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 November 21, 2016

Host: Anna Maria Tremonti

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Listen to the full episode

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

The chicken sisters—Miss Broiler. Miss Fryer. Miss Caponette. Miss Stewer and Old Madame Hen. But we’re spotlighting Ms. Roaster of the Year.

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: She knew her fryers from her roasters. She offered both sizzle and steak. Julia Child was the first television celebrity chef, one who broke all the rules, the American who mastered French cuisine. She was in her sixties when she became a breakout star and she not only changed the way we ate, she changed North America's perception of food. In half an hour, our ongoing project, The Disruptors, focuses on Julia Child’s recipe for success. And a moment of personal disruption—this one courtesy of author Camilla Gibb.

SOUNDCLIP

He said well, how much time would you need? And I thought if I had six months to just dedicate myself to this, I would know whether I had anything to say.

AMT: The man who asked the question would offer to fund that writing time—a move that enabled Camilla Gibb to be the author she wanted to be. A good news story celebrating generosity coming up. We'll also hear from Massimo Tozzi. For a full year he commanded an Italian naval ship on a mission to save desperate migrants adrift on decaying ships in the Mediterranean.

SOUNDCLIP

I can tell you I had personal ideas about migration, before being the captain, were very clear ideas. Now many of these ideas have changed.

AMT: Hear his perspective in about an hour. But we're starting today with Canadian Special Forces in Iraq.

SOUNDCLIP

The Canadian Armed Forces will now be allocating more military resources to training Iraqi security forces. We will be supporting and empowering local forces to take their fight directly to ISIL/

AMT: It's not quite the way it's playing out. The CBC's Murray Brewster is standing by to explain what he's seen travelling with those troops in Iraq. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current.

Back To Top »

Embedded CBC journalist Murray Brewster on Canadian special forces mission in Iraq

Guests: Murray Brewster

SOUNDCLIP

And I’ll just get you to stand forward if you could, folks. We had—if we look at a few vignettes, these are all based on real-life situations not necessarily here but things that we experience. So with our technology or through our observation devices, we may notice these elements massing up to 100 potentially enemy, massing for attack on the front line. And because they have demonstrated hostile intent, we are able to use through our rules of engagement, our own integral weapons system to engage that kind of threat.

AMT: That is Lieutenant-Colonel Steven Hunter—commander of the Special Operating Forces regiment in northern Iraq. He's speaking on a hilltop—you can hear the wind there—15 kilometres outside of Mosul, Iraq. With the battle to retake Mosul raging, the Canadian Special Forces on the ground are there officially on an advise and assist mission to the Kurdish Peshmerga. But as Lieutenant-Colonel Hunter explained there to the CBC's parliamentary defence reporter, Murray Brewster, that doesn't preclude engaging ISIS forces when they have to. ISIS or ISIL. There are some 200 Canadian Special Forces on the ground in northern Iraq where the offensive to wrest Mosul away from ISIS has been underway for more than a month. Murray Brewster was in northern Iraq last week and he's back in Ottawa and he joins us now. Hello, Murray.

MURRAY BREWSTER: Hi, Anna Maria.

AMT: So you got 15 kilometres away from the frontlines. That's pretty close in that fight.

MURRAY BREWSTER: We were on top of Zardak Mountain. I know that sounds like something out of Lord of The Rings and it looked a little bit like Lord of The Rings because the ground looking down from the mountain towards Mosul was scorched, empty, a wasteland. It was an incredible sight. And you could actually hear the battle raging. We couldn't quite see into Mosul because of the ground mist but you could hear the explosions. Every time there was a huge blast, some of the Kurdish troops on the mountain top would give out this great big yell and cheer.

AMT: And so you're saying scorched around. So to get there, you had to go by villages or towns? What was it like?

MURRAY BREWSTER: That's right. Well, what we did was, this was an organized Canadian military tour. And they took us along essentially a four lane highway from Irbil that in bygone days connected Irbil and Mosul, you know across a destroyed bridge and then through some villages, recently liberated villages—about four of them—passed several IDP camps, refugee camps, internal refugee camps that were just mushroomed around the landscape, and then up to the top of this mountain which was about the closest that they could get us to the battle, or closest as they were willing to take us to the battle that’s been going on for Mosul for the last month.

AMT: What did you learn about what Canadian Special Forces are doing then in that fight against ISIS, Murray?

MURRAY BREWSTER: Well, what has become very clear is that Canadian Forces and Special Forces are involved in a limited form of combat. And this has been very much a political question and you see military members and you see politicians like jigging on the head of a can. But essentially what we have is Canadian troops, if they're fired upon by ISIS, they return fire. If—as you heard in Lieutenant-Colonel Hunter's clip just a couple of moments ago—if they see ISIS assembling and the Kurds are unable to fire to prevent a counterattack, then the Canadian Forces will fire. The Canadian Forces have been using weapons that the Kurds don't have, for example anti-tank rockets. They’re been guiding airstrikes. What we have and what we're seeing is a limited form of combat. Know the Canadian Forces it does not have a designated place in the front line. It does not have an assigned hill to take or defend but what it does do is been supporting in a very real way, the operations of the Kurds. And if the Canadian Forces, the Canadian Special Forces were not there, I would suggest the Kurds would probably be in a lot of trouble and not be able to hold the line. So they are playing a very integral role there.

AMT: And so, but you’re saying they're kind of dancing around this officially. Why is that?

MURRAY BREWSTER: Well, it's because of the political narrative, the political narrative that has been spun around this. The government has made it very clear that this is a training, a non-combat mission. I would suggest to you that last week the reaction to the story that we ran coming out of this trip about the fact that Canadian troops were firing first in some cases against ISIS was completely and totally disingenuous on the part of national defence, the spin coming out of national defence. Well, this has always been part of our rules of engagement. They pointed to the fact that the chief defence staff had mentioned that during a testimony before a Senate committee back in the spring that this was a possibility. Well, there's a difference between saying you might do something and then actually doing it several dozen times in the midst of a battle. So it revived even somewhat of the political debates that we would have back in the nineties about what had become a peacekeeping. When you're dropping troops into Bosnia that are peacekeepers but then all of a sudden they're engaged in battles like Medak Pocket, it's you know, it's certainly meant to be shoehorned into a political narrative.

AMT: And is that because our politicians are afraid of how the public will react? Is that because they don't want to be seen to be taking that role and making themselves more apparent to ISIS? Why?

MURRAY BREWSTER: Well, I think it's mostly because it's domestic politics. I'm pretty sure that ISIS is very clear about the role that Canadian troops are playing. When you have Canadian soldiers firing anti-tank rockets at their Frankenstein suicide bomb trucks, I think ISIS has a pretty clear indication of the role the Canadians are playing. So this is more for domestic political consumption because it fits with the political narrative of the current government which is that we're not engaged in combat. We're not the Conservatives. The Conservatives were in the bombing campaign, we’re not. So I believe it's very much for domestic political consumption.

AMT: You say Frankenstein suicide bomb trucks. What are you talking about?

MURRAY BREWSTER: What I'm talking about is that the Islamic State for the last year or so has been taking not 18 wheelers but very, very large trucks, lading them with explosives, armouring them up. And the troops on the ground call them Frankenstein trucks, and then driving them towards the front line and setting off these huge suicide bomb blasts that allow ISIS fighters to follow through behind and breach the front line. If you remember back in December of 2015, there was a huge battle the Canadian troops had to help out in to plug the gap in the line. That was how the battle unfolded because there was a suicide truck bomb and then a breach in the line. And so Canadians have been firing pre-emptively at these trucks to make sure that it doesn't happen again.

AMT: Now you also mentioned that Canadian Forces are using weapons the Kurds don't have. They've asked for them, haven't they? They want those weapons.

MURRAY BREWSTER: They have asked for them. Yes. Yes. The Kurds have asked for a rather extensive list of equipment from Canada. And the Liberal government, when it retooled the mission in February of this year, promised that it would deliver these weapons and nothing's happened so far. And earlier last week I had an opportunity to ask National Defence and Global Affairs Canada what's going on and essentially the government is waiting for the approval from the Iraqi government because the Kurds are a semi-autonomous part of Iraq and the Iraqi government must approve the imports. And in talking to Kurdish commanders, a lot of them are saying don't hold your breath because billions of dollars have been given to the Iraqi government in US military aid and the Kurds claim that not a lot of that has found its way to them.

AMT: What's the relationship like between the Canadian Special Forces and the Kurdish forces?

MURRAY BREWSTER: It's very good. It was strained in March of 2015 because of the friendly fire death of Sergeant Andrew Doiron. But it was very clear to me that there is a great deal of respect that the Kurds have for the Canadians and for the way that they do training. And I am also pretty convinced that that respect is reciprocated to the Kurds because the Kurds are very tough, disciplined fighters. And having covered Afghanistan extensively and having patrolled with Canadian troops who were training Afghans, I can say that you can really see the difference. You can see the difference in the quality of the troops. And I think that Special Forces appreciated the fact that they didn't have to bring the Kurds along as much as the Afghans had to be brought along in terms of training and getting them ready for combat.

AMT: So what did your trip to Iraq teach you about Canada's plans to continue its presence in the country?

MURRAY BREWSTER: It's taught me that this is an incredibly complex military and political situation and I don't think that we have necessarily wrapped our head around it entirely. And I'm speaking not only of the impending defeat of the Islamic State at least in the conventional military term but I don't think we necessarily thought through what happens next because the Kurds are already asking Canada for training to prepare them for the inevitable guerrilla war that the Islamic State is going to fight after they have been defeated conventionally. We also have political questions such as what happens to the Yazidis and what sort of humanitarian help can be given in the region. The United Nations only has 57 per cent of the funding it needs to keep camps going in that area.

AMT: Okay. Murray, we have to leave it there. But thank you so much for your work on the ground.

MURRAY BREWSTER: Thanks.

AMT: Murray Brewster, parliamentary defence reporter for CBC News. He joined us from Ottawa, just back from Iraq. This is The Current.

Back To Top »

'Like a religious moment': The gift that gave Camilla Gibb a new life

Guests: Camilla Gibb

[Music: Sci-Fi]

All this season, as part of our project, The Disruptors, we're featuring personal moments of disruption. And today we have one from author Camilla Gibb. Two decades ago, Camilla Gibb had set herself up for what she thought would be a dream job in academia, only to realize the realities of the ivory tower did not sit right with her. Then a man she barely knew gave her a gift that would change her life. Here is Camilla Gibb.

SOUNDCLIP

Twenty years ago, I had just finished my PhD in social anthropology. I was back at my undergraduate college at U of T with an administrative job. And I knew what was before me—I had to apply for academic jobs and you know grow up, really. But I was feeling like a fraud and I was feeling very disillusioned with academia. It wasn't my language. And I knew, as a social scientist, I knew there had to be another way of telling stories and I knew what that language was. It was fiction. But what was I going to do? Suddenly you know turn around having completed this PhD with a mountain of student debt before me and say now I'm going to write fiction? I was sitting in the quad of University College, probably looking really petulant and morose, wearing black, writing in a notebook and I had made the acquaintanceship of this man who was not an academic himself but was friends with academics at the college. He used to come and visit them. He was a businessman, a disillusioned businessman and he was searching for something himself and he was trying to teach himself Mandarin at the time. And he would sit down beside me periodically when I was having my coffee break and we'd chat about the world. And one day he sat down beside me and said you know you look really miserable. And it was one of those things that someone says to you and you just feel sort of you've just been stripped naked somehow. You feel completely exposed and where do you go with a question like that? And I had to confess that I was. And he asked me what the problem was and I said that I had set my life up in such a way that pursuing fiction wasn't a possibility and it was something I had always wanted to do. And I was trying. I was writing short stories on the sly while I was doing the applications for proper grown-up jobs. And I was having no success with it whatsoever. They were terrible stories. I was amassing a good pile of rejection slips. And he said you know what's really stopping you from pursuing this? And I said well, I think beyond the expectation that I should be an academic now. It's probably a matter of time. You know and the money to facilitate that kind of time. And he said well, how much time would you need? And I thought if I had six months to just dedicate myself to this and do it to the exclusion of anything else, I would know whether I had anything to say. I would know whether I had anything worth hearing. And he said well, how much money would you need to live on for six months? I remember my rent was $775 a month and I thought $1,000 a month. And he said well, what if I were to give that to you? $6,000? And you can imagine my shock. I barely knew this man and I thought well, nobody does that and that's strange and I think what are the implications of a gift like that? And he said you could treat it like a scholarship and I said well, what if I can't write? What if you don't like what I write? And he said I don't read fiction. And I thought to myself, you know is this some kind of indecent proposal? [laughs] Do I have to sleep with this man? And then I thought to myself well, would I? Six-thousand dollars seemed like a fortune.

He met me a week later in the quad. He delivers the cash—$6,000 in cash—in a box. Beautiful box which I open and there's a tiny note inside that says, “With no strings attached.” It's like a religious moment. I see the sunlight shining down and illuminating this box. I don't even remember what words were exchanged. And I mean have you ever seen $6,000 in cash? A Monopoly game doesn't even give you that many bills. It was, you know remarkable and terrifying to have this in my possession. It was more money than I'd ever known or handled. And you know I wasn't going to squander a second or a dollar. I took it and I ran literally. I quit my job. I gave up my apartment and I went to my brother's trailer. He wasn't in the trailer during the week so I had that space to myself. I borrowed a laptop. I plugged that laptop into the outlet above the tiny stove and I just started writing and I was so terrified. I was so terrified to stop writing. I was so terrified to fail. So I didn't stop writing. I just kept writing throughout the weeks of a summer. A short story because that's what I thought I was doing, that went on and on and on to the point where it started to look suspiciously like a novel. That novel was eventually published a year later and I haven't stopped. I haven't looked back since.

You know when I look back on all of this I think to myself you know what? He gave me the biggest gift. He gave me a gift that truly changed my life. But what he gave me was not just the financial means and the permission really to take that time out of my life. He gave me the kick I needed which was to say if you think these are the obstacles before you and I eliminate them for you, you have no choice. You simply have to face it as terrifying as it is and it was terrifying. I could have entertained that fantasy that I would one day be a writer for the rest of my life had that not happened, you know and never done it. So he gave me this phenomenal gift. He asked me to maintain his anonymity. He said there were no strings attached. I wrote that first novel. It was published. I invited him to the book launch. He came with his wife and daughter. He bought a book. I signed it for him. He left. [laughs] And then the next book came out three years later. I did the same. He came to the launch. He bought a book. I signed it. He left. No words were ever exchanged between us. No recognition of what this gift had done. And there's some beauty in that somehow. It's a true act of, what's the word? I mean he was a benefactor. It was a true act of beneficence? Is that even a word? When I look back on that moment, I certainly see it as life changing. And I also see it as what’s my responsibility? If I have that kind of resource, can I share it with someone? It did come not explicitly but from my own sort of morality, it came implicitly with that it felt like the responsible and right thing to do to pay it forward in some way that would facilitate something similar for another person who had obstacles in the way of a dream.

AMT: Author Camilla Gibb on the moment that led her on the path to becoming an award-winning author of four novels and a memoir. That was produced by Karin Marley. You can find all the moments of disruption we are featuring this season on our website: www.cbc.ca/thecurrent. Click on our features and The Disruptors and send your own story to us through the website. Click on the contact link. We want to hear from you. Stay with us. Right after the news, more disruption—Julia Child, the first ever celebrity chef and one still adored by home chefs today. This is The Current.

Back To Top »

'The revolutionary in pearls': Julia Child's recipe for success

Guests: Alex Prud’homme

AMT: Hello. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti and you're listening to The Current.

[Music: Theme]

AMT: Still to come—when migrants making the perilous crossing of the Mediterranean radio for help, Massimo Tozzi was one of those who would come to the rescue. In half an hour, the Italian Navy commander shares his experiences of rescuing desperate migrants on the Mediterranean Sea. But first, a disruptor in the North American kitchen.

SOUNDCLIP

[Music: Sci-Fi]

VOICE 1: The disruptors.

VOICE 2: Julia Child presents the chicken sisters. Ms. Broiler. Ms. Fryer. Ms. Roaster. Ms. Caponette. Ms. Stewer and Old Madame Hen. But we’re spotlighting Ms. Roaster of the year. We’re roasting Ms. Chicken today on The French Chef.

[Sound: Laughter]

[Music: Cheerful]

AMT: Kong before Jamie Oliver, Rachael Ray, Anthony Bourdain, there was the original celebrity chef, Julia Child. With her warbly voice and unflagging good humour, she was an iconic TV presence from the 1960s onward, as you heard there. She introduced French cuisine to North America, teaching us all new ways to cook in our own homes. Julia Child died in 2004. She was 92 years old. But her legacy lives on because she forever changed the way we think about food. She was a disruptor and as part of our project, The Disruptors, we’re looking at her life and legacy and we're starting in her kitchen. Julia Child’s kitchen is a popular display at the National Museum of American History in Washington, DC, and Paula Johnson curates food history collections there.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: I’m Julia Child.

[Music: Cheerful]

VOICE 2: Well, this is actually Julia Child's home kitchen from her home in Cambridge, Massachusetts. This was the design that Julia and her husband Paul was settled on when they settled in the house in 1961. By the time they got to Cambridge, this was their 12th kitchen and so they knew exactly what they wanted. They knew what Julia needed to do her cooking and so they designed it to suit her. And so for example, the countertops are a couple inches taller than ordinary because of course she was six foot three and having a taller countertop, she didn't have to stoop over. This kitchen, when you look at it at first, it seems pretty simple. It seems sort of small and you know the cabinetry is very simply painted. But if you look closer, you can see that this is a serious workspace. You can see some of the pegboard has outlines around the pans and the pots and that is again to make sure that everything is put away properly. Things are categorized. You have the pots and pans that are used on the range are very close at hand. You have the knives that are placed on magnetic strips on both sides of the sink. She was a self-avowed gadget freak, knife freak. She loved to try new tools, new equipment. She did have I think many fish scalers. I don't know how many fish scalers one person needs but she had quite a few. She also basically said everybody needs you know at least three knives but you can see she has many more than that because she again, collected knives to suit different tasks.

VOICE 1: This is Julia Child. Bon appetit.

[Music: Cheerful]

VOICE 2: Julia enjoyed cooking for her friends and family. As she said, the kitchen is the beating heart of the household. And it would have been her desire for everybody who sees this to feel the same way about their own kitchens.

[Music: Cheerful]

AMT: Paula Johnson curates food history collections at the National Museum of American History in Washington, DC. Alex Prud’homme is the author of The French Chef in America, which chronicles how Julia Child remade herself after her initial success with the book, Mastering the Art of French Cuisine. He also happens to be Julia Child’s grandnephew and he's in our New York City studio. Hello.

ALEX PRUD’HOMME: Hello there.

AMT: Did you ever have a chance to be in that kitchen in her home and cook with her?

ALEX PRUD’HOMME: Oh, many times. And for me it's odd to go back to the Smithsonian and see the kitchen behind Plexiglas because I did spend a lot of time there. And I associate it with delicious aromas and fantastic creations on the old Garland stove in the corner. So when I see it I want to just walk through that Plexiglas and sit down, have a glass of wine and see what's cooking.

AMT: Your fingerprints are probably still somewhere in that kitchen.

ALEX PRUD’HOMME: Actually, the chewing gum that my sisters and I surreptitiously put under the kitchen table may still be there. [chuckles]

AMT: [laughs] Well, what was she like? How does she compare with the person we saw on television?

ALEX PRUD’HOMME: Well, the Julia that you saw on television was actually the real Julia, the person that I knew. I think it slightly amplified for TV. She was a great ham, as she put it. She loved to perform. But even when it was just Julia and I alone working together on her memoir, joking back and forth, it was very much the person you saw on television. She was very genuine.

AMT: Tell me about the moment she decided she wanted to dedicate her life to learning about French food.

ALEX PRUD’HOMME: Well, I can give you the precise moment. It was at lunch on November 3^rd, 1948. She had never been to France before. Her husband Paul brought her to France because he was posted to the US embassy and they took the SS America across the Atlantic through a terrible storm, landed in Le Havre and drove to Paris. And along the way they stopped in Rouen and went to La Couronne, The Crown, which is the oldest restaurant in France and had lunch and it was a lunch of sole meunière, which is sole in a sputtering butter sauce, with wine which Julia had never had at lunch before and the salade and lovely café filtre at the end. Julia was transported by her first French meal and she said it was the meal that changed my life.

AMT: Hmm. How much of a departure was her focus on food from the life she and her husband Paul had before?

ALEX PRUD’HOMME: Pretty radical. She was raised in Pasadena, California in an upper middle-class household. They had a gardener and a driver and a chef. So she and her mother and siblings spent very little time in the kitchen. She basically knew how to boil water and burn toast and didn't really have much of an interest in cooking other than that she loved to eat as a young woman. But when Paul brought her to France, a switch went off and it just changed her life. And she dedicated the rest of her life to cooking and teaching cookery and writing and talking about it.

AMT: Because he was originally the foodie, wasn't he?

ALEX PRUD’HOMME: That's right. He was a very interesting, unusual guy. He had lived in France in the twenties as a starving artist and a teacher. He knew Hemingway and Gertrude Stein. He was fluent in French. He became a gourmand and a wine expert back before that was a chic thing to do. And he was 10 years older than Julia so when they met in the OSS which was the precursor to the CIA during the Second World War, he was kind of the suave older man who had lived a very adventurous and cultured life around the world. She was, as she described herself, too tall, too loud, rather unsophisticated social butterfly. And it was a little bit of a Pygmalion story. He sort of tutored her and mentored her and helped to shape her. And certainly when they lived in France, he was the senior member of the relationship. He was the diplomat. He was sort of out front. She was the diplomatic wife who was learning to cook at the Cordon Bleu and then with her friends Simca Beck and Louisette Bertholle sort of behind the scenes. And it's when they moved back to the States in 1961 that this remarkable transformation happens. Paul retires from the Foreign Service and very consciously steps back from his public role and pushes Julia forward. Her first cookbook, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, is published in 1961. She gets on television first in 1962 and then starts to perform as the French Chef in 1963. And then she was off and running.

AMT: What made her want to launch a new career at that stage in life when many people think about winding down?

ALEX PRUD’HOMME: Well, she was a very dynamic person and she had dedicated herself to cookery, as she put it. She had this book. She wanted to promote it and she had this great joie de vivre and she wanted to share her excitement about food and the love of France and its culinary tradition to her fellow Americans. And so she did. I don't think she thought strategically too much about her career. She was very much of an instinctual person. She went by her gut, if you will. And it just felt like the right thing to do and she was full of energy. The other thing is they didn't have children. They had tried but as she said it didn't take but later on she did say to me you know had I had children, I probably would not have had my career. I would have dedicated myself to my kids.

AMT: Tell us back to her early days as a chef. So Mastering the Art of French Cooking is published in ’61, right?

ALEX PRUD’HOMME: Correct. Yeah.

AMT: And then her first episode of The French Chef cooking show comes two years later?

ALEX PRUD’HOMME: Yeah. ‘63. She gets on television for the first time when she's invited on a show called What I've Been Reading in Boston. It was at the local PBS station WGBH. And she was invited to come talk about the cookbook. But Julia being Julia, she didn't just bring the book, she brought a hot plate and a frying pan and some eggs and lots of butter and proceeded to make an omelette in the French way and in fact was so intent on making the omelet that she forgot to mention the title of her book. But the good news is that all 27 people who are watching the show wrote in and said we want more of that tall lady cooking. And there were cooking shows on at the beginning in the 1940s. Actually James Beard, who later became a great friend of hers, had a show called I Love to Eat, which was aptly titled. And at that point Paul and Julia didn't even own a television. But what I've been reading went so well that the honchos at WGBH sort of looked at each other and said hmm, maybe a cooking show with this Julia Child person might work out. And so they did three pilot shows, each one of which was slightly better than the last. They had more and more mail coming in. And so in 1963, they started up The French Chef.

AMT: Okay. Well, we have a montage of a few episodes. Let's listen.

SOUNDCLIP

[Music: Cheerful]

Welcome to The French Chef. I'm Julia Child. You know the egg can be your best friend if you just give it the right break. I'm not talking just about breakfast eggs, but eggs for brunch, eggs for lunch, eggs for appetizers, for company and eggs for elegance. Now take for instance, oeuf en cocotte, or eggs baked in little dishes like this. These are called little ramekins.

[Music: Cheerful]

Getting acquainted with the Hollandaise family today on The French Chef. This is Hollandaise sauce— lemony and rich and buttery. And all you need to do is just taste it and you know it's homemade. Mmm. Delicious. And we have its sibling, sauce Béarnaise, or Béarnaise as we call it here which is like so many people in the family—brother has freckles, sister has red hair—and in this family the difference is flavour. And we're going to make them and show how to keep them and show how to heat them again and show what to do if tragedy strikes which it sometimes does of course, but not when you really know what you're doing.

[Music: Cheerful]

Welcome to The French Chef. I'm Julia Child. You could really call this chocolate mousse ambrosia. It's got such a lovely texture and flavour that it really brings tears to your eyes when you taste it. It's really—it's that good. And while you make it, you're going to learn several fine techniques such as how to cook eggs in sugar until they make a thick and creamy mass. And this is one of those techniques you can use for French buttercream frostings and cake fillings. And also you're going to master egg whites. That is the gateway to French soufflés and cakes. So you're not only learning a mousse, you're getting sort of a great bunch of marvelous techniques which will serve you well. That's my little pitch for you learning the moves.

AMT: Learning the moves. Don’t you love the music, huh? [laughs]

ALEX PRUD’HOMME: I love the whole thing. It just brings it back. I love hearing her voice and she's so enthusiastic. You just want—you feel like she's there next to you kind of guiding you through these things and she mixes the humour with the pedagogy. You know it's so interesting listening to that chocolate mousse at the end where she says you know you're not just learning how to make a mousse. You're learning the techniques and you're learning things that you can apply to other dishes and that’s sort of classic Julia, where she mixed humor with teaching in a very compelling way.

AMT: It's interesting because she was so successful. When you go on YouTube and you start watching those, you go down the rabbit hole. You just keep watching because it's so much fun to listen to and see what she’s doing.

ALEX PRUD’HOMME: You know it’s amazing. Even today—she’s been dead for a decade—I would put her up against any of today's modern celebrity chefs. I think she'd still win because she's just, she's so charismatic and funny and entertaining but also instructive. And that's sort of her secret sauce.

AMT: She started in the era of black and white television and she carried on. What inspired Julia Child to keep experimenting with her television presence?

ALEX PRUD’HOMME: You know if I had to pick one adjective to describe her, I'd say inquisitive. She was just constantly curious and constantly pushing. She said she wasn't ambitious and didn't have a grand plan. You know with all due respect, she must have had some ambition because she was ground-breaking in so many realms. I mean in the books she did and the television she did, in the documentary films she made and in the way she lived her life. So she was driven but in a very kind of pleasant, not overbearing way. And she was just endlessly curious and she liked being a celebrity but she didn't take it that seriously and she referred to herself not as a chef but as a cook. And she referred to herself as an eternal pupil and a teacher of cookery more than a celebrity.

AMT: Did her celebrity surprise her then?

ALEX PRUD’HOMME: I think it probably did. You know I tried to pin her down on this a bit when we were working on her memoir. I said do you realize the impact you had on the culture? And she said oh well, if it wasn't me, it would be someone else. And again, I say yes, maybe it would have eventually happened but she was the right person at the right time with the right message and she just had that gleam in her eye that people found irresistible.

AMT: How did she change the culinary landscape in North America?

ALEX PRUD’HOMME: In many ways. There were notebooks like the ones that she did at the time which were French cookbooks for the American audience laid out in a very logical way with exact measurements and step-by-step procedures illustrated from the cook’s perspective, not from sort of the third person which is the standard of the day. And this was really aimed for people like herself who were dedicated home cooks, who were adventurous and ambitious. And the television that she did, she just had so much fun. I mean you just heard it on those clips that she was having a great time. But at the same time she was extremely instructive and really knew her stuff and so she kind of made things that were a bit complicated seem easy and seem approachable and she really held the viewer’s hand in a sense. And what you heard in the clip how she kept saying oh, it's so delicious and she was constantly tasting and it made you want to cook and made you want to dive through the TV and eat that boeuf bourguignon or that tarte tatin, you know? And then she did documentary films which you know people just simply weren't doing about food at that time. She, you know anticipated a lot of what's happening now by decades. And so she was really a pioneer and a revolutionary.

AMT: She really actually even changed what grocery stores carried.

ALEX PRUD’HOMME: That's true. She exhorted her audience to demand you know fresh mushrooms and exotic vegetables like leeks or you know herbs like tarragon and parsley or tools like the garlic press or later on you know the Cuisinart. And when the audience did so, the retailers responded because they would sell out on all those things. And you know she wasn't the only one doing this. She wasn't solely responsible for the food revolution in North America in the sixties and seventies. But she was its leading voice and I would argue she was the first celebrity TV chef. And so when she spoke, the medium was so powerful that it really resonated in the culture.

AMT: Did she realize the irony of how her work to preserve the French culture of eating was symbolically overturning the dinner table in North America?

ALEX PRUD’HOMME: I think she did. That's a great question. You know I call her the revolutionary in pearls because you know on the one hand she was kind of a patrician woman, sort of traditional in certain ways and certainly a defender of tradition in French cooking. And yet in her personal life, she was a revolutionary. She was upending the shibboleths and the standards of the day. Let's remember what food was like in the early sixties when she first appeared on the scene, which was you know Jell-O and iceberg lettuce and meals in a can.

AMT: Velveeta cheese.

ALEX PRUD’HOMME: Yeah. I mean this space age horrible food and all the advertising was about well, let us take care of you, the little woman in the kitchen. You know let's make it easy. You don't have to worry about this stuff. Julia took the exact opposite approach. Her approach was let me show you how to make a really great meal that requires some work and you get your hands dirty. And it just—people really responded to that as a reaction against all of that kind of commercial glop they were being fed.

AMT: Did she become rich as a result of her fame?

ALEX PRUD’HOMME: She did fine but she was resolutely non-commercial. She never endorsed products or chefs or individual restaurants. She was very careful to cover up the labels on ingredients she used on television. She turned down million-dollar endorsement deals left and right. So she certainly forsook a lot of money. But that's not why she was doing what she was doing. She was doing her cooking shows in her books, in her films because she loved to cook and to teach cookery. And that's really what turned her on. But she certainly wasn't like the modern celebrity chefs that you know are basically CEOs and celebrities first.

AMT: Has a product line, yeah.

ALEX PRUD’HOMME: Right.

AMT: As you point out, she was the first celebrity chef, the television celebrity chef so many have now followed. Some chefs do have a cult following on all their product lines. She was alive to see some of this change. What did she think?

ALEX PRUD’HOMME: I think she had mixed feelings to be honest. You know she saw cooking as a civilized art, as she put it and she liked the camaraderie and the creativity of cooking. And today what you see is competition and soap opera melodrama. And I think she would have dismissed that out of hand as something that wasn't you know true or real. It's a manufactured product in a sense. On the other hand, these cooking shows that seem to happen 24/7 now have brought a huge audience to food. And I think she'd be really pleased to see how many people in North America consider themselves foodies. And as she would say, are “eating with gusto.” It was one of her favorite words. And you know going out more, buying cookware more. They're more informed about wine and ingredients and that conversation is really engaged. And it's remarkable. So I think she would have mixed feelings you know on the one hand a little bit disappointed by the razzle dazzled, on the other hand encouraged by the widening of the conversation.

AMT: She'd be proud of some of them top, huh? Because she mentored some of today’s celebrity chefs.

ALEX PRUD’HOMME: Yeah. In fact one of the guys I interviewed for this book is Emeril Lagasse, who she mentored. And he, to this day, credits her with getting him on television, inspiring him as a kid. He's kind of the lynchpin between Julia's era of cooking on television and the modern sort of CEO celebrity era. He's the guy who is the transition figure there.

AMT: And there are others too, huh? Lidia Bastianich, Sara Moulton.

ALEX PRUD’HOMME: Yeah. And especially as women chefs, they were very much influenced by Julia's model. I just saw Lidia the other day in Toronto as a matter of fact. You know Julia got her on one of her programs in the 1990s. It was the first time I believe that Lidia was on TV and they won an Emmy for that particular episode. And now look at Lidia. She's got her own little empire going. Same with Sara Moulton who Julia mentored.

AMT: You know Alex, as you’re talking I'm watching the clock here because I know we're going to have to stop for a regional break, a 90 second break very soon. So I want you to hold onto that thought. I'm speaking with Alex Prud’homme. He's the author of The French Chef in America which chronicles how Julia Child remade herself after her initial success with the book, Mastering the Art of French cuisine. So Alex Prud’homme, we will continue our conversation in the next half hour. Stay with us. After that we'll be joined by a man who's helped save the lives of countless migrants and asylum seekers making that dangerous crossing of the Mediterranean Sea from North Africa, trying to reach Italy or other European waters. Commander Massimo Tuzzi, a captain an Italian naval rescue ship, he'll be by to tell us what he learned and how he's changed his mind about what he used to think about the migrants who are coming to the Italian shores. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current on CBC Radio One, Sirius XM and online on www.cbc.ca/thecurrent.

[Music: Sting]

AMT: Hello. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti and this is The Current. Let's keep going, shall we? If you're just joining us, I have been speaking with Alex Prud’homme and we're talking about the life and legacy of his great aunt, the great chef Julia Child, the woman who brought French cooking to regular Americans and Canadians. If you missed the first part of our conversation, you can find it on our website www.cbc.ca/thecurrent or with the CBC Radio app. Now Alex Prud’homme is the author of French Chef in America, all about Julia Child and Alex, we've been talking about her as a disruptor in the food world and most people who are disruptors face resistance. What challenges did she face?

ALEX PRUD’HOMME: Well, in the seventies Julia separated herself from her old persona which was the French chef and cooking just classical French cuisine and she reinvented herself. She re-Americanized herself. She began to write in the first person as Julia Child and she developed a really kind of distinctive voice, the one that we came to know on television, and she was able to transfer that to the page. And it was not easy for her but she did it and then she started to use this voice rather loudly and aggressively. And she, you know would champion Planned Parenthood and left-leaning Democratic politics. She would dismiss things like nouvelle cuisine as not being as healthy or revolutionary as its promoters declared. She questioned vegetarianism and nutritionists and all of these things kind of stirred the pot, which she loved to do in her kind of mischievous way, and gained her huge following but also some enemies. Amazingly some of which were within the ranks of fellow cooks. There were the Hesses, a couple that wrote for the New York Times who said that Julia was not a chef though she played one on television. And Madeleine Kamman, a woman who was French-born and Massachusetts-based who taught cookery who said that Julia was neither French nor a chef and that she, Madeline was and therefore she should be known as the French Chef. [chuckles] So Julia kind of took these criticisms in stride and was careful not to respond in public. But in private, I found a letter where she's saying about Madeleine Kamman, or she who will not be named, that she'd like to take Madeleine by the short hairs and grind her up in the Cuisinart piece by piece.

AMT: Whoa.

ALEX PRUD’HOMME: So she was annoyed in private.

AMT: Okay. So that scary knife, those big knives. You’ve got to be careful. [laughs]

ALEX PRUD’HOMME: The fright knife, yes. Exactly.

AMT: Interesting. We heard earlier the National Museum of American History in Washington, DC has her kitchen as a display. It's very popular to this day. We wanted to hear what some of the visitors had to say about it. Listen.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: I am fascinated by these bajillions of thing over here.

VOICE 2: It's fascinating because I’ve always loved her and I used to follow her TV show on PBS. The first day I got of hers was the Art of French Cooking and I made dishes out of it.

VOICE 3: Every Thanksgiving, I use her recipe for cream mushrooms that his grandmother used to make.

VOICE 4: Julia gave us the recipe.

VOICE 1: There’s a lot of stuff in here. I mean, gosh, the meals that must have been made in this kitchen. It's impressive.

VOICE 6: This is cool. Her arrangement of her pans because she actually drew drawings around what she was doing and the fact that you can just have a sense that she was very organized.

VOICE 7: So when I come here, I think about sitting in front of the PBS television show watching The French Chef with my mother and learning how to cook with my mother through Julia Child.

VOICE 8: I always think of like a little bit of more wine for me, a little bit of wine for the dressing. [laughs] But this is exciting for me being a cook to just see this. It is a part of our history. In the whole cooking culture that she started, she was at the forefront.

VOICE 9: She was an icon. She really was.

AMT: Alex Prud’homme, what are you thinking as you listen to that?

ALEX PRUD’HOMME: Oh, I love it. You know the—

AMT: Well, they love her, huh?

ALEX PRUD’HOMME: Yeah. Well, you know that kitchen display was meant to be a temporary exhibit and proved so popular that it's now fairly well enshrined in the National Museum of American History and it's wonderful to see. You know you see people there of all ages, races, creeds. They kind of think they're going to pass through and they just get stuck there. And it's remarkable, I've seen it happen many times and it's a combination of the kitchen itself is quite interesting. The displays and the cabinets of you know her giant rolling pins and her mortar and pestle which looks like it belonged to a cave man. And the wine that she used on the show which was called Château Gravy Master. It was actually Gravy Master mixed with water to look like wine. And then there's a video loop of some of the old shows like some of the moments you were just playing and it's just kind of irresistible. And now, that kitchen is the entry point to a whole new American history of food hall. They've done a wonderful job with it.

AMT: So when people find out your connection to her, how do they react to you?

ALEX PRUD’HOMME: When I first started to promote the memoir, My Life in France, was people would come up and give me a big hug and some of them would start to burst into tears because it turned out that Julia had really changed their lives. And I wasn't ready for that at first. After the fifth or sixth time, I thought oh okay. This is a thing. I’ve going to have to get used to it. More often, they just want to know all about her because she was such a genuine person on television and they felt as if they knew her and people invariably referred to her simply as Julia, as if she is a personal friend even though they had never met her.

AMT: It's also incredible to me that Julia Child achieved all this success. She was like starting in late forties, early fifties.

ALEX PRUD’HOMME: Yeah. Well, she first learned to cook in her late thirties in Paris at the Cordon Bleu which was considered sort of old maid territory back then. She didn't get on television till she was in her fifties. And the new book I wrote, The French Chef in America, talks about the period in the seventies when she was in her sixties, when most people were thinking of retirement and she was charging ahead, reinventing herself, had a whole second career that was really inspiring and she just led a bouillabaisse of a life, as she would say.

AMT: She created a model for aging. She was aging on television. This is not a small thing—woman on TV like in her sixties and then seventies. How old was she when the show ended?

ALEX PRUD’HOMME: She stopped performing as the French Chef in 1971 but she went on to do many other shows and she was working right up till almost till her death in 2004, when she was just shy of her 92^nd birthday. She wasn't doing so much TV at that point but she was still writing and she was still curious and she was still pushing. So she was amazing in the way that she performed as an older woman on television and she was aware of the visual. So she did get facelifts, at least three of them that I know of, and she was careful to occasionally diet even though she hated to diet. But—

AMT: Oh, come on. What about all that butter?

ALEX PRUD’HOMME: I know.

AMT: Of course we now know butter is good for you. Butter was never supposed to be off the menu.

ALEX PRUD’HOMME: Yet another example of Julia being ahead of the curve.

AMT: This is true. Well, for you, what is her most important legacy?

ALEX PRUD’HOMME: Well, it comes down to this optimistic worldview that she has. She would encourage people to be adventurous in their cooking, you know take risks, don't worry about failing and if you do fail, never apologize. But above all, have fun. That was her message and she applied this very optimistic worldview to cooking but one could really apply it to anything in life and I think people just found that empowering.

AMT: I have to tell you, I am so hungry right now.

ALEX PRUD’HOMME: [laughs] Time for some boeuf bourguignon.

AMT: Or maybe some baguette and butter. Anyway.

ALEX PRUD’HOMME: Yeah, sure.

AMT: Thank you so much. It's great to talk to you.

ALEX PRUD’HOMME: My pleasure. Merci and bon appetit.

AMT: Alex Prud’homme, grandnephew of Julia Child and author of French Chef in America. He joined us from New York City. If you want to see pictures of Julia Child’s kitchen in the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History, please go to our website: www.cbc.ca/thecurrent. And we also want to hear from you about your thoughts on Julia Child as a disruptor. You can comment on our show's Facebook page or you can tweet us @thecurrentCBC.

[Music: Bridge]

AMT: You're listening to The Current on CBC Radio One and Sirius XM. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti.

Back To Top »

Italian Navy Commander recalls 'devastating' memories of his year rescuing migrants

Guests: Massimo Tozzi

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: Please, faster. Your position, please. Your position.

VOICE 2: 33.1.

VOICE 1: And then under, under.

VOICE 2: Okay. 80.52. We have small children. Please can you help us? We are sinking.

VOICE 1: Madam, please calm down because we will send rescue. But you need to calm down. Okay. So save your battery. I will call you back, okay?

AMT: Well, that call for help was captured in the documentary, Fuocoammare, or Fire at Sea. And there have been thousands of such calls to Italian ships from seafaring migrants attempting to cross the Mediterranean in very flimsy boats and dinghies. More than 340,000 asylum seekers have arrived on Europe's shores this way so far this year. More than 4,000 are known to have died on such a journey. And when those calls for help come across the ship's radio, it is people such as my next guest who go to the rescue. Massimo Tozzi was captain of the Italian military patrol unit on the ship Giuseppe Cigala Fulgosi from 2014 to 2015. And in fact, his ship and the captain was featured in the documentary, Fuocoammare. Commander Tozzi is visiting Toronto and he's with me in our studio. Hello and welcome.

MASSIMO TOZZI: Thank you. Thank you very much.

AMT: When you hear that woman's voice, you can hear the panic in her voice. Is that what you faced when you were commander of that ship?

MASSIMO TOZZI: I saw many scenes of panic, scenes that honestly I could have never imagined possible. I see many. On my ship during one year, we made 25 rescues—sorry—search and rescue event. During these events, we took on board. We picked up more than 2,600 refugees or migrants.

AMT: And you know we see pictures of those boats and they look fragile but we just, we see it sort of in two dimensions. And I'm wondering how you see it. When you see these boats, you’re the captain of a ship. You know what the dangers and the risks of ships. So when you see them coming into view, what are you thinking?

MASSIMO TOZZI: Okay. Now we know how to behave. There are many kind of boats. For example, as you were saying before, there are inflatable rafts, but there are rubber boats. There are even wooden boats, trollers. According to these units, they can contain different figures of migrants. For example, an inflatable raft that can contain a maximum 100, 120 refugees. A troller even 400, 500 refugees. So the situation can be different.

AMT: They are always overcrowded, huh? They’re always crammed.

MASSIMO TOZZI: They’re always overcrowded. Always overcrowded. Imagine that an inflatable raft that should contain maximum 20 people, they contain 100, 120.

AMT: So when you started doing this, tell me about the first things you saw. How shocked were you at what you were seeing?

MASSIMO TOZZI: Try to imagine the situation. They’re at sea. The engine’s off. They are completely drifting. You see so many people, inflatable rafts that overcrowded. Only few of them have life jackets. There are no systems of communications. They have no water. The water is [unintelligible]. So we have to intervene. We put our boats at sea. We give them the first aid. For example, we give them life jackets and water and when we are sure the situation is calm, they are calmed down, we start to bring them on board on our ship.

AMT: Okay. So by the time they get to you or you see them, how long have they been on the water often?

MASSIMO TOZZI: When we discover them, it's seven o’clock, eight o’clock in the morning. I mean just 12 hours after they leave.

AMT: And what's the emotion like as they get to your ship?

MASSIMO TOZZI: Inwardly, we have many, many emotions. Many feelings. Many sensations. Outwardly, we have to go at sea and to rescue them. I mean there are so many things to do. We can't lose time. We can’t waste time.

AMT: You have a job to do and you have to just do it, right?

MASSIMO TOZZI: Yeah. Under this point of view, I think we are fortunate. There are so many things to do that you can’t waste time thinking and thinking again to things that might be. You have to do and stop.

AMT: How long have you been in the Italian military?

MASSIMO TOZZI: Now 25 years.

AMT: Have you ever seen anything like what you saw on the water when you were rescuing people?

MASSIMO TOZZI: I can tell you it is first time. It's the first time. I can tell you I had idea, personal ideas about migration before being the captain, were very clear ideas. Now many of these ideas have changed, have been modified by what I saw at sea.

AMT: Tell me more about that. What were your clear ideas before?

MASSIMO TOZZI: Ahh. My ideas were we have to help them but I didn't know what the meaning of this doing. When I was at sea, I tend to say that the law of the sea is the one and I agree no man left behind. Safety is paramount. My safety. Safety of all people. Safety of my ship, of my crew but what’s more important—the safety of migrants, refugee, asylum seekers. There are people we need to be helped.

AMT: Is there a particular rescue that stands out for you?

MASSIMO TOZZI: There is one particularly rescue operation on the 15th of August 2015. We met, we had to investigate and contact the vessel that was a wooden boat with more or less we saw about 400 people on board. At the end of the day of that morning, we would have saved 320 migrants but on the ship below deck, we found 49 bodies without life. Corpses.

AMT: Forty-nine, huh?

MASSIMO TOZZI: Forty-nine. 49.

AMT: What had happened to them?

MASSIMO TOZZI: They died during the journey. Probably they got—they choked.

AMT: From what, the fumes of the ship? The gasoline?

MASSIMO TOZZI: The gasoline. The gasoline.

AMT: Okay. Because they were so tightly—they were in such an enclosed space.

MASSIMO TOZZI: In a closed space. They were below deck. You can imagine a very small room, less than one metres high, large two metres and a half, two metres deep. In this space, they were concentrated, many, many people. Forty-nine of them died there.

AMT: Who on your crew had to go and find them?

MASSIMO TOZZI: At the beginning, two of my officers had to go there. They called me. Commander, Commander, there is a very dire situation. So I went there and I saw a mound of bodies, one on each other. It was not possible to count them. It wasn't possible. It was 15th of August. There were 43 degrees Celsius. So it was almost impossible to stay in there. There were many waste, many garbage. I say that to my authorities in Rome probably between 30 and 40 dead people. At the end, there were 49.

AMT: Devastating.

MASSIMO TOZZI: It was devastating. But we were fortunate because a few days later we had to go on another scene of event, another scene of action, another boat to be saved. So we didn't have time to think about it.

AMT: And you say that there were 312 people on that ship who you saved too, on the same ship.

MASSIMO TOZZI: Exactly. Exactly.

AMT: Right. But you remember the exact date too. So that is indicative of how much it stays with you.

MASSIMO TOZZI: Yeah.

AMT: Do you think about it now? Is it something you think about often?

MASSIMO TOZZI: Oh, many times because when I go down below deck, the first scene I saw was a child. This child was more or less eight, nine years old. And I have a kid aged eight whose name is Riccardo. They were very similar, one to each other. For a moment, for just a moment, I had the impression, a very vivid impression to see my son there. So I got shocked. I got frightened from what I saw and I had to get out on the deck to breathe. This is what I saw, was what I felt. This is the reason for which even today even if more than one year has passed since that day, when I think back to what I see, my sensations and emotions are very, very, very difficult to explain.

AMT: And what do the—the people who come on board, what do they tell you about how they were treated? Do they tell stories? Do you hear snippets? I know you're working and there's a lot going on but do you hear snippets of how they were treated before they got there?

MASSIMO TOZZI: No, no, no. Every refugee can come on board. We ask him five questions: Where are you from? Where are you escaping from? When did you leave? How much did you pay for the journey? And the last question: Can you recognize—among other migrants—can you recognize if there is any smuggler, any trafficker? This our question we have to do. And for this reason I heard many stories about their life. Very, very, very difficult lives, the lives they have.

AMT: What kinds of things are they telling you? Where were they coming from, the ones that you were rescuing?

MASSIMO TOZZI: Most of them are from Eritrea, from Nigeria. Even from Gambia, from Niger, Chad and Sudan. They're fleeing from dictatorship, poverty, bombings, violence and torture. There are even economic migrants, those who try to go to Europe for a better life.

AMT: And have they at times pointed out smugglers who have been traveling with them?

MASSIMO TOZZI: Oh yeah. We found many smugglers as Italian navy. Many of them had been taken and given to the, I say to the Italian justice.

AMT: How much pressure do you feel as the captain of a ship like that as you head out, as you head toward the people you know you have to rescue?

MASSIMO TOZZI: I think each captain thinks its crew is wonderful but mine crew was really wonderful because they make this job every day, every year. The captain changes one year after year. The crews still remains for three, four, five years. So in one year, they saw in five years, four years. I'm particularly grateful to my crew for having done what they’ve done. I saw an enlisted officer, a young military [unintelligible] closing the eyes of people, of dead people. I can't forget this. I will always be grateful to them.

AMT: They treated the people who were dead with great respect.

MASSIMO TOZZI: Great respect. We have to serve and we like to serve. It's not a matter of training. Training aside, it's like food. You eat in the morning, afternoon, your dinner. So you’re training. What counts is motivation. The crew must be motivated and they are extremely motivated.

AMT: You know in Italy and many other countries, there is worry and there's opposition about how many migrants are arriving. And I know that that's a government issue and I'm not asking you to pronounce on any one government but what kinds of conversations do you have with colleagues and friends when you're not on sea about that? What do you tell people who are curious and who have ideas that are different than your own?

MASSIMO TOZZI: Okay. You'll be surprised knowing that our conversation are very simple. Simple. Once we get back to our room, we need to relax. We need to relax. We don't spend much time talking about what we've done. I mean the emotion, the emotions are so deep, so deep that it's not easy to share them, to share these feelings with other people. Anyway, this is a very controversial theme, migration. I know the numbers are increasing dramatically, drastically increasing. It's not easy for a country such as Italy to [unintelligible]. But it’s our job anyway.

AMT: Is there anything that keeps you awake at night sometimes, when you think about being out on the sea?

MASSIMO TOZZI: In the first days and the days after what I saw before and I was describing, I had some difficulties in sleeping. But now, now I’m in Lago, another Italian town. I changed my job and now I'm a professor at the Naval Academy. Now life is different. Once again, I’m back with my wife, my kids. So my situation is, for certain respects, has improved.

AMT: And as a professor at the Naval Academy, what advice do you give to those you are teaching about some about issues like this?

MASSIMO TOZZI: The first thing I'd say them is that safety is paramount. And no man must left behind at sea.

AMT: And so when you look at your career, how important has the time been that you spent you know on that ship that year of rescuing these migrants?

MASSIMO TOZZI: It’s a normal aspect of my career. I could have been the captain, the commander of another ship. But I was lucky to be the commander of that crew in that period.

AMT: What do you want us to know all this way, all this far away in Canada about the pictures we see then? What do we need to remember?

MASSIMO TOZZI: I am a teacher. My job is not here. It’s not telling you information. But I want to meet the interest, the motivation for this topic. Information, you can read this information wherever you want. Newspaper, journals, TV, TV shows, what you prefer. But the motivation, the interest—no. You can't learn this. This is probably—my being here is [unintelligible], I think.

AMT: You want us to know how much it matters.

MASSIMO TOZZI: Exactly.

AMT: Yeah. It matters a lot.

MASSIMO TOZZI: Exactly.

AMT: Thank you for your work.

MASSIMO TOZZI:Thank you to you.

AMT: That is Massimo Tozzi, a commander. He was assigned for a year to an Italian naval ship rescuing migrants off the coast of Lampedusa in the Mediterranean. He joined us in our Toronto studio. That's our program for today. Stay with Radio One though, for q. Michael Stipe and Mike Mills of REM join host Tom Power. They're all waiting in the wings. Now remember you can take The Current with you. Go on the CBC Radio app. You can get that from the App Store or Google Play. Now we want to go back to Julia Child. We were talking about her earlier. She had a huge impact not only on how we think about food but on popular culture and that translated into a memorable impersonation by comic Dan Aykroyd on Saturday Night Live. So we're going to leave you with a bit of that—his impersonation of the French chef in a famous sketch that ends with quite a bit of blood spattered in the kitchen. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. Thank you for listening to The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

Welcome.

[Sound: Crowd laughing]

I’m Julia Child. Today we’re going to make a holiday feast, or les fêtes d'holiday. And we're going to start with a half-boned chicken, or poularde demi-désossée. You need a fine, fat roasting chicken like this one. Now first, remove the giblets—and you really should save the giblets. They make a fine stock for soup. Or you can save the liver and fry it up with some onions for a little snack, or if you have a number of livers, you can make a lovely liver pate or perhaps a delicious liverwurst which you can spread on a cracker—a Ritz cracker, a Saltine or on bread, rye bread, or pumpernickel bread. Oh well, anyway. It’s time to bone the chicken. Now for this you need a very sharp knife. Can’t do nothing without a sharp knife. Now you place the chicken on its stomach and cut along the backbone to the pope’s nose like so. Crap. Oh. Oh, now I've done it. I've cut the dickens out of my finger. Well, I'm glad in a way, this happened.

[Sound: Crowd gasping, yelling]

Back To Top »

Provide Transcript Feedback

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

November 21, 2016 full episode transcript

More Stories Like This