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The Current Transcript for November 23, 2016

Host: Anna Maria Tremonti

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Listen to the full episode

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

I thought you know what? I discovered this guy. [chuckles] I was disappointed to learn he was already completely famous in Canada.

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: Well, clever statements aside, Steve Martin may not have discovered Lawren Harris, but his enthusiasm for his art has given the works of one of the founding members of the Group of Seven newfound attention. And when the iconic and looming Rocky Mountain painting called “Mountain Forms” goes on auction tonight, the Canadian art world will be holding its collective breath. The expectation is that the bidding will break records. But the very thing that would spotlight and celebrate Canadian art may also send more of it out of the country and not everyone likes that. We'll tell you more in an hour. Also today we hear the phrase “cold case” on the news, on detective shows, so we all know what it is. But what do we know about the families of the people described as “cold cases”?

SOUNDCLIP

Her body has never been found. I never have the answers I want. It's like I'm stuck in the past. It's hard to move on.

AMT: Today we'll introduce you to three people—their loved ones’ murders have left so many unanswered questions that they have spent decades consumed by what they do not know. They'll join me in half an hour. But first, we've got our eye on the media.

SOUNDCLIP

Donald Trump has faced an unprecedented avalanche of critical coverage and frankly, I think in part, he owes his victory to that. There was a backlash against those who were telling Americans what is important to them.

AMT: After a year of volatile coverage on the campaign trail, how do journalists cover Donald Trump as president? I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current.

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Rethinking how the mainstream media should cover Donald Trump

Guests: Susanne Craig, John Hayward, Roy Peter Clark

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: Just let's get it straight—they don't want to give it straight because the press are liars. They’re terrible people. And the media—look at all those people back there. Scavengers. They’re like scavengers.

VOICE 2: Is this what it's going to be like—

VOICE 1: Yeah, it is.

VOICE 2: —covering you if you’re president?

VOICE 1: Yeah, it is.

VOICE 2: We’re going to have this confrontation in the press room?

VOICE 1: Yeah, it is going to be like this, David. Span out. Show them the crowd, press.

[Sound: Crowd cheering]

VOICE 1: Show them the crowd. Show them the crowd. Look, they’re not turning the cameras. They don’t even turn the cameras because you know what? They’re very dishonest people.

AMT: Well, that was candidate Trump, and now that he is president-elect, his love-hate relationship with the press continues. When Donald Trump summoned a who’s who of the news media for an off the record meeting this week, members were expecting a reset. Instead, they apparently got a personal berating. His spokesperson, Kellyanne Conway, called it “cordial and congenial,” but the next day’s headlines screamed otherwise. As part of our occasional series, Eye on the Media, we’re asking where this rocky relationship between the incoming Trump administration and the journalists may be going. Susanne Craig is an investigative reporter with the New York Times. She has been covering the Donald Trump campaign for the last year. She and a colleague made headlines last month when they published portions of Mr. Trump's tax returns revealing he may not have paid federal taxes for 18 years. After he initially took to Twitter to cancel a meeting with the Times, Mr. Trump did in fact meet with a group of reporters and editors in the Times’ offices yesterday. Susanne Craig wasn't in the room. She's on assignment. But she joins us today. John Hayward is a columnist with Breitbart News which is the news group formerly led by Mr. Trump's campaign CEO and newly appointed chief strategist, Steve Bannon. John Hayward is in Fort Myers, Florida. Roy Peter Clark is a senior scholar with the Poynter Institute—that is a school for journalism and democracy and he is in St. Petersburg, Florida. Hello everyone. Welcome.

JOHN HAYWARD: Thank you very much for having me.

SUSANNE CRAIG: Morning.

ROY PETER CLARK: Morning.

AMT: Susanne, let's start with you. Your colleagues at the New York Times live-tweeted their meeting with the US President-elect Donald Trump yesterday. Throughout this campaign and in the lead up to that meeting, he had consistently attacked the credibility of the organization. Does that worry you?

SUSANNE CRAIG: It does on a macro sense just because I think that the attacks are deliberate and an attempt in many ways to cow the media. The New York Times is sort of, I think he uses it as—it’s a touchstone for all the media and over the campaign. I think what it’s just emblematic of is just over the campaign, he's threatened to sue newspapers and journalists. He's attacked and insulted members of the media. He's barred news outlets from his events and he's even you know, he even went as far to one point to blame freedom of the press for a terrorist attack. And I think what it does is, he’s also threatened to open up libel laws and I think we're just entering a potentially scary chapter in terms of what this means broadly for journalists. I mean the proof is going to be in the pudding and I think the way that we're looking at covering him is by his actions more than his words. But his words can be dangerous. They incite people and I think they leave an impression of the media and of journalists that’s potentially wrong. So I find it upsetting. I mean I think going forward, I think there may be a bit of a reset but it doesn’t give us amnesia in terms of what’s happened.

AMT: At the same time, does the New York Times need or want to repair relations with the president-elect?

SUSANNE CRAIG: I don't think it hurts to have a good relationship with the people you cover. I don't think it's necessary. I think we have to go ahead and cover a president or politicians the way that we feel is right and without fear or favour. And if politicians want to have a relationship with us and vice versa, I mean that's great. It's always better when the person you're covering engages with you but it's not necessary and I don't think that we should shape our coverage in order to have a positive relationship with the president and with the office.

AMT: John Hayward, do you think Donald Trump has been justified in being so critical of the New York Times and other mainstream major US news organizations?

JOHN HAYWARD: Well, I think he has legitimate complaints and they have written, run, some legitimate stories against him. This is not unique. President Obama has repeatedly attacked Fox News individually over the years. President Clinton back in his day blame talk radio hosts for causing a terrorist attack and repeatedly attacked them. So this isn't new. The new thing about what Trump did is that he did it to their faces. He put a bunch of people from the press in a room with him and directly addressed his criticisms to them instead of going on the air and tearing them up behind their back which he also does, I mean let's not be coy about that. Nut he actually sat in a room with them and aired his grievances and he's right to think they don't like him, they were against him. We have the WikiLeaks revelations to show how closely they coordinated with the Clinton campaign in many ways. So everyone knew this was going to be an adversarial relationship going in. And I personally like the press being adversarial towards the people in power. I think that's their job.

AMT: Do you think mainstream journalists lost touch with voters during this campaign, John Hayward?

JOHN HAYWARD: Oh, I think there's no question about that. The sheer stunned shock that swept over the press when Trump won the election pretty clearly indicates they had no idea that people felt that way in the numbers they did in the states they did. It's regional as well as the total population and the press simply did not see this coming in the areas where Trump flipped states and won in places where President Obama had won previously. So this is a landslide for them and I think it's more important for them to understand the voters than it is to really worry about Trump. He is a creature of media. It's the voters that the press really needs to put some effort into understanding in the next four years.

AMT: Roy Peter Clark, as you watched all of this unfold, I'm wondering about some of your observations. Let's start with how Donald Trump has gone about circumventing mainstream media to deliver his message.

ROY PETER CLARK: Yeah, I think there are sort of precedents from the past that are worth thinking about. But at the same time, I think we've entered a period where all of the old rules seem to have been challenged. All the old boundaries have been crossed, Twitter being a vehicle for example, in which Donald Trump has mastered the ability of sort of circumventing the press. I had a really interesting experience the week of the election, which is that I hosted for the State Department a conference of 100 journalists from 50 countries. They were the Edward R. Murrow fellows. And it was really remarkable to see the election through the eyes of journalists who have been jailed, who have been imprisoned, who have been intimidated, who try to practice their craft under the shadow of tyranny and they were trying to figure out what happened in America. We were trying to figure out what happened in America. And so I think it's a time when all of the stakeholders and key players have an opportunity to sit back and try to figure out what the future should look like in terms of the relationship between journalism and the presidency.

AMT: Well, Roy, Donald Trump has pushed the narrative that the elite media is corrupt and unfair. So what do journalists have to do to effectively and to be seen to be effectively covering the Trump administration over the next four years?

ROY PETER CLARK: Well, I think one of the things that we've seen in the cycle, the Poynter Institute owns the Tampa Bay Times, a newspaper in Florida which won a Pulitzer Prize a few years ago for the creation of a reporting mode called PolitiFact. And we've seen fact checking emerge as a dominant mode of covering politics. I think we're going to see more of that. It's going to be—it has become a sort of a global movement. I think it's a good one. I think fact checkers will be decertified by the critics of the press. And there's nothing to do about that. I mean people who want to see bias will find that in the most subtle signals. So I would say fact checking, investigations, working very, very hard for access including in courts, and I think teamwork, collaboration with other journalists, other competitors, I think will provide the resources journalists need to do their job in the public interest.

AMT: John Hayward, what do you think of that?

JOHN HAYWARD: Well, I think one of the problems there is the question of objectivity and the media's claim of perfect objectivity. Some of those fact checkers have been very, very biased and very, very wrong and there is nothing subtle about any of what they did. So the claim that you’re sitting on a mountain of truth and no one dare challenge you is exactly the kind of attitude that I think caused this popular rebellion against media culture. It’s one of the reasons they've lost their objectivity and their credibility. They need to work hard to interface with the voters, make their best effort to be fair. Of course, fact checking will continue. Everybody is going to do it. But I think the important thing is to try to understand what's happened in the country and understand that some of the criticism leveled at the media, even by Trump—as belligerent and bellicose as he can be—is accurate. It's time for some soul searching from the entire mainstream press about what they've done over the years.

AMT: Okay. But John, are we conflating two things here? You know when the media reports things they're not doing it to be everybody's best friend so sometimes facts can upset people. It's one thing to say you need to cover regions and see how people feel. It's another thing to talk about investigators and find out the truth of people—what they're actually saying, what their connections are.

JOHN HAYWARD: That’s true.

AMT: So sometimes that can—people can be angry about facts but they're still facts.

JOHN HAYWARD: I think it's more dangerous when the media is trying too hard to be people's friends. I think most of the big media crises of the past few decades have come when they didn't challenge the powerful, when they enabled power instead, when they allowed themselves to be spun and manipulated. That's the part that bothers me. As long as they're being adversarial and skeptical, they're doing their jobs and sometimes they'll get it wrong and they have to be ready for criticism. But nobody really gets the last word. I wouldn't like it very much if Trump or anybody in his administration tried to silence media organizations they disagreed with. At that point I'm instantly on the other side. As long as people are speaking and responding, criticizing and counter criticizing, we're having a conversation and I want that conversation to continue forever.

AMT: Well, I mean let's talk to Susanne because she's an investigative reporter who broke a story. But the campaign criticized her entire organization as corrupt. You did a lot of work to break that story, Susanne.

SUSANNE CRAIG: [laughs] I think [unintelligible]. But we're not in the business to make friends and I think Donald Trump is allowed, certainly allowed to, and well, you know he has a voice on Twitter and elsewhere to criticize us. I think we need in some ways thicker skins and in terms of that, I'm not so much bothered is that you know Democrats and Republicans alike have never been big fans of the New York Times and I've covered both. And our job is to ask questions and to shine a light where they necessarily don't want it. But I think John made an important point which is I think that the media, the so-called mainstream media, did miss a large portion of this and I think what we missed was—and it doesn't mean that it wasn't covered and certainly the New York Times did a lot of work on it—but it was just the beat of the country. I think that we saw polling that fell into you know the election was going one way and in many, many instances it fell into the beliefs of many in the mainstream media who live in New York, heavily Democratic area and they didn't question it. And I think the lesson was we can just spend more time, to me, out in the country listening to people and doing that as well as investigative work. I mean I think they're both important and not mutually exclusive. But I think now has never been a better time for both that and for investigative reporting. I mean I sort of think on a large scale, Donald Trump, his election is you know concerning on just given all of the things that he said about opening up libel laws. But you know as investigative journalists, it's a great period. It's going to be an incredible four years like we've never seen and it's going to rewrite how we've covered presidents. So in some ways you know as an individual, it's an exciting time. But on a more macro level, I think there's a lot of issues that need to be dealt with and will be by the White House press corps because I think there's going to be issues about access and other things. So it's sort of interesting that those two issues have come together. But I think for the Times, one thing that we've definitely talked about is spending even more time out in the country and talking to people and hearing that beat that I think a lot of people missed.

AMT: Roy Peter Clark, you want to comment on that because it sounds as if the real assigning cannot only go on in Washington. People really do have to spend more time in regular America to cover the effects of any political decisions and how they affect people.

ROY PETER CLARK: I think, I remember feeling quite alienated after as a journalist, somebody talks to journalists a lot, after the 2004 election. And I wrote a little essay, “Confessions of an Alienated Journalist” where I really was surprised by the outcome of the election and I had that kind of a, sort of an LSD flashback this time around and I visited what I wrote back then I talked about like what are the virtues that we need, not just in journalism but in society? And to me they were tolerance, empathy, attention and self-doubt. And I do think the last one is a virtue that journalists lack too often and it leads them astray. It leads them to a kind of myopia. We're really good at seeing things, we're good at the plane crash. We're good at the terrorist attack, at the mass shootings. We're pretty bad at the slow moving evolution of sort of social, sort of social movements that change the paradigm of how democracy is lived. I think that we just experienced that. I also think that we're kind of bad at history. I know this sort of catastrophic feeling that some people felt about how bad things were in America. And I remember I was 20 years old in 1968 and when Dr. King was assassinated, Bobby Kennedy was assassinated, the war was raging in Vietnam. Riding in the streets of Chicago, it really felt like the world was coming apart. And I think we kind of live as Americans and sort of the myth of the golden age where we think that you know now is the worst time and all the good times were in the past. And so a historical perspective, an ability to kind of look back and learn from the past as we look to the future I think is a muscle that journalists—

[Crosstalk]

AMT: Well, you mentioned the Edward R. Murrow journalist fellowships. Edward R. Murrow—this was the time of the United States under McCarthyism where the media also was confronting tough issues in Washington.

ROY PETER CLARK: Yeah. In 1964, a historian, Richard Hofstadter, wrote a famous essay called, “The Paranoid Style in American Politics.” And he was certainly thinking of McCarthy, but he went back and he traced a pattern in American political life where there was a tendency to sort of blame the country's problems on the outsider. And originally it was the Freemasons and then the papists and then of course the Jews and then the Japanese and then the communists and now it's a different group. It's Mexicans, Syrians, Muslims, refugees and things like that. And what's really remarkable about Murrow’s actions with CBS—with very limited resources as it turns out—is how much courage it took for them to go after McCarthy knowing that they themselves were going to come under attack because as communist sympathizers as they were. So listen, I think that there are patterns. There are traditions. There are stories of courage. There are ways in which journalists can refresh, revitalize themselves not for their own sake but for the purposes in which journalism is meant to invigorate democracy.

AMT: Okay. John Hayward, is Breitbart willing to go after the Trump administration and hold its feet to the fire?

JOHN HAYWARD: Oh, absolutely. There's a great deal of separation that was brought into play between the campaign and us after the executive chairman, Steve Bannon, left to run the campaign. The people that work there are all willing to go after any story that interests them, they expect the media to do the same. Nobody wants cooperation. We all want a more adversarial relationship with the government. But I think the relationship with the people is crucial and this is a great opportunity to look at that relationship. We could make a start right here for all the media. The people that voted for Trump, especially in the Rust Belt states, they don't want you to psychoanalyze them and tell them they're paranoid. They would like the immigration laws of the United States to be enforced. They have legitimate concerns about the security of mass migration of people from the Middle East from these war zones. These people are not crazy, they're not lunatics, they're not paranoid and they're not apocalyptic. Some of them are, you know, but a lot of the people that voted for Trump especially in those Rust Belt states will tell you they have fairly modest concerns about the course of the nation and they thought a change was in order.

AMT: Okay. And very briefly, Susanne Craig?

SUSANNE CRAIG: Well, I think the other thing that I think is important in all of this is when there's an obligation to readers of news to, I think reach beyond what they normally look at and to seek out sources that they may not otherwise. I mean I think that the one thing that's sort of come of age in the last five or 10 years is just the huge difference in news and the proliferation of different type of news sources. So I think both are interesting as I was listening to—

AMT: Okay. We're going to have to leave you there with just the fact that we need to seek out more sources. Thank you all for being part of this discussion. That's Susanne Craig of the New York Times, Roy Peter Clark at the Poynter Institute and John Hayward, columnist with Breitbart News. Let us know what you think of this. You can find us on our website, www.cbc.ca/thecurrent. Stay with us. You're listening to The Current on CBC Radio One.

Back To Top »

'I still don't have the answers': the lifelong grief of open cold cases

Guests: Mary Ann Russwurm, Celine Ethier, Trevor Brown, Ashley Wellman

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

[Music: Theme]

AMT: Still to come, tonight could be a record breaking night for the Canadian art world as a Group of Seven painting comes up for auction and could fetch a price on the millions. I'll be joined by some Canadian art aficionados in half an hour to ask how they'll feel if a Lawren Harris painting goes to a US buyer and what a renewed interest in Canadian art could mean for today's arts and culture makers. But first, when there's no coming in from the cold.

SOUNDCLIP

[Sound: Door knock, door open]

VOICE 1: Hi. How are you?

VOICE 2: Good.

VOICE 1: Are you Anthony?

VOICE 1: I’m Dave Ridgen. I work for CBC. I'm a journalist. I wanted to ask you about your confession regarding the murder of Christine Harron on August 2004. Can you tell me a little bit about that, why you confessed to that murder? No?

VOICE 2: I can’t answer that question.

VOICE 1: No? Her mother is wondering what happened.

AMT: That was independent documentary maker Dave Ridgen here on The Current in 2012 before his new true crime CBC podcast, Someone Knows Something. Then as now, he was tracking down a cold case. You heard him door knock Anthony Edward Ringel who had—it’s true—confessed to killing 15-year-old Christine Harron. His confession to police came 11 years after Christine first disappeared. That's 11 years that Christine's mother, Mary Ann Russwurm, waited for an answer about what had happened to her daughter. And even then, problems with evidence meant that Anthony Edward Ringel walked free. In fact it was only last month that he pleaded guilty and was sentenced to life in prison. But Christine's body has never been found. When cold cases such as that come up in the news, the focus is usually on the accused, the police, the victims. We seldom think of how the experience affects the family left behind. Their lives are forever changed, not solely by the loss of their loved one, but by the uncertainty around what happened and the solitary grief that they live with. So we brought together a panel of people who have lived with a cold case close to their hearts to discuss that experience, including Christine Harron's mother, Mary Ann Russwurm. She's in Kitchener, Ontario. Celine Ethier’s daughter Melanie has been missing since 1996. Celine Ethier joins us from New Liskeard, Ontario. And Trevor Brown's sister, Kerrie Ann Brown, was murdered in 1986 but the crime remains unsolved. Trevor Brown is in Thompson, Manitoba. Hello to you all and thank you for doing this.

MARY ANN RUSSWURM: You're welcome.

TREVOR BROWN: You're welcome.

AMT: I want to start with maybe some good memories and maybe a portrait of each of your family members. Mary Ann Russwurm, can you start? What were some of your daughter Christine's favorite things to do?

MARY ANN RUSSWURM: She loved to babysit kids and go for walks, loved to go reading. She loved being down in the park. She only had a very close set of friends. She wasn't really a girl to be out there and have a whole lot of friends.

AMT: Celine Ethier, your daughter Melanie was also 15 when she went missing. What was she like?

CELINE ETHIER: A good student, she had good friends. She liked to spend a lot of time at home after school with her friends. She liked dancing. She liked Highland dancing. She liked going to Pete's Dam Park, a nice park in the area. She spent a lot of time with her little sister. My other daughter was five years old at the time so, because I had had back surgery, they used to do lots of things together that I couldn't do. She used to dress her like a little doll.

AMT: Trevor Brown, you and your sister were both teenagers when Kerrie Ann was killed. What's your favorite memory of the two of you together?

TREVOR BROWN: Oh, play fighting. I used to watch TV all the time laying on the floor in the living room and if she wasn't interested in what I was watching, she jumped on me and we’d start wrestling. We were only a year apart. And I miss wrestling with her and racing her. She was a real fast runner. We were both in track in high school and we used to love racing each other to see who was faster. And she was younger than me and she was actually faster than me. So I remember things like that, just talking to her.

AMT: Yeah. Celine Ethier, how much do you know about what happened to Melanie?

CELINE ETHIER: All I know is there's been many tips and there's a lot of suspect. There has been so many stories that the police have followed from the beginning and they still keep on getting.

AMT: So she was with friends watching a movie.

CELINE ETHIER: Yes.

AMT: And went home sometime early that morning and was never seen again.

CELINE ETHIER: She was with friends watching movies and just eating Jos Louis. It wasn't a party. And then she left on her own around the area of two o’clock in the morning and nobody's seen her or ever heard from her. There was also police parked at the end of that street because there used to be—there was a bar close to that area. And nobody has seen her. There has been some screams that were heard, there were parties, there were all kinds of things but we don't know if it’s related to Melanie.

AMT: Do you think she's still alive?

CELINE ETHIER: In my heart, I believe she's passed on.

AMT: Do you have other family members who have—how have they dealt with not knowing what happened?

CELINE ETHIER: It's been very hard. The day when Melanie went missing, like in the morning, Melanie was supposed to have made a birthday cake for my mother. So she had got a heart pan and she had got little hearts to decorate it. She had bought her candles for a gift. For my mother it's been very hard. She's never wanted to have the gift. She always said I want to wait till Melanie hands it out to me herself. It's only a few years ago that she finally took them and it's been hard like every year at her birthday because I'm going through remembering what's happened. My mother has went many years without birthdays because of that.

AMT: How has your younger daughter dealt with that all?

CELINE ETHIER: For my daughter it was very hard because she was only five at the beginning so for her to see posters and have the police come over. And like children can be cruel sometimes and kids were saying monsters took your sister and they killed her, cars ran over her, all kinds of stories, so she used to cry and I used to have to hold her to console her because it was so hard for her to take. What I realized from that because I talked to other families of missing children, my youngest made me realize that I had to consider giving her as much time as I did to Melanie because especially at the beginning, I used to go and do search and many people would call for tips and stuff so I really had to focus on giving her as much time because it's easy to get lost in thinking of our missing child every day because especially at first, it's like our heart stops beating. We're just like surviving. And even the first Christmas because Melanie went missing September 29^th, the first Christmas, it was hard because Melanie used sing “Happy Birthday” to me because I was born on the 26^th and Melanie was on Christmas Day. So I used to sing “Happy Birthday” to her then she’d sing it to me. My youngest daughter, the first Christmas, started to sing “Happy Birthday” and it was very hard to take, to realize Melanie wasn't there and it's now going to be 20 years later this Christmas.

AMT: Trevor Brown, your sister's body was found shortly after she was killed but you still don't know who killed her. Do you think finding out more and who did that would change something?

TREVOR BROWN: For our family, yeah. Answer is that's what kind of prevented—at least for me in my situation—for moving forward. I've never moved past this because I don't have the answers that I'm wanting. And so I obsess about it to the point where it's a distraction at times, I guess. We want justice for Kerrie. The people that did this to her have no business walking around in our society. They've given up that right. They need to be behind bars and she deserves that. I believe yes, we will be able to move on once we have some answers.

AMT: How did your life and the life of your family change after Kerrie Ann was killed, Trevor?

TREVOR BROWN: Drastically. Drinking—we began drinking quite a bit to cope. It knocked me right off course. I dropped out of school within a year. I was an honour roll student prior to my sister dying. I was a very outgoing, very extroverted kid and after my sister died, I withdrew completely. I didn't go out socially. I didn't get involved academically in school. I just lost interest in life and went into a deep depression as did my mom, as did my dad, as did my brother. And my mum never got over the death of my sister. She died in 2002. I know having answers won’t bring Kerrie back, but some peace of mind, having the answers to the questions that we have right now I think would help change the path that I'm on right now. This great obsession for me is not having answers and so it leads me back into those dark places where I go looking for answers and it take me back into where I don't want to be and it's a strange dichotomy because I got in one essence, this could drive me insane trying to figure out who did this, at the same time I don't want to let go of it because she's worth it in my mind, everything that we're doing to try and find who did this to her.

AMT: She disappeared at a party, didn't she?

TREVOR BROWN: Well, she was with some friends at a friend's house. A boy she had been dating had just shown up with a new girlfriend and my sister was not comfortable being there so she decided with her best friend that they were going to leave. Kerrie went outside. Her friend went inside for a moment to grab her purse that she'd forgotten and when she came back out, Kerrie was gone. Well, we were looking for her for a day and a half and then of course, they found her on a Saturday afternoon north of the city out at the stables on a hydro line.

AMT: Mary Ann Russwurm, it took more than two decades but there is now someone in jail for your daughter Christine's murder. How much has that changed things for you?

MARY ANN RUSSWURM: It's changed a little bit because there's a little bit of justice there but I still don't have the answers. I have what he says happened, but that's one side and that's all I have. Her body has never been found. He won't speak to me. I've tried to approach him to talk to him in the past and he won't talk to me.

AMT: And you make the point that it's only what he says that you know is sort of on the record. What does he say that you want answers to?

MARY ANN RUSSWURM: Well, I want to know you know did he stalk her? How did he approach her? Did he know her before? I don't know if he's actually telling the truth about what happened and that upsets me because he said she never struggled or called out or anything and that wasn't my daughter. My daughter was a fighter.

AMT: You know you can put a name to her killer now but for so long you could not. How did her disappearance change the way you looked at people around you when you had no idea and there was no one arrested?

MARY ANN RUSSWURM: You always look at everybody and especially the ones that come in from out of town or you're always looking to see you know did this person do something to her? You know did they know her? And you're always like—with me, my life changed. It stood still. I haven't been able to move on and I suffer from depression because of it and anxiety attacks. And trying to raise my son after that happened because there was only two years apart was very difficult, even for him. He got in with the wrong crowds and drugs and everything. It was so hard on all of the family. Like we went and did searches ourselves to try to find her just from tips. But the police at the time, the town police, you know they were more interested in what people coming into town would be worried about.

AMT: You put up posters. What happened to them?

MARY ANN RUSSWURM: They all were taken down.

AMT: By who?

MARY ANN RUSSWURM: The police, town police went and took them all down. There was a car show that weekend that she had went missing and they didn't want people panicking that something like that happened.

AMT: And so in those years before that confession, what would your days be like?

MARY ANN RUSSWURM: Very hard. There's not a day that goes by that I don't think about her and what happened to her and if there was something I could have done differently or you know there's just always those questions.

AMT: Celine Ethier, how involved are you personally in trying to find out what happened to Melanie?

CELINE ETHIER: I have put posters all around town. I’ve talked to the media as often as I could in order to keep Melanie's face in the public. I know somebody has answers somewhere. Nobody just disappears without a trace. There has been many tips. They’ve followed them all. One of the hardest one for me to hear was that she would have had been put through a wood chipper. I've looked at every tip when they come as a story or else I would have went crazy by now because of all the different stories and all the different people that apparently killed her. It doesn't make sense. And I know when people pass me information, I believe that they believe what they're saying that they've heard from somebody but I know that one day I will get the right answer.

AMT: How recently have you followed up on tips?

CELINE ETHIER: The last time was two weeks ago. I was told of an area so I ended up going there with someone to look and then I mentioned it to the police.

AMT: Hmm. How did they respond?

CELINE ETHIER: They've always been very supportive from the beginning.

AMT: You have actually gone to the jail to talk to people to try to get answers as well, have you not?

CELINE ETHIER: Yes, I have. I've tried everything I could. Whenever somebody gives me information about somebody, I try to approach them.

AMT: And have you been able to do that? Will people talk to you?

CELINE ETHIER: Yeah. I would say most people have responded to me. Only a few have said that they've never heard anything. But really, I live in a small town and people talk about it so that's more suspicious to me, when somebody is not willing to talk to me.

AMT: Is there anyone police have warned you away from?

CELINE ETHIER: Yes, but I have a hard time staying away so I usually go forward and talk to them.

AMT: This is somebody you think could be a suspect?

CELINE ETHIER: I'm not even centered on one person. There has been so many different stories that I don't know which one is the real one. For example, even Christmas Eve last year actually, that day I received a call saying that she is being captured somewhere and being used as a prostitute and then they're asking some money in order to try to go and buy her. Like the stories I hear, like I have to be aware that some people may just want money.

AMT: What does that do to you when somebody calls and does that?

CELINE ETHIER: Like I said, I try not to think of it as the answer but as a tip in case it is, so I do my best to get as much information as I can and then I pass it on to the police if I think they can go somewhere with it. But yeah, it's been like that for a long time. I have a site called “Let's Work Together to Find Melanie Ethier.” On that site at some point, somebody had confessed that they were there when they tortured Melanie and then it was also followed up. People thought it was the answer but because I'm used to it since it’s been 20 years of stories like this, it got followed but it was nothing.

AMT: Trevor Brown, the police charged someone in Kerrie Ann’s death soon after her death and then the charge was dropped because of a lack of evidence. Years later, when DNA technology had been improved, the man was found not to be a match to the DNA found at the scene. How did your family deal with all of that?

TREVOR BROWN: Well, with regards to this individual, I only learned in the last couple of years that—and it was through my dad actually, who still sees this individual downtown. For a long time their relationship was needless to say, well, unfriendly. They actually, in the last year, had actually started talking because my dad kind of came to the mindset that he wasn't involved in my sister's murder because he told my dad they took my DNA, I passed a polygraph examination. What other test do you want me to do? That's what we know. The RCMP has never actually told us that they've cleared him as a suspect. They won't tell us stuff like that. The police honed in on him in the beginning because somebody pointed a finger at him and said I saw his car there that night and they got tunnel vision, the cops up here, and they kind of let everything else scatter. And we are where we are now.

AMT: Does that make you angry?

TREVOR BROWN: It does. I take issue with how the initial investigation took off.

AMT: And that one individual who they arrested at first and then was cleared, were you angry at him when he first got released?

TREVOR BROWN: Yes. Well, a lot of people are because we were told point blank that this guy was involved. It's unfortunate. The cops that were here were the cops that were here and they made a lot of mistakes as far as I'm concerned.

AMT: Mary Ann Russwurm, you have a parallel experience. What was it like having Anthony Ringel in jail after a confession and then freed before that case was reopened more recently?

MARY ANN RUSSWURM: Oh, I was very, very upset for have him out in the public again, you know that he could do it to another girl or something. But the police just messed up the case so badly that you know if they wouldn't have did things properly then he may still have been there. I don't like the way the police handled the case at all. They made so many errors and it was David Ridgen that brought all the errors to light for me. He started showing me paperwork with all the mistakes that they had made and I was very angry. I believe that this case has come now for a guilty plea because of David Ridgen and what he's done. It's made them have to go there you know trying to get answers.

AMT: Trevor, the police tried a new tactic in your sister's case. What did they do?

TREVOR BROWN: The RCMP in each province has their own Twitter feed and so on Sunday, October 18^th, Kerrie, she took over their Twitter feed and what they did was they basically outlined her last day alive. So they had going to school, she had a doctor's appointment.

AMT: So they were essentially tweeting as if they were her to kind of jog people's memories and make them think about what they might—

TREVOR BROWN: They wanted to personalize her so that she wasn't just a statistic or a name. They wanted people to get a sense of who she was as a human being which makes it as you know, a lot more difficult for people to sit on their hands and idly not do anything. Everything we've been doing through the media, we're hoping to awaken a conscience, evoke some type of an emotional reaction that says enough, I know something. I'm not going to live in this fear anymore. I’m going to walk through it and I'm going to say something to somebody that can do something about it. And that's what we're waiting for. And there apparently was a lot of information that came in on the Twitter feed from what I've been told.

AMT: And you know the three of you are talking about what you have gone through over decades. As you listen to each other's stories, are there parts that sound familiar to you or is there any advice you want to give each other? Celine?

CELINE ETHIER: Each story is very different but we all live in the wondering, the having to get our heart beating again because losing our loved one takes our heartbeat out. I remember for two and a half years, I was just like so numb but yet I was still out there doing search. Nothing was stopping me. I was very focused on finding Melanie and it’s 20 years later and I'm still putting out posters, I'm still talking on the radio still. I'm not going to stop until I find answers for Melanie.

AMT: Trevor, got any advice?

TREVOR BROWN: Yeah. You know the depression clearly is the common thread and the efforts and the lengths that we're clearly willing to go to to get answers for our loved ones and our families and friends of course. It's one of those things, you know you can't really—it's difficult to explain, Anna Maria, because you have to go through it in order to try to put yourself in the boat of what it's actually like because it's not easy. I know for me, like I did a lot of media in the last month and it shows. I see myself on TV. I look so tired and my friends say you've got to take care of yourself. And I said you know what, Kerrie is worth it and I know for the other two ladies here, I know. I hear it. Their daughters are worth it and so we do these things and for good or for better or for worse for ourselves, we do it because it's in us. It’s innate in each one of us to find answers for our loved one and it's not easy but it's necessary and it is what it is, eh?

AMT: Mary Ann, do you want to say something?

MARY ANN RUSSWURM: I just want to let them know not to give up hope. You know that someday they might have their answers. Like with my case. I don't have a body so that is very difficult. I can't bury her, give her a proper burial. She was just like she was thrown away and garbage, you know? But you know just never give up hope. Keep trying and try to get your answers however you can. Don't always rely on the police. You've got to do it yourself. You've got to push them every day.

AMT: You know we use that shorthand, cold case, in the media and we don't—then we move on. But we need to understand what you go through and how this is with you forever, huh?

MARY ANN RUSSWURM: Yeah, this is never going to go away. For me, it's a daily challenge, just trying to live my life and go on and be happy. Like nothing I do anymore—I'm not a happy person anymore, ever since she went missing. I don't celebrate holidays or anything because it doesn't feel right without her there. So it's very, very difficult.

TREVOR BROWN: You know for us, holidays, birthdays, anniversary dates—very significant, very, very sad and yeah. At the end of the day, all you have is hope—hope for the answers that you seek and you just keep going.

AMT: Celine, what about you?

CELINE ETHIER: For me, I feel that on days like this is when I feel my daughter the most. Her memory is very strong in my mind. I mean I feel like she's with me every day.

AMT: Thank you all of you for sharing your stories and your emotions with us. I appreciate it.

TREVOR BROWN: Thank you, Anna Maria.

CELINE ETHIER: Oh, you're welcome.

AMT: And I'm very sorry for your loss.

TREVOR BROWN: Thanks, dear.

MARY ANN RUSSWURM: Thank you.

AMT: That's Mary Ann Russwurm. Her daughter, Christine Harron, was killed in 1993. Mary Ann Russwurm joined us from Kitchener, Ontario. Celine Ethier’s daughter, Melanie, has been missing since 1996. She joined us from New Liskeard, Ontario. And Trevor Brown’s sister, Kerrie Ann Brown, was murdered in 1986. He joined us from Thompson, Manitoba. We will have contact information on our website if you have any information related to these cases as you listen: www.cbc.ca/thecurrent.

[Music: Sting]

AMT: And in our next half hour, we're going to continue this discussion on this issue with one of the growing number of researchers studying the effects of cold cases on the families. And also, why a potential record breaking price for a Canadian painting at an auction could be a boon for Canadian arts and culture—we'll talk about that as well. We’ll just take a 90 second break. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current on CBC Radio One.

AMT: Hello, I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current. If you're just joining us, I was just speaking with family members living with cold cases. These are people whose loved ones have disappeared or have been murdered but those cases have not been solved, including the case of Celine Ethier’s daughter Melanie, who has been missing since 1996.

SOUNDCLIP

It's been very hard. The day when Melanie went missing, like in the morning, Melanie was supposed to have made a birthday cake for my mother. So she got a heart pan and she had got little hearts to decorate it. She had bought her candles for a gift. For my mother, it's been very hard. She's never wanted to have the gift. She always said I want to wait till Melanie hands it out to me herself.

AMT: Well, that's from our conversation that was just happening in our last half hour. And if you missed it, you can find it on our website www.cbc.ca/thecurrent or on the CBC Radio app. The grief we've been talking about with those family members is something that researchers have only just begun to study formally. Ashley Wellman is an associate professor of criminal justice at the University of Central Missouri. She's with us from Warrensburg, Missouri. Hello.

ASHLEY WELLMAN: Hello.

AMT: Well, as you listen to those family members, what were you thinking?

ASHLEY WELLMAN: My first thought was Christine, Kerrie Ann and Melanie—they have incredible families that are fighting for justice in their cases. And we've heard from the people who are experts on cold case homicide survivors. It's the families who wake up every day and fight the same way that Mary Ann and Trevor and Celine are fighting.

AMT: And as you listen to them, did you hear any familiar themes?

ASHLEY WELLMAN: Their stories really hit on many of the experiences that I've heard from other survivors. The thing that it's important to note is that no one has the same case or the same type of grief, however, these families can see between their cases that there are so many different similarities and the struggles end up becoming so similar. One of the things that I do is I really fight to get families together to talk and to understand how they can come together on those issues.

AMT: What makes the grief that cold case families deal with different from families who are dealing with other violent deaths and murder?

ASHLEY WELLMAN: There is very little out there about the surviving grief of cold case homicide survivors. But there's no denial that it is a very different type of grief. They don't have the answers that they're looking for. They go to bed at night thinking of the details and filling in the gaps with their own ideas that often make the case even more frightening to them. The other thing that really complicates and makes this grief traumatic is that they will continue these relationships with law enforcement, with the media and they're living with this grief that's debilitating on a daily basis.

AMT: And so the grief keeps its initial kind of strength and that like—someone who loses a child will always have that. But you're suggesting that because they have fewer answers, there's another like layer of something that just never goes away?

ASHLEY WELLMAN: Absolutely and no one, no one forgets. The death of a mother due to cancer, that is also incredibly difficult to deal with. But in the event of these dimensions of violence, I believe that it does, it keeps this long-term, more difficult to manage grief going strong. And without the answer—so traditional homicide survivors is a term we use—traditional survivors often find that as they get answers, they can stop filling in those gaps with maybe more detrimental or more violent facts that they're putting into the story themselves, trying to make reasoning of what has happened to their loved one.

AMT: What patterns do you see in how different family members deal with what has happened?

ASHLEY WELLMAN: Often times, men struggle to share their emotions as freely as women do. They are taught that they need to be the stronger family member, that they may need to protect any surviving children, that they need to protect their spouse. But then they might find themselves neglecting their own grief and neglecting their own need to express their emotion. Some men are very comfortable doing that and we see especially with children, it's very helpful for their father to express his emotions so that the children feel that they're on a similar grief structure with their dad and that he is also struggling in a similar manner that they are. Women and mothers especially, often take on a lot of that guilt. And we heard that a little bit with Mary Ann and Celine, that there's this questioning—we have this innate responsibility to be a mother and to protect our children. And so there's a question of did I fail? Was I not cut out to do this? Could I have done something more? And I think mothers often harbour that. And we see in siblings an increased level of anger and frustration, both from the feeling that they may be neglected by their parents who are focusing on the murdered child and that they also feel this anger towards the outside world more so than often the parents do about why did this happen? Why is this something now that has taken my family off course?

AMT: I have a clip I'd like to play for you. Noreen Greenley disappeared in Bowmanville, Ontario in 1963. She was 13 years old. Her niece, Mandy Ramos, never met Noreen. In fact, Mandy Ramos's own mother was an infant at the time. But the need to know what happened has trickled through generations and it became especially strong now that Mandy Ramos’ mother is in palliative care with cancer. Listen to Mandy Ramos.

SOUNDCLIP

Where it’s affected me personally is definitely my mom's mental health because my mom doesn't stop talking about it. She’s stuck on it, right? So then I'm looking into all this stuff, going to the police station to go through the record. You know of course we want to see justice served but we just want to find her and lay her to rest with her dad and with my mom. My mom will be gone soon. And just to be able to have that closure for everybody. It's been so long that you know it's suffocating. It suffocates you.

AMT: Ashley Wellman, how can a family heal when a cold case has such profound effects, even through generations?

ASHLEY WELLMAN: I think it's difficult to tell a family that here's the direct way you need to heal. What we need to be doing as practitioners and what bereavement specialists and mental health counsellors need to be working towards as a goal for families is to learn how to live in spite of this loss. Families often fear if I were to move on, if I were to feel joy, if I were to pursue the dreams I had prior to this homicide, in some way I'm minimizing the value of my murdered loved one. The thing that we need to be doing is saying life will not be the same and that we need to now take each day and say how do we learn to live knowing that your loved one is gone and honouring your loved one and now making new routines? You hear from these families, from Mary Ann and Trevor and Celine, daily their fight is to bring justice to their children and to their siblings. I think there becomes a moment where they also have to be reminded that it's okay to care for yourself and to care for those who are still here and are still supporting you and remembering that you have a slain loved one, a murdered loved one who you can still continue to triumph but also try to learn how to incorporate that into a life where you're also protecting and taking care of yourself.

AMT: And so what can we as neighbours, as society, do to help families who are dealing with cold cases?

ASHLEY WELLMAN: I think one of the greatest gifts we can give as fellow human beings is to listen and to not pretend that the homicide defines the survivor but also be very cognizant that it's important for these survivors to share their loved one's memory and to ask questions and to keep this homicide relevant. I will tell you now, there's no right thing to say. But because people are scared to say the wrong thing or they might feel overwhelmed by the power and the trauma of a homicide, they often shy away or end up pulling away from survivors. And so I think really just being there and being supportive, really being there to celebrate, to mourn and to support them and truly mean it.

AMT: Ashley Wellman, thank you for your insights on this.

ASHLEY WELLMAN: Of course. Thank you for having me.

AMT: That is Ashley Wellman. She is an associate professor of criminal justice at the University of Central Missouri. She joined us from Warrensburg, Missouri. Now as we mentioned earlier, we're going to have contact information on our website if as you listen to this you realize you have any information relating to the cases we have been discussing, because in a cold case they are always waiting for more tips: www.cbc.ca/thecurrent. Now of course here in Canada, many cold cases involve Indigenous women and girls. And that is the subject we are taking on this season in a series of public forums across the country. Our next town hall will be in Winnipeg next Wednesday, November 30th. If you are in or near Winnipeg, join us for that forum and also to experience our virtual reality documentary, The Highway of Tears. For more information and how to reserve a free ticket, you can go to our website: www.cbc.ca/thecurrent. You can also go to our site and view our virtual reality documentary there. We tell you how to do it. But we will be in Winnipeg next Wednesday.

[Music: Bridge]

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Potential record-breaking art auction shows a growing interest in Canadian art

Guests: David Silcox, Sarah Stanners, Anna Hudson

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

SOUNDCLIP

Lawren Harris? Who's that? And slowly, as I sort of pursued who he was and seeing pictures of his, I thought you know what? I discovered this guy. [chuckles] I was disappointed to learn he was already completely famous in Canada.

AMT: Well, that is the actor and comedian Steve Martin talking about discovering the late great Canadian artist Lawren Harris. Mr. Martin is an avid art collector and a fan. He curated a popular exhibit of the Group of Seven painters’ work which showed in Boston, Los Angeles and the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto. Later today, one of the paintings from that show, “Mountain Forms”, will be auctioned off in Toronto. The painting is expected to set a record price for a Canadian artwork, especially after Steve Martin's prediction that it could fetch up to $10 million. For a look at “Mountain Forms” by the way, head to our website www.cbc.ca/thecurrent. Now tonight's sale is gaining a lot of attention in Canadian art circles especially because there's a good chance that canvas would go to a US buyer. It's what some see as an unintended consequence of growing global appreciation for Canadian art and culture. My first guest is a noted expert on the Group of Seven. David Silcox is a senior fellow at the University of Toronto's Massey College. He's also former president of Sotheby's Canada and he's with me in our Toronto studio. Hello. Good morning.

DAVID SILCOX: Good morning.

AMT: For anyone who cannot see it online right now—and I've got it right here next to me—describe this painting.

DAVID SILCOX: It's a very large painting and one of the largest ones I think he ever painted. There are some that are more, are larger sideways than up and down but this is really a major canvas and a big work for him. And it's been in a private corporate collection for many years. And it's a stunning work of art.

AMT: It's a looming mountain.

DAVID SILCOX: It is.

AMT: It's beautiful and it's stark. You know part of its power is how stark it is.

DAVID SILCOX: It is and he was moving in that direction when he started painting along the north shore of Lake Superior. And then they kept moving west until he hit the Rocky Mountains and then he was right in his element. But he didn't realize how much further he could go until he got to the Arctic in 1930 and the further north he went, as per the Group of Seven, you know the further north they went the closer they thought they got to the centre of the essence of the Canadian soul and spirit. And Harris was the one who sort of led the charge on that. And his first abstract work was painted in 1930 just after he came back from the Arctic.

AMT: And so this painting is really emblematic of who he was and how he thought.

DAVID SILCOX: He was on the way. Yeah. Absolutely.

AMT: Now I want to ask you. When a Paul Kane painting sold in 2002 for $5.1 billion, that set a record in this country.

DAVID SILCOX: It did. My first sale.

AMT: Is that right?

DAVID SILCOX: Yes. I was astonished. I stood up there beside the auctioneer and it sold for $5.1 million as you say. And I thought boy, what a wonderful business to be in. You know bingo. And you just set a record for Paul Kane, set a record for a Canadian painting, set a record for a Canadian auction all in one fell swoop. It was kind of exciting. The next sale was more difficult. [laughs]

AMT: [laughs] So why is this painting expected to surpass that?

DAVID SILCOX: Well, it's—Harris has always dominated that generation of painters. AY Jackson was always happy if he could get $20 or $25 for a small eight by 10 sketch. Harris' oil sketches were 10 and a half by 13 and a half and he always insisted on $50 minimum. And so he moved in social circles that the other members of the Group of Seven didn't inhabit.

AMT: You mean $50,000 minimum.

DAVID SILCOX: No.

AMT: Fifty dollars?

DAVID SILCOX: Fifty dollars.

AMT: Fifty dollars. Okay.

DAVID SILCOX: Fifty dollars. Yeah, just a little one like that. And he often gave them as wedding presents and special anniversary presents to his friends. So he, and in fact, he and Riopelle for nearly 20 years, accounted for 25 per cent of the auction market in Canada. That's a huge percentage and that's where he stood. And he came very close with one of his small sketches which is called, “The Old Stump.” It was actually a sketch for a big painting, a large canvas, which sold for $3.1 million about three, four years ago. I guess.

AMT: Now Imperial Oil is selling this painting, huh? Out of Calgary.

DAVID SILCOX: They are. It is.

AMT: Well, what do you want to see happen to that painting?

DAVID SILCOX: Well, I don't—I don't know. I sort of thought that Imperial Oil might have given more thought as to how they wanted to deaccession the work, whether by donating it or by putting the proceeds towards some charitable cause or something like that. But they didn't. And it's their right. They own it.

AMT: I think they've donated something like 62 works of art as part of what they're up to right now.

DAVID SILCOX: Their collection numbered over 6,000 works so it may not be a huge thing in the larger scheme of things but that particular one was really special and it stood out.

AMT: Okay. Well, David Silcox, I've got some other people with us here so stay with me and let's introduce them. Sarah Stanners is the director, curatorial and collections at the McMichael Canadian Art Collection in Kleinberg, Ontario just north of Toronto. Anna Hudson is an associate professor of Canadian art history and curatorial studies at York University. They are also sitting here waiting to jump in so welcome. Hi.

SARAH STANNERS: Good morning.

ANNA HUDSON: Great to be here.

AMT: So Sarah, let's start with you. There's talk that this could go to a US buyer. Is that a good thing? Would you have a problem with that?

SARAH STANNERS: I think it depends. And if—let's say it went to a private buyer in the US, maybe Steve Martin's friend or something that has become really attractive to Harris' work. In a private US collection, it might be more difficult to maybe ever find out where it's gone to. You know the auction house doesn't—is not obliged to let us know where it actually sells to if it's a private sale. But if it went to a very important international museum, I mean if it went let's say to the Museum of Modern Art in New York, I think I would be pleased to walk in and see that painting hanging there as an important work by an important Canadian artist.

AMT: So for you it really is about, its visibility as it goes on, its accessibility to regular people.

SARAH STANNERS: If it enters into a public museum in the US, then myself you know working at the McMichael, I would have a chance to request it for a loan for an exhibition. It would be quite open. Let's say somebody was researching. They might visit the museum in the US and have access to view it and it’d be part of a public collection. And I think in many ways, the art world is international. And this is a very fine painting. And why not have one of Lawren Harris' best paintings represent the artist in an important you know public museum collection? But as I say, there's a difference. If it went to a private buyer in the US, it may become impossible to access if the new owner’s not forthcoming.

AMT: Right. And how many Lawren Harrises do you have at the McMichael?

SARAH STANNERS: More than 100 paintings and certainly a lot of very interesting—you know we have his easel that he painted on for years in Vancouver. And we have “Mt. Lefroy” at the McMichael. We have “Pic Island,” so some really fantastic masterworks by the artist, many of which were featured in “The Idea of North” exhibition.

AMT: And just to clarify, the McMichael is exclusively Group of Seven?

SARAH STANNERS: No. We’re actually exclusively—

[Crosstalk]

AMT: But a lot of Group of Seven.

SARAH STANNERS: Exclusively Canadian art and a third of our collection is Indigenous arts. But we are considered in many ways the home of the Group of Seven and we're the final resting place for Lawren Harris and Bess Harris. We have a cemetery there of which six members of the Group of Seven chose to be buried at and AY Jackson lived at the McMmichael for the last six years of his life. So we have a very important connection.

AMT: So this is not a small thing to watch this particular painting go to auction for—

[Crosstalk]

SARAH STANNERS: No, it's not a small thing. And more and more attention is being brought to the artist. We're working on an exhibition that will highlight his abstract works that will open in February. So to see this kind of attention and excitement over the artist is important to us and hopefully it drives people to want to come and see more exhibitions about the artist.

AMT: Anna Hudson, from an historical perspective, where does this sale fit in?

ANNA HUDSON: Well, I think there's—well, there’s three things and this might not quite address your question but there's three things that I wanted to say about it. I mean given the size of the painting, it's an immersive experience and I think that really reflects on how Lawren Harris believed in what art should do. I mean that it was a really kind of physical and emotional experience. So there's nothing that can–you need to stand in front of it to really have the full experience. From a study point of view, I think it's well photographed. We can access it to research it. In a digital world, the quality of those reproductions has really been improved. But in a bigger scale, what I wanted to say—and perhaps this does relate to your question more directly—is the overall relationship that's coming for between culture and economic vibrancy in Canada. I mean I just heard Minister Joly speak about the relationship of art, creativity, imagination and economic well-being and growth in Canada. I believe it's a real moment, particularly as an art historian, to promote the relationship of the study of art in Canada and our collective advancement, not in a patriotic way. And I think that's been a problem with academics in the past of historical Canadian art. They've perceived this as too narrowly patriotic and I don't think that's fair. I don't think that's how Lawren Harris believed the Group of Seven, what the Group of Seven stood for. I think it's inspiring our imaginations to go forward, to innovate, to develop. That's where we need to go in the 21st century.

AMT: The very idea that this could set a record, David Silcox, in terms of price, are there Canadians—we have a smaller pool of people and institutions.

[Crosstalk]

DAVID SILCOX: True. We’ve got some very rich ones.

AMT: Are there Canadians who can actually play ball on those levels?

DAVID SILCOX: There are a lot of Canadians with pockets deep enough to buy it at Steve Martin’s suggested retail price plus premium and plus taxes.

AMT: What about institutions like the National Gallery of Canada? What’s their acquisition budget like?

DAVID SILCOX: Well, it's about 10 per cent of their total budget. So it's about a million dollars a year. They're not going to—I don't think they would invest their entire budget on one painting, even a really important one. It wouldn't be very prudent of them. But the other option is of course, that it doesn't sell. I mean there's always a risk at auction that you don't find a buyer.

AMT: But we are going to—but even by talking about it we give it some attention.

[Crosstalk]

DAVID SILCOX: Yeah. Well, that's true. That’s true. And there is a very complicated process if it goes out of the country. You have to get an export permit and you can be held up for up to six months getting a permit and giving a Canadian institution or individual an opportunity to acquire.

AMT: So nothing is set in stone yet.

DAVID SILCOX: That’s right.

AMT: We have to see where this goes. Now Sarah Stanners, if this gets the kind of price that is predicted, what does that do to other Harris paintings?

SARAH STANNERS: It's interesting. It sets the bar higher. So museums that have large works in their collections, like we do, we would have to readdress our insurance. Private owners—sometimes there's a phrase—people who've been collecting for many years, maybe they bought something out of the artist’s studio. Let's say Michael Snow—a really prominent Canadian artist that's been working for so many years and is still alive today. Let's say you purchase a work in early days and then many, many years later it increases. There's a phrase that some people say that they can't afford to keep a work now.

AMT: Literally because the insurance rates for having a—

SARAH STANNERS: Insurance and just the risk, the thought of you know I've met with descendants of artists’ families and they have important works in their collection and then they fear going to the cottage because the thing is in their home.

DAVID SILCOX: It’s a liability.

SARAH STANNERS: It is a liability. And then it's also you have to understand when these works become so important to our culture, collectors have to start behaving like custodians of art because they have to ensure that it's in proper conditions of temperature, humidity, that there's security, that it won't be stolen. So there's added responsibility when the value increases and some people may find wow, I've got a big Lawren Harris painting and now I've got a $10 million object sitting in my home. Am I equipped to care for this?

AMT: So this is the ripple effect.

[Crosstalk]

DAVID SILCOX: I’ve actually come across people who actually get the painting out from under the bed literally because they’re afraid to have it on the wall in case somebody notices it.

AMT: Is that right, huh? So as you wait for this auction tonight, are you excited or are you worried?

DAVID SILCOX: Neither. I think what will happen will happen and then we'll know afterwards know how it's done. But it's exciting to see something that has the potential to knock the record that Sotheby's has held with Paul Kane for 14 years. I think it’s quite exciting.

AMT: And Anna, what do you think this says about Canadian art?

ANNA HUDSON: Well, I think the auction house is a trading floor and I think you know you set the stock price of Canadian culture on the auction floor and that's really important. So I hope it goes for more than 12.

AMT: And Sarah?

DAVID SILCOX: Wow.

SARAH STANNERS: I just think it's interesting—

AMT: I just let that go by. Twelve million, okay.

SARAH STANNERS: Before we walked into the studio I think all three of us agreed that it's a wonderful thing when the visual arts in Canada can get more airtime, can get more inches in the newspaper and if it's by the sheer sort of curiosity of whether or not a Canadian painting will go for multiple millions of dollars, it gets people talking about Canadian art.

AMT: Okay. Well, we're all going to be watching so thank you for coming in.

ANNA HUDSON: Thank you very much.

SARAH STANNERS: Thank you.

DAVID SILCOX: Pleasure.

AMT: That is David Silcox, senior fellow at University of Toronto's Massey College, former president of Sotheby’s Canada. Sarah Stanners is the director, curatorial and collections at the McMichael Canadian Art Collection. Anna Hudson is an associate professor of Canadian art history and curatorial studies at York University. They were all with me in our Toronto studio. And again you want to see the painting, go to our website www.cbc.ca/thecurrent. That's our program for today. Stay with Radio One for q. We're going to leave you today with some American culture—some music about the mysterious happenings in the closed corridors of power from the Broadway hit that Vice President-elect Mike Pence famously checked out this past weekend. This is “The Room Where It Happens” from Hamilton. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. Thanks for listening to The Current.

[Music: “The Room Where It Happens” – Cast of Hamilton]

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November 23, 2016 full episode transcript

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