there. You get different emotions that come in at different times, so.

VOICE 2: How do you feel after?

VOICE 1: Honestly, I feel a little bit lighter. I feel like some of my burdens are not something that actually are right there. They're not as big as you make them up to be compared to everyday life. [chuckles]

MARCEL GAGNON: It was very painful for me. For me in particular because there’s a lot of the men that I worked with have been murdered and stuff. Today especially was pretty hard on me just knowing why we were in there. My mind immediately went to a couple of those men that left here not too long ago, and yeah it was hard.

VOICE 3: In our community we have had loss. I have a child myself so I know how it must hurt for these families, so I just hope that the Creator helps these families heal.

[Drum beats stop]

VOICE 4: We have family members that have been missing for a few years and pray that they still come back to us.

[Sound: Drum beats and Indigenous singing]

MARCEL GAGNON: It's good for us as Aboriginal people to say, you know, we do these things we need them back in our lives, we need these ceremonies. That's what's going to make us stronger. I call it awakening the medicine man or the medicine woman within. We were born with it, it will never go away. We just hear that drum and something inside us is alive.

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October 27, 2016 full episode transcript

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