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The Current Transcript for January 10, 2017

Host: Anna Maria Tremonti

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Listen to the full episode

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

The dead people are dead, then you have six, seven million people who are homeless. They don't have electricity. They don't have food. There's no potable water. Think of the chaos, the humanity of it. It's unparalleled.

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: He is talking about the potential for a catastrophe of epic proportions at a massive dam in Iraq north of Mosul. As it becomes weaker, it is more susceptible to collapse every day. Its rock foundations were never strong enough to bear the weight of billions of cubic feet of water without constant reinforcement and that kind of maintenance has not been possible because of all the fighting. So now in a place where war is so intense, so drawn out, the very land they are fighting for and over could wipe them off the planet because they are preoccupied with bullets, not bedrock. We're looking at that in about an hour. Also today, God’s closet.

SOUNDCLIP

I know homosexuality only from the church. I hated my sexuality. I wanted to be priest. And I know that that the homosexuality is something wrong.

AMT: For years he was a closeted Roman Catholic priest—an official in the very Vatican office that wrote and enforced the rule that banned gay men from the priesthood. He left in a spectacular show of defiance, introducing his lover to the press. In half an hour, Megan Williams explores the reaction to the Vatican's latest guidelines renewing the ban on gay men in the priesthood. And her daughter's addiction—like so many others—began with a prescription for pain.

SOUNDCLIP

She was the mother of three beautiful girls. She was a partner. She had a beautiful home. That was her before her addiction. One by one, she lost it all.

AMT: One mom powerless to change the trajectory of an opioid addiction. Before fentanyl, the concern was oxycodone. We’re asking what we can learn from a history of pain killers that turned into killers causing pain. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current.

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Ontario prepares for fentanyl crisis as the drug moves eastward

Guests: Jason Smallboy, Jason Altenberg

SOUNDCLIP

Toronto police seized three kilograms of fentanyl last year—a 750 per cent increase from the year before. Fentanyl is going up quite steeply in terms of the identified overdose cases that we're seeing in Toronto. Our paramedics used naloxone—the overdose antidote—more last year than in the two years prior. So these are indications of a growing problem. And fortunately, we've had the resources to be addressing that in an increasingly intense way.

AMT: Well, that is Toronto's mayor, John Tory, speaking at an emergency meeting yesterday called to talk about this issue. He announced the city will work toward increasing the availability of those naloxone kits and will press for month-to-month data of fentanyl overdoses and deaths. BC has been tracking those numbers closely, but the latest numbers from Ontario are only from 2015. In that year, about 200 people died of fentanyl-related causes in the province. Even without official 2016 numbers, politicians and health officials acknowledge fentanyl is a growing problem—one that extends beyond the big city. Northern Ontario communities have been confronting fentanyl with fewer resources and less attention. Just last week, police warned of the dangers of fentanyl in the communities of Red Lake in Ear Falls, Ontario and that news has alarmed many people with the Nishnawbe Aski Nation. Deputy Grand Chief Jason Smallboy is on the line from Timmins, Ontario. Hello.

JASON SMALLBOY: Good morning.

AMT: Well, can you tell me what's going on in your community? What do you know about the use of fentanyl in these places?

JASON SMALLBOY: Well, we've heard stories about overdosing in our communities and also we’re hearing reports out west. We're very concerned about fentanyl. Our communities are concerned and our resources are already stretched thin as is.

AMT: And so these communities of Red Lake in Ear Falls, are you responsible for them?

JASON SMALLBOY: They’re just on the outside boundaries of Nishnawbe Aski Nation territory. But we have a lot of our members that visit those communities on a regular basis.

AMT: Police had a drug problem last spring—a drug operation last spring in your area. What did they discover?

JASON SMALLBOY: They discovered that a lot of drugs that they seized were methadone tablets and oxycodone pills, cocaine and marijuana. The drug problem is huge in Nishnawbe Aski Nation.

AMT: So you're already confronting opioid abuse. How prepared are you to deal with the growing use of fentanyl?

JASON SMALLBOY: It's feared that fentanyl is also coming into [unintelligible] territory from the urban centers in the West. And with the onset of the winter road season, it makes it easier to traffic illegal narcotics into remote and isolated communities and we need more resources.

AMT: Uh-huh. What kind of things would you like from governments then?

JASON SMALLBOY: We would like those naloxone kits to be made available in our communities and also support for our law enforcement agencies.

AMT: So do you have any naloxone kits now?

JASON SMALLBOY: No, we don't.

AMT: Okay. So are you at all concerned that the attention and resources will focus on the big cities and not get to more remote communities like these?

JASON SMALLBOY: Yeah, we're very concerned. Back in 2009, Nishnawbe Aski Nation declared a prescription drug-induced state of emergency and our teams have been in a serious opioid crisis for years. And what's different now is the drug of choice.

AMT: So the problem—the drugs have changed, the problem’s the same.

JASON SMALLBOY: Yes.

AMT: That must be really frustrating.

JASON SMALLBOY: Oh, it is. Our communities are already, you know dealing with this prescription drug abuse and the prescription drug abuse is rampant in our communities and our First Nations. And our communities are unequipped to deal with the opioid addiction. Resources are minimal and our communities have to scramble to fund addiction counsellors and opiate substitution programs.

AMT: Is anyone listening to you in the halls of power?

JASON SMALLBOY: We hope so. We’re hoping to reach out to Health Canada so that they can make these kits available for our communities and our members so that our communities can have the same type of services that the rest of the country enjoys.

AMT: Okay. Well, Deputy Grand Chief, thanks for speaking with me today.

JASON SMALLBOY: Thank you.

AMT: That is Deputy Grand Chief of the Nishnawbe Aski Nation. He's in Timmins, Ontario and his name is Jason Smallboy. Well, yesterday the Ontario government committed to funding three supervised injection sites in Toronto. One will be at the South Riverdale Community Health Centre, which runs programs for drug users. Jason Altenberg is the director of programs and services for the organization. He's in our Toronto studio. Hello.

JASON ALTENBERG: Good morning.

AMT: What can you tell us about fentanyl and the overdose and the use and the concerns going on here in Toronto?

JASON ALTENBERG: So as has been, as it has been talked about a lot in the last few days, there is a growing understanding of the degree of the crisis in Toronto and a mobilization to expand harm reduction responses to respond to it. I think one of the one of the things we don't have fantastic information about is exactly the numbers and we are, as you know, working from older numbers in terms of coroner reports, in terms of accurate data about the number of overdoses and overdose deaths that are directly attributable to fentanyl. But from the community perspective, we've been knowing and hearing about a growing concern for many years now. And there has been good community response and an improved one now. And I think one of the things I'm hopeful about is the growing alignment between different levels of government to respond more proactively and respond to this in a way that aligns provincial, municipal and federal resources, perhaps for the first time in a decade from where we sit. So we're encouraged by that.

AMT: And as you point out, we don't have hard numbers for this year, but what are you seeing anecdotally? You’re hearing from the users.

JASON ALTENBERG: Yeah. So in our program in the southeast of the city, we have a robust program that sees about 3,000 drug users a year and in addition to supplying harm reduction services to those community members, we link them to health services. So we have fairly good local data about what's happening with our community and we have seen incremental overdose increases year after year for the last 10 years, which is borne out in the statistics we do have from the city. And we have seen that increase more rapidly in the last six months to a year.

AMT: So you used to be a front worker in Vancouver on the downtown east side, am I right?

JASON ALTENBERG: You are correct.

AMT: So what lessons can you take from what you were doing in Vancouver and do in Toronto?

JASON ALTENBERG: So the context is very different in terms of how drug use happens in the two cities but there are some really important lessons learned from the Vancouver experience and it's good to see the degree of attention being paid. I worked in Vancouver as a frontline worker in the early nineties and one of the things that strikes me as valuable reflective learning is the first call of emergency that led to the four pillar approach in Vancouver happened in the early nineties, when what was called China White was hitting the streets and overdose deaths were happening in large volumes, particularly on welfare Wednesdays. And the state of emergency was declared in 1993. And from a frontline perspective though, that crisis has never really abated. And so what we've seen though is—with a lot of advocacy work by drug users and activists and advocates—an expansion of harm reduction as a primary response to overdose and to injection drug use. That expansion has been too slow for some but has been successful. So when we look at Toronto, Toronto implemented needle syringe distribution programs through public health in a decentralized and robust way and got ahead of HIV and AIDS which was absolutely epidemic in the eastside of Vancouver. Similarly, we've seen a proactive approach to distributing naloxone in the community, the antidote drug, and a desire to increase that. We now receive naloxone directly through our Hep-C treatment program to distribute to drug users. We are in some ways learning from those experiences and trying to get ahead of the worst of it.

AMT: I'm struck by the fact that before this crisis, there was a crisis with China White heroin. So there's always something.

JASON ALTENBERG: And there will be something after this.

AMT: So you need to get something in place that can react very quickly. So Toronto does not have supervised injection sites like Vancouver does.

JASON ALTENBERG: Not yet.

AMT: And you will have one of these. What will the difference be once the supervised injection site is up and running?

JASON ALTENBERG: So the proposed services for Toronto include three locations, de-centralized, in the same way that drug use is not as centralized in Toronto as in a single neighbourhood in Vancouver. The response in Toronto needs to look a little bit different and the proposal for Toronto includes three sites— two community health centres, ourselves and Queen West CHC, and Toronto Public Health Service, the works. Each of us will have three to five booths where injection drug users will be able to come in with their pre-obtained drugs and inject under supervision of a nurse and other harm reduction staff.

AMT: So if there is a problem, you're right there to help them.

JASON ALTENBERG: Immediate response. There's never been a fatal overdose in a supervised injection service. And we anticipate that we will be able very quickly to save more lives as a result of the service being available.

AMT: Your organization has a drug users’ memorial. What is that?

JASON ALTENBERG: So going back about 10 years ago, our staff, our harm reduction program is staffed entirely by people who use drugs or former drug users. And in 2010, we were reflecting on the experiences of loss in the community and we received a small donation that was meant to be used by the drug using community and we asked the community what would you like to do with this?

AMT: And so they created a memorial. What does it look like?

JASON ALTENBERG: It's an eight foot copper flame that was actually made collaboratively with an artist in the community and the copper flame has etchings of images and the names of people from the community who have died because of overdose.

AMT: How many names?

JASON ALTENBERG: There are now over 150 names. But I should say that the names on our memorial are people in the community who have died because of drug use. So that may be overdose deaths, it may be as a result of hepatitis-C or HIV or the impact of living in poverty and dying prematurely.

AMT: It's a reminder.

JASON ALTENBERG: It is a reminder.

AMT: That it’s right there in everyone's city.

JASON ALTENBERG: I would invite people, if they are in the southeast of Toronto, to come and see it. It is a moving piece of art, but it is also a place that the community gathers regularly to remember and honour the deaths of people who have died prematurely because of the war on drugs.

AMT: Jason Altenberg, thanks for coming in.

JASON ALTENBERG: Thank you, Anna Maria.

AMT: That is Jason Altenberg. He's the director of programs and services at the South Riverdale Community Health Centre in Toronto. He's in our Toronto studio. Well, opioid and painkiller addiction is not new and according to my next guest, we can look to history for answers on how best to deal with the fentanyl crisis. Dan Malleck is a medical historian and an associate professor in health sciences at Brock University. He's the author of When Good Drugs Go Bad: Opium, Medicine and the Origins of Canada's Drug Laws. And Dan Malleck is in St. Catherines, Ontario. Hello.

DAN MALLECK: Good morning.

AMT: Well, I'm wondering—we can look to history for lessons on how best to deal with it or on the mistakes that have been made with the others?

DAN MALLECK: Yeah, I would be more inclined to say the mistakes that have been made and I think really to understand the situation that we're in or that we've gotten to with crises like the OxyContin and then fentanyl crisis and now the frightening carfentanil issue.

AMT: You know it's interesting because I was looking at a chart of deaths for 2015 which is the most accurate information that Ontario has. And the list is—opioid toxicity deaths and there's a list—fentanyl, heroin, codeine, hydromorphine, methadone morphine, oxycodone. If it's not one painkiller, it's another.

DAN MALLECK: Yeah, yeah. And in many ways, the current situation of prescription drug addiction has a long history and in fact, I would say was one of the factors creating our current drug laws and the system that exists now. In the 19th century, there was a growing concern about addiction to opium specifically and morphine. And in an interesting parallel, when morphine was isolated in the middle of the century, a lot of physicians didn't know how much stronger it was than opium and people were having overdose deaths or at least overdose crises when doctors started prescribing it incorrectly. But by the end of the century, people were concerned about addiction to opium and opiates like heroin, which was brand new at the end of the 1800s. But the demographic tended to be more middle-class people who had had access to medical care and had basically been hooked on drugs by prescription. But it didn't have the stigma around it that it does today.

AMT: You write that we need to talk more about pain if we’re going to understand painkiller abuse. What do you mean by that?

DAN MALLECK: Well, pain itself is something that is fundamental to our being. When we are in pain, we seek palliation. Right? So the drugs that are issues of concern like fentanyl began as prescription painkillers. Fentanyl was a fast-acting surgical painkiller like after surgery, you would get this. But the need for painkillers expands its use. And when people are still in pain but there is a concern around continuing to prescribe addictive drugs like fentanyl, things that cause dependence, medical personnel will become concerned about creating that kind of addiction. So there's a stigma not only for the person using it, but also for the physicians who can be scrutinized by their college or scrutinized by the authorities for prescribing it. And they might remove it saying you know what, you should be better by now. And that’s something that makes physicians sound more vicious than they are—they're not like that—but there is this concern. And so pain management is something that we need to talk about because the fentanyl crisis is the end point of a process of needing pain treatment of some kind, whether it's physical pain or dealing with emotional or spiritual or psychological pain.

AMT: So how do you suggest people use those and prescribe those opioids in a way that speaks to what you're concerned about?

DAN MALLECK: Well, I don't know if I can make suggestions to clinicians but I think that what we need to do as a society—and government and different agencies need to think about is—what do the stigmas around drug use, what kind of behaviours does it drive? Not only among the user—and I don't mean just the user who has been a recreational drug user—but people who are seeking some kind of pain treatment. And also what does that stigma do to physicians and is there a better way to manage pain? And also to look—I think it's really important to think about, what is it that's causing so much pain? Right? Is it that more people are working in jobs where they don't have the kind of sick leave that they can take time off? Is it that we have a health system that is so overburdened that people get painkillers for immediate problems until they can get to more sophisticated treatment and by that point they may be hooked or they may need to continue to use? I mean I’m making a very simple story about a very complex situation, but without looking at and discussing those issues of what's causing the pain and what's causing the move towards drugs to treat it, we're going to continue to see—as your previous caller said—we're going to continue to see more crises like this.

AMT: So that's what you mean because you said we should look beyond the biology of pain to the sociology.

DAN MALLECK: Absolutely.

AMT: This is what you’re talking about—the underlying reasons for even being in pain.

DAN MALLECK: Yes. The reasons for being in pain and how we frame it and how we view drug use and drug dependency or addiction—I've been taken to task for using the term addiction too much—but dependency or addiction to these substances. If people are hiding that use, if it's so far in the shadows, then it's really hard for it to become viewed and treated if needed. And then we end up in cases where people are accessing say, heroin that's cut with fentanyl or fentanyl and they don't quite know the dosage or all of these things that lead to death. Right. Because their use of it is not properly observed or not properly managed by people who know the pharmacology of it.

AMT: It's interesting to hear your thoughts on this. Thank you for your time.

DAN MALLECK: Thank you.

AMT: That is Dan Malleck. He’s a medical historian and he is an associate professor in health sciences at Brock University. He's also the author of When Good Drugs Go Bad and we reached him in St. Catherines, Ontario. Let us know what you think of what we're talking about. You can tweet us. We are @thecurrentCBC. Find us on Facebook. Go to our website, www.cbc.ca/thecurrent, and click on the contact link if you've got thoughts on the ongoing issue of increasing numbers of fentanyl deaths across this country. The CBC News is next and then inside the deep closet of the Vatican. Despite the Catholic Church's ban on gay men entering the priesthood, we hear from insiders who say the prevalence of homosexuality inside the church is one of the Vatican's most open secrets. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current.

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Vatican expert says homophobia in Catholic Church due in part to high numbers of gay priests

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

[Music: Theme]

AMT: Still to come, warnings of water. While the fight for Mosul continues, some say the true danger is the largest dam in Iraq. There's concern over the potential for a catastrophic flood. We'll talk about it in half an hour. But first, forbidden love in the Vatican. Late last year, the Vatican introduced fresh guidelines on how to educate its all-male seminarians. What it called “the gift of the priestly vocation” included a renewed ban on accepting gay men into the priesthood or as the Catholic Church put it—“men who practice homosexuality, have homosexual tendencies or support gay culture.” Freelance journalist Megan Williams explores the Vatican's stance against accepting homosexual relationships despite the open secret of gay priests, in the documentary you're about to hear. This is God's Closet.

KRZYSZTOFER CHARAMSA: I am Krzysztofer. In English, Christopher. Krzysztof Charamsa. I’m Polish priest and I am gay. [chuckles] And I'm so happy that I can say it.

MEGAN WILLIAMS: Krzysztof Charamsa and I meet over cake and coffee in the historic centre of Barcelona. He's strikingly handsome with sparkling blue eyes and dressed in a crisp shirt and tailored jacket. We're sitting under the stone arcade of a kid-friendly cafe that was once a cloister. It seems an apt place to meet a reformed Catholic priest.

KRZYSZTOF CHARAMSA: The Catholic Church is the principal political agency of homophobic position in the world. Very powerful. I was collaborator of system.

MEGAN WILLIAMS: For more than a decade, Krzysztof was an official in the Vatican bureaucracy. But not just any Vatican office—he worked at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Think of it as the Catholic Church's politburo—the office that writes and enforces Catholic rules. For much of his time there, Krzystof's boss was Joseph Ratizger, the cardinal who went on to become Pope Benedict the 16th, Francis's predecessor. While moderate clerics defended celibate gay priests, Ratzinger set in motion a purge of homosexuality—not just the act—but the orientation. A church document he drafted referred to gay people as "intrinsically disordered" with a tendency toward "moral evil”. Then in 2005, the Vatican instituted a ban on gay men from entering the priesthood. Yet, despite knowing he himself was gay, Krzysztof kept silent.

KRZYSZTOF CHARAMSA: I remember people who ask my opinion about this project and I cannot say nothing. In this time, I must confirm, yeah. This is good. This law is good. And I remember I cried this day in my office, that I cannot say that it's paranoiac law.

MEGAN WILLIAMS: Kryzstof has spent most of his life in the Catholic Church. He joined the seminary as a teenager in Poland then later in Switzerland, always sure he was meant to become a priest. He says during his training, no one ever uttered the word homosexual. But he knew that's what he was.

KRZYSZTOF CHARAMSA: I know homosexuality only from the church. You know, I hated my sexuality. I was terrified by my being and in this time, I wanted to be priest and I know that the homosexuality is something wrong.

MEGAN WILLIAMS: As he struggled in silence, Charamsa rose through the ranks of the Vatican. He was well-respected for his intellect. He taught theology at a pontifical university and held a prestigious office with good pay and benefits. But as the anti-gay position at the Vatican grew, Krzysztof says he moved deeper into the closet. That is, until he met Eduard, a man from Barcelona, and he was forced to make a decision.

KRZYSZTOF CHARAMSA: When I discovered that I loved this man, I think you must say who you are. For us, there was no possibility to double life. For me and for my partner, it was impossible. Impossible to think all life, no. No. In this church, many priests have said to me, “But why? You can continue. Your relationship is good. It’s fantastic. You are happy. He's a very good man. Why you cannot continue? You have work. You have money. You have your pension and you know what begin when you say that you are gay and you have partner.” The answer of the church—in Italiano—Fuori! In Italian—Fuori! Out! You are not one of us.

MEGAN WILLIAMS: Did you have a sense it was now or never, because you were in your forties?

KRZYSZTOF CHARAMSA: [Chuckles] You are very human. It's a very good observation. For this decision, you must have energy and when you are 50, when you are 60, it's game over. Game is over.

SOUNDCLIP

[Sound: Bells ringing in St. Peter’s Basilica]

MEGAN WILLIAMS: In the fall of 2015, when several hundred bishops descended upon Rome for a Vatican meeting on family and sexuality, Krzysztof made a move that changed his life.

[Sound: Krzysztof Charamsa speaking in Italian at a press conference]

MEGAN WILLIAMS: I remember it well. It was in a restaurant across the river from the Vatican. There, in front of several dozen journalists from around the world, he introduced his gay partner Eduard and came out.

[Sound: Krzysztof speaking in Italian]

MEGAN WILLIAMS: But not only. He also denounced the office he'd worked in, charging it with promoting "paranoid homophobia”. And he apologized for his own complicit silence.

[Sound: Applause]

MEGAN WILLIAMS: He was almost immediately fired from the Vatican and defrocked.

SOUNDCLIP

[Sound: Bells ringing in St. Peter’s Basilica]

CARDINAL THOMAS COLLINS: I found it very odd that he would do this the day before the Synod. I mean even people who approve of his decision may have found it a bit interesting to pull off kind of a thing like that. It seemed to be a bit artificial or a bit, I don't know.

MEGAN WILLIAMS: I meet Toronto Archbishop Thomas Collins at a small Vatican guest house around the corner from the Canadian Embassy to the Holy See. Just down the street, the dome of St. Peter's Basilica gleams in the sunshine. It's during the week-long Synod—or meeting—on the family that Pope Francis called to update the Catholic Church's stance on everything from offering communion to divorce and remarried Catholics, to how it welcomes gay members. A few days earlier, Krzysztof had come out and denounced the Catholic Church for homophobia.

CARDINAL THOMAS COLLINS: I think it had very little influence or none, no influence on the Synod itself because we’re not talking about this.

MEGAN WILLIAMS: Cardinal Collins is what's known as a doctrinal hardliner—a strong believer that what the Catholic faithful want just as much as compassion, are cut and dry rules on how to conduct their lives. He was part of a group of cardinals that signed a letter later leaked, where they warned the pope about the danger of reformer bishops taking the Catholic Church down what they saw as a slippery slope of adapting to modern times. One of those dangers? Acceptance of gay couples. But Cardinal Collins insists that Krzysztof’s charge of "paranoid homophobia" is not behind the church's take on gay men and women.

CARDINAL THOMAS COLLINS: I mean really, I think that's just simply unfair. I think that the church, the Catholic Church, is faithful to its teachings, the teachings of Christ. It needs to teach them always with compassion and understanding. But to accuse anyone of being phobic or antagonistic, that's a bludgeon. That's a pre-emptive club that can be used to shut down people's freedom of speech.

MEGAN WILLIAMS: [To Cardinal Collins] Even with language “intrinsically disordered”, that doesn’t strike you as phobic?

CARDINAL THOMAS COLLINS: That language probably is a kind of language that is such a technical theological language and that is interpreted by people. Disordered is being something you're—a very, very kind of a negative term. What it is saying the order of creation is that the sexual relationship between a man and a woman faithful in love and open to the gift of life, so something that is not in harmony with that is—that's where you get the terminology.

MEGAN WILLIAMS: He says, if anything, it's not the church's position that needs to change, but the language it uses. He suggests making it easier to understand, or conveying the concept through parables. Still, it boils down to the same thing.

SOUNDCLIP

MEGAN WILLIAMS: But your advice to gay couples—two women or two men in a loving gay relationship—is to… what?

CARDINAL THOMAS COLLINS: I would say that my advice to all people is to live a good and faithful life of chastity. To get anything else from the message of our Lord is I think, rather, would be rather strange and not very good.

MEGAN WILLIAMS: Chastity—when applied to gay couples, Collins clarifies—means no sex life.

CARDINAL THOMAS COLLINS: We're dealing with a tendency or inclination. But we're not slaves of anything—not just this—but anything in life. We all inclinations to do all kinds of things and what it means to be free is not to be a slave of one’s inclinations. We're not defined by that. So when a person puts people in boxes—boom, like this—we just find that to be very narrow.

[Sound: Bells ringing]

ROBERT MICKENS: I think unfortunately because of the whole ethos in the church and teaching around homosexuality and the fact that there seems a large number of people in the priesthood and religious life who have homosexual orientation, I think what you end up having are a lot of self-loathing, homophobic homosexuals in the priesthood.

MEGAN WILLIAMS: That's Robert Mickens. We're on our way to the Foreign Press Club in Rome, just around the corner from the Trevi Fountain and a short walk across the Tiber River from St. Peter's. Robert is a Vaticanist, or Vatican expert. He moved here to Rome almost 30 years ago as a seminarian. After deciding the priesthood wasn't for him, he worked as a journalist at Vatican Radio for a decade or so, then as a reporter for various Catholic publications. Mickens says one way the Catholic Church has tried to avoid the issue of gay priests is through language. Euphemism.

ROBERT MICKENS: One of the things that you’ll hear the culture warriors—self-styled Orthodox Catholic priests and bishops do—is use language which is explicitly not PC language. So they'll say “same-sex attraction” or “homosexual tendencies”.

MEGAN WILLIAMS: Robert says what's unusual about Pope Francis is that he's the first pope who has actually used the word gay. Robert says the Vatican wasn't always so condemning of homosexuality. In the 1980s when he attended a US seminary, there was a willingness to talk openly about everything from the fear of being gay to concerns about celibacy. Then with Joseph Ratzinger at the helm of Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, that dialogue was shut down, and gay priests in the church were driven deeper into the closet. That’s when terms like "intrinsically disordered" came about.

ROBERT MICKENS: As a minister, you know yourself. I'm homosexual, I'm a gay man. But my church for whom I've given my life in ministering tells me that I'm intrinsically bad. That is a burden under which a lot of men in the priesthood labour because there are a lot of gay priests. Whether they are open about that to themselves or others, whether they are celibate or whether they are sexually active, there are a lot.

MEGAN WILLIAMS: There are no reliable official stats on what percentage of Roman Catholic priests are gay. In a 2002 poll by the LA Times, 15 per cent of American priests self-identified as either gay or "somewhere in between but more on the homosexual side." Twenty-three per cent for younger priests. But many gay priests I've spoken to say it's much, much higher—closer to 70 per cent. Robert Mickens himself planned to become one.

ROBERT MICKENS: All I wanted to be was a good priest.

MEGAN WILLIAMS: But when he was in his final year as a seminarian in the US, he began a relationship with a fellow seminarian. That took him by surprise.

ROBERT MICKENS: I never—I was a hockey player. My father was a construction worker. I didn't ever play with dolls or anything when I was a kid. I never saw myself as fitting any kind of gay stereotype. And I was probably very afraid of it as I think of it now.

MEGAN WILLIAMS: Robert spoke with some older priests about it, one who was gay himself. They tried to convince him that it was just a phase and even told him he should marry a woman. By this time, he was studying here in Rome and had fallen deeply in love with another seminarian. After months of torment, that's when he took the step of leaving the seminary and the easier one of stepping out in Rome.

ROBERT MICKENS: Starting to go to gay places, you know, clubs, nightclubs and the beach.

MEGAN WILLIAMS: What he discovered, was just how many gay men there were at the Vatican.

ROBERT MICKENS: And I was running into all kinds of priests and even seminarians. People that worked at the Vatican. In gay bath houses, I would meet priests there. I've met people who are bishops today. I pity these people because I know that they must live—they live double lives. I don't know how they do it. I think people end up self-destructing. They're also, I think, I know a number of priests to have partners or special friends from various stages of platonic to full-blown, almost like husband-to-husband relationships, you know? The church and certainly the Vatican is an extremely homoerotic place. Take a walk to the Vatican museums. It's all male genitalia all over the place. I mean it's quite something. Look at the rituals. The young men who sing at these things. It's all men up there. And they bring out the pretty ones. Look at the bishops. Look at who their secretaries are. It's always the pretty one. And they’re blind to it. They're nothing going on but it's eye candy. They love surrounding themselves. They wear dresses, for God's sake. It's very homoerotic.

MEGAN WILLIAMS: But, says Mickens, dare to own it publically at your peril.

ROBERT MICKENS: In the Vatican, it's basically, as long as you're discreet and you don't get caught. But once you do, you're all on your own. We're not going to help you.

MEGAN WILLIAMS: So, why all the denying about gay culture in the church?

ROBERT MICKENS: I think the church wants to keep this issue a taboo so that those pious young men will continue to think of priesthood as the noble way rather than thinking that well, I am gay and maybe that's what I should live my life as, as a gay man. The church loses. The church loses if we allow people to live openly their sexuality, their homosexuality, because we lose a great pool of our resources for ministry.

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[Sound: Bells ringing]

KRZYSZTOF CHARAMSA: I love this city.

MEGAN WILLIAMS: What do you love about it?

KRZYSZTOF CHARAMSA: So here you have theatre.

MEGAN WILLIAMS: Back in Barcelona, Krzysztof is facing the reality of starting over. In Rome, he was fired from his professor job and now, he can no longer teach in any Catholic university.

KRZYSZTOF CHARAMSA: I have nothing. Pension. Nothing. I begin like person—I don’t know. After studies and begin looking for the work without security, without medical security or social security. Nothing.

MEGAN WILLIAMS: He's written a memoir and has become an advocate for gay rights. He says he’s grateful for the freedom he feels as a gay man in Barcelona, and for the love of those most important to him.

KRZYSZTOF CHARAMSA: Oh, to have family like mine—to have reactions, friendly—for your coming out, as I have. It was incredible. With all this pressure of Catholic mentality, they accept only me. [Crying] And you know, only in this time I understand fully the love of my family. Only now, I know that they love me with all their hearts.

MEGAN WILLIAMS: But with that love comes suffering. While Krzysztof relishes his new-found freedom in Barcelona, back in Poland, the Catholic Church and its message about gay people still wield huge influence.

KRZYSZTOF CHARAMSA: Here these people are happy. Here we have freedom. We have tolerance. We have respect for your dignity. But when I think about my Poland, my family—when I say to my mother, here people come to me and congratulate with me for coming out. They say here, nobody congratulates. Here, people stay in silence, don't speak with me and in the street, when I meet somebody, they laugh. Children of my brother return from school crying because another children say that they are sick like their uncle, who is sick. And they suffer for me. And you know, here I’m so happy, so free, but I think about my family and my family must suffer in place of me.

MEGAN WILLIAMS: But even the pain his family has experienced hasn’t left Krzysztof bitter about his church. In fact, he sees coming out not as a rejection of the Catholic Church, but as something far more positive.

KRZYSZTOF CHARAMSA: Eduard was for me, the last gift of God. The last light. It was my experience which I give to my church. I am gay and I am happy.

MEGAN WILLIAMS: I ask Krzysztof what he thinks needs to change for the Catholic Church's message about being gay to finally change.

KRZYSZTOF CHARAMSA: I don't want to condemn people who are in closet. But I think that this strong, unhuman conservative position of the church is fault of us who are in closet. Gay people in the church, with many, many suffering, with many pain, and who are good priest but who support this position. Every priest, every bishop, every cardinal who is gay must come out.

[Music: Piano]

AMT: We’ve been listening to God’s Closet, a documentary produced by freelance journalist, Megan Williams, and The Current’s documentary editor, Josh Bloch. Some blunt and provocative observations in that documentary. Let us know what you think. You can tweet us @thecurrentCBC. Find us on Facebook. Go to our website: www.cbc.ca/thecurrent.

[Music: Bridge]

AMT: Okay. We've got time to remind you of the many ways—really easy ones—you can listen to The Current. If you are like me and you don't actually have a radio anymore, you can download the CBC Radio app and you can always have The Current with you. The app will let you browse through past episodes of our show. You can start listening instantly. You can search for stories you missed that you want to hear again. You can listen live to any local CBC radio station across the country and you can listen in different time zones. If you sleep in, you can listen to the next time zone along. You can also hear the day's top stories or even make your own playlist of your favorite programs for later listening, all right on a smartphone or tablet free from the App Store or Google Play. Try it out. Let us know what you think. We are @thecurrentCBC on Twitter. You can also reach us through our website: www.cbc.ca/thecurrent. And in our next half hour, it has been called the worst threat—a worst threat than ISIS—why water could be the biggest danger for people living around the Mosul Dam or downstream from the Mosul Dam. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current on CBC Radio One, Sirius XM and online on www.cbc.ca/thecurrent.

[Music: Sting]

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Engineers warn that Mosul Dam, at risk of collapse, could threaten more lives than ISIS

Guests: Nadhir al-Ansari, Peter Hahn

AMT: Hello. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti and this is The Current. Up next—warnings of death dealing water.

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This dam is a very long dam. It's about three and a half kilometres in length. It holds behind it, a big lake, artificial lake, that has 11 billion cubic metres of water. If the foundations of this dam begin to get weak, cracks will begin to happen. And as soon as water starts moving, there is nothing stopping it. Within a few hours, a small leak will turn into a big crack and very soon we will have a wave of water coming down the river, starting with the height of the lake of the dam. And of course, that is higher than the river, so as soon as the water starts coming out, it starts gushing over the sides of the river. But it's a huge, huge tidal wave. It's a tsunami. It's an inland tsunami moving down. And within three hours, the city of Mosul is going to be reached by the tsunami wave. And even the high parts of the city, the oldest part of the city—they’re the ones that have been inhabited for 3,000, 4,000 years—will be under 20 metres of water. Every house will be under water. Nobody's going to be able to leave in time. The streets are congested with cars and people are fighting. And it's like a Hollywood movie, I would say. And then the wave moves and within 72 hours, it will reach Baghdad. The water is going to leak to both sides of the river to maybe six kilometres wide. Every house, every street is going to be under three to four to five metres of water, depending on how much water was in the reservoir. Not a generator is going to survive. Not a car is going to survive. The houses, the old houses are going to collapse on its inhabitants. The people who have two-storey houses may survive the initial wave. And then chaos and mayhem will start. The dead people are dead. Then you have six, seven million people who are homeless. They don't have electricity. They don't have food. There's no potable water. Think of the chaos, the humanity of it. It’s unparalleled.

AMT: That is Dr. Azzam Alwash, an Iraqi-American hydraulic engineer who has served as an advisor on the Mosul Dam and the apocalyptic scenario he's described—it’s a worst case scenario—but it is one that haunts many experts familiar with the structure. The Mosul Dam has been dubbed the Saddam Dam. It was built more than 30 years ago on an unstable rock foundation. The US Army Corps of Engineers says it's at risk of collapse. But what they call the most dangerous dam in the world, Iraq's water resource minister says is working normally. In a worst case scenario, flooding caused by a collapse could be catastrophic for the millions of Iraqis who live along the Tigris River, as far as Baghdad. Now of course, complicating all of this is the fact that Iraqi forces backed by the US are currently locked in a fierce battle with ISIS to retake Mosul. Nadhir al-Ansari is monitoring all of this. He's an Iraqi-born professor of civil, environmental and natural resources engineering at Lulea University of Technology in northern Sweden. Hello.

NADHIR AL-ANSARI: Hello.

AMT: You've been warning about this for years. At this point, what's your biggest fear?

NADHIR AL-ANSARI: In fact, I was warning about this dam and my colleagues for a long time because we knew exactly the problem since it started in 1986. And in fact, last year, we were very worried due to several reasons. One of them in fact—the dam has two bottom outlet gates and one of them was jammed in 2011 and it was not fixed till a few months ago, in fact. So this is one. The second reason was that ISIS, when they occupied the dam, although it was a short period of time, but they destroyed the machinery and all the engineers and workers. There were about 360 personnel working on grouting operations. They ran away and the grouting was stopped or halted for a long period of time. And according to the US Corps of Engineers who worked on the site in 2015, they calculated the amount of gypsum—which was supposed to be dissolved during that period—which amounts to about 10,000 cubic metres. And that means you have a huge cavities developed under the dam.

AMT: So help us understand in really simple terms. It's the rock bed that makes it so vulnerable?

NADHIR AL-ANSARI: The rocks under the foundation is alternation of limestone and gypsum. Limestone is calcium carbonate and gypsum is calcium phosphate and the gypsum is highly soluble in water. Some people, they might say why it didn't dissolve before? Well, when you have water and gypsum and it is saturated, then you won't have any dissolution. But once impounding in the dam started, then the hydrostatic pressure of the water in the reservoir pushed the old water from these gypsum beds and then you have a new water coming, which is not saturated, so it has a very high ability to dissolve the gypsum beds.

AMT: So when you talk about the grouting, they were actually trying to reinforce that rock bed underneath those billions of cubic feet of water.

NADHIR AL-ANSARI: Exactly. They were trying to induce this grout material so that it take place of the dissolved material and trying to stop the seepage. But they couldn't do that simply because the rocks are so cracked and there are minute fractures and cracks that grout material cannot get into them. This is one of the reasons in fact. And the other reason which increased our worries last year, in fact, the flood season of the Tigris. You have very high flood and this takes place usually during the period April to June. And if that flood comes in such large quantities, the dam will not hold. So these were our worries last year, really.

AMT: Am I correct in understanding that since this dam has been built, there has been ongoing regular reinforcement of the underlying bedrock?

NADHIR AL-ANSARI: Yes, exactly. In fact, in 1986, they started to impound the reservoir and then seepage started. I was asked by the minister of irrigation at that time to go and see what's the problem. When I went there, I saw that there were plenty of geological mistakes done by the consultant and I wrote a report about that and nobody believed me at that time. And so they told me that they are going to send the report to the International Board of Mosul Dam. I told them okay, send it. They did and the board, they came to the site and the deputy minister of irrigation at that time asked me to give a presentation to the board in the presence of the consultants and contractors. I did so and they realized that the problem is very serious. So the board of experts, in fact, they recommended they use grouting, continuous grouting, and they tried plenty of mixes of grouts and they tried plenty of techniques just to stop the seepage, but they couldn't. So in 1988, the recommendation was to build another dam— downstream Mosul Dam—so that in case of failure of Mosul Dam, that dam was designed to take the wave which will be generated due to the failure of Mosul Dam. And actually, the workers started on that dam in 1988, but it was halted in 1991 after they have finished 40 per cent of the construction of the dam due to UN sanctions. And after that, that site was abandoned and they continued just maintaining grouting operations on Mosul Dam.

AMT: So what you're telling me is that this dam has been problematic from the moment it was created.

NADHIR AL-ANSARI: Exactly.

AMT: And you mentioned sanctions. So you're talking about the late eighties. Of course after that, there was the first Gulf War. In the early nineties, there was the Iran-Iraq war. Then there was the US invasion of Iraq. Now there is the war with ISIS. What has all of this conflict meant to the ability of workers to keep shoring this dam up?

NADHIR AL-ANSARI: Let’s say, till 2014, the work was going on okay. I mean grouting operations—they were maintained according to the schedule. But when ISIS, they occupied the dam—although it was a very short period of time—they destroyed the machinery and everybody ran away. And there was a long period of time till some of the workers came back and then the ministry of water resources, recently I heard that they brought some grouting machines, new ones that they are using now.

AMT: You mentioned a concern about floodwaters in the spring. So the dam right now, it’s not at capacity right now.

NADHIR AL-ANSARI: The dam, no. The situation now, they are keeping the water level low so the water level now, it's about 3.8 billion cubic metres. That means 40 per cent less than the maximum water level. So that's how they are trying to keep the situation calm.

AMT: And what could bring it to a breaking point though? Does it just depend on the melt waters in the spring?

NADHIR AL-ANSARI: The only worry now is the flood during April. So if April comes and there will be huge quantities of water coming, this might be dangerous really, because the rocks under the foundation are so weak. So that's why people are worried.

AMT: So the scenario we heard just at the beginning of a tsunami, of a wave that can be as high as 80 feet high moving toward Mosul and then moving toward Baghdad is—

NADHIR AL-ANSARI: No. Sorry, with all respect, this scenario he was talking about, in fact, this is hypothetical. This model—this gives the worst scenario—if the dam is fully impounded to the maximum—11.11 billion cubic metres.

AMT: So that worst case scenario is—even without a worst case scenario, you are concerned, however.

NADHIR AL-ANSARI: Yes, of course. The loss of one single person worries me, in fact. So it doesn't have to be half a million people die so that I can worry. In fact, the loss of one person worries me and makes me very nervous, really.

AMT: If this dam were to collapse under a better scenario, how much damage could still be done?

NADHIR AL-ANSARI: If the water level is kept like as it is just now, I think not that much damage will take place, really.

AMT: Did the Iraqi people who live along the river and on the other side of that dam know that there are these concerns?

NADHIR AL-ANSARI: Yeah, some of them, they know. Others they don't because the areas nearby the dam is still occupied by ISIS. And ISIS, you know, they are telling them that there is nothing wrong with the dam because they are trying not to make any problem for themselves.

AMT: This is still a very active conflict zone obviously. What's the greater danger to people along in that area? Is it ISIS or is it that dam?

NADHIR AL-ANSARI: Nowadays it’s ISIS, of course. The ongoing measures that I can see now in Mosul Dam, I think they are very good really and I don't think we have to worry now.

AMT: Okay. And the ongoing measures though, are reliant on workers being able to go there. So keeping that area safe from ISIS again.

NADHIR AL-ANSARI: Yes. The dam area itself is safe and there is Italian company—Trevi—they are working there and along with them, the Iraqi team also is working on grouting operation as well. So there are both teams—the Iraqi team and Italian team.

AMT: Okay. Well, Nadhir al-Ansari, it’s interesting to hear what you have to say. Thank you so much.

NADHIR AL-ANSARI: Thank you.

AMT: Nadhir al-Ansari is a professor of civil, environmental and natural resources engineering at Lulea University of Technology in Sweden. Now, the Mosul Dam’s threat of collapse not only endangers people in the water's path, it exposes political tensions. Peter Hahn is a professor of history specializing in US foreign policy in the Middle East. He's at Ohio State University. We've reached him in Columbus, Ohio. Hello.

PETER HAHN: Hello, Anna Maria.

AMT: Why was this dam built?

PETER HAHN: It was built for several reasons, many of them technologically and historically based. Dam building is something that governments around the world have done as a proactive public works measure for the common good purposes of controlling flooding, of pooling water for irrigation purposes, of having a steady supply of water for drinking purposes, of generating hydroelectric power, of creating an opportunity for jobs under broad development schemes and so forth. And there was long talk of building dams on the Tigris in northern Iraq going well back into the British colonial phase. It was built in the 1980s precisely because Saddam Hussein, who had just come to power in 1979, had rather grandiose aspirations to rule his country as his hero, Gamal Nasser, had governed Egypt and had sort of dominated the region. And he had pressing need to build a dam quickly because he was engaged in war with Iran and much of that war was being fought in the southern part of his country, down around Basra. Basra was especially prone to periodic flooding and some of Saddam's advisors recommended that that dam be built promptly because it was time for another flood. Another flood seemed due and a flood coming at that moment would expose the army, would cut off the army and make the military capacities of Iraq and in the war against Iran very complicated.

AMT: So there's a lot of geopolitical history here as well. Agriculturally, it was actually a really good thing—has been—has it not?

PETER HAHN: Well, yes. It did provide flood control. It did provide a steady source of water for agricultural development. It did generate hydroelectricity for the one million plus residents of Mosul. It did create jobs. It did accomplish all of those positive things that governments have accomplished through public works projects like this all over the world.

AMT: At the same time, it was a bit of a vanity project for him.

PETER HAHN: Yes, it was and the decision to build it there was fraught with complication as well. As Professor Ansari has so well said, it was built on unstable ground. I'm not an engineer but I understand that engineers consider it to have been a mistake to build it on that type of rock. But it was built there perhaps for political reasons. There is some evidence that one of Saddam's generals essentially wanted to pork barrel by building it at that site so that he could take care of the people of that part of the country.

AMT: Now the US helped Saddam build that dam, did it not?

PETER HAHN: Well, the US was on semi-friendly terms with Saddam at that point in time. When he took over in 1979, he was promptly dubbed sort of a bad boy, an autocrat, who the US should hold at arm's length. He had a deplorable human rights record. He was anti-democratic, et cetera, far too authoritarian for the tastes of US officials. However, once he was engaged in war with Iran, US officials engaged in a policy under President Reagan that they called the “tilt” toward Iraq. And the tilt meant that they would lean in Iraq's favour—not necessarily because they like Saddam Hussein—but because they disliked the Ayatollahs a lot more. And they wanted to empower Saddam Hussein to survive that war because he seemed to offer a containment barrier against the prospective flood of Iranian power across the Arab Middle East.

AMT: This is a region that is so rife with conflict and has been for so long now. How big a priority is it for the Iraqi government to protect the dam?

PETER HAHN: Well, I would say it's an important priority for them. They obviously want to avoid—it goes without saying—they would want to avoid the doomsday scenario like your opening segment alluded to. And as Professor Ansari said, even a relatively mild failure of the dam would be catastrophic for the. It might lead to massive loss of life. Maybe not as many as a million people as the worst case scenarios project, but even hundreds of people. And it would be catastrophic in terms of undoing the hydroelectricity and the flood control and it would damage—floods are catastrophic in that they carry industrial waste and weapons residue and things like that all over the land and despoil the land. So yes, they want to save this dam. Right now they have been engaged since shortly after the dam opened—as they have been since shortly after the dam opened—in these grouting operations to save it, to fill the voids that form with liquid cement and the voids form so fast that this just becomes a full time ongoing enterprise. They've been able to carry that out since the late 1980s, despite obstacles like ISIS' temporary interruption and the dislocations of the Gulf War of 1990-91, and the sanctions regime that followed. It's been imperfect but to date, it has worked and they are committed to making it continue to work. They would probably love in their highest of dreams to come up with a permanent solution to replace the dam with an alternate structure or to figure out how to reinforce it on a permanent basis. But they have much higher priorities in terms of national unification, stabilizing the government in Baghdad and these days, especially defeating ISIS.

AMT: It's so interesting, the many tentacles here because I was reading—Dexter Filkins has an article in The New Yorker—when they got the dam back, the Kurds wanted to actually shut down the turbines and they can't. They need it to keep operating. And so ISIS has been charging the residents of Mosul for the electricity that the dam makes and it’s a really uncomfortable situation, to put mildly.

PETER HAHN: Yes, it is. It's fraught with irony. One might say that because the hydroelectric generation powers the city of Mosul and Mosul is in enemy hands being occupied by ISIS, why not shut off the power and diminish ISIS’ war-making ability? But the government in Baghdad says yes, but that would make life extremely difficult for the one million or so hapless civilians who are already living under the brutish force of ISIS. We don't want to punish them. So let's keep the generators humming and the electricity transmitted. Then of course ISIS benefits because it uses that same power. And in fact, as that New Yorker article revealed, it taxes the consumption of electricity and thereby raises funds that it needs to continue to occupy and do its other miserable deeds.

AMT: Is the international community doing enough? Is it able to? Is there a political will to try to help shore up this dam?

PETER HAHN: In principle, there's a political will to save the situation. I don't think there's a responsible international authority that would welcome the type of doomsday scenario of the worst case variety that have been forecast. Everyone would want to minimize the possibility of that calamity. Since the ISIS period, since ISIS occupied the dam briefly in 2014, there has been a growing international consensus around the idea of what can we do? The World Bank, I understand, floated the $300 million for the current contract with the Italian firm that's now there working side by side with the Iraqis to accelerate the grouting—the remedial action that's ongoing—and also to see if they can engineer some kind of a more permanent fix. And in fact, the Italian government has sent 500 soldiers to that dam to protect that civilian workforce and offer a modicum of stability, behind which that kind of engineering remediation can occur. The bigger fix might be to go back to that alternate site that Professor Ansari talked about, where a secondary dam started under construction in the 1980s. But the price tag of that type of thing would be billions of dollars and I don't see a consensus around that yet.

AMT: Okay. Well, who said infrastructure doesn't matter, huh? Peter Hahn, thank you.

PETER HAHN: You're quite welcome.

AMT: Peter Hahn, professor of history specializing in US foreign policy in the Middle East. He's at Ohio State University. We reached him in Columbus. Well, that is our program for today. Stay with Radio One for q. Tom Power’s speaking to Ali Hassan—the comedian who's been touring his show Muslim Interrupted. He's actually had to rewrite parts of it since the US presidential election and he's going to talk about changing his comedy with the times and what it's like to be a Muslim-Canadian today. Now tomorrow, we're going to be tackling Canadian identity issues through the tasty prism of food. It is our 150th anniversary as a country. We still often think of ourselves as a nation without a national cuisine. However, food researcher Lenore Newman argues there is such a thing as Canadian culinary tradition and to give you an idea of what she's talking about, here are Christina Nakogee and JoAnn Pezzo describing how they make bannock at a restaurant called Tea N Bannock in Toronto.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: I’ll make the raisin. You can make the plain.

VOICE 2: Alright.

VOICE 1: So traditionally, your bannock has flour, salt, baking powder, water and lard. But because we’re at the restaurant and we have vegetarians here, we can’t use lard so we use canola oil. I love to make it. The first place I actually learned to make it was here. Growing up, like I just watched my grandmother make it all the time and I always wanted to learn to make it but I never really bothered because I lived in the city so I wasn't really exposed to a lot of, you could say, traditional foods. So everybody has their own story, I guess.

VOICE 2: I grew up north in the bush. I'm pretty sure that I was exposed to all the wild meats, all the berries, the roots, et cetera, et cetera. And then when I moved into town, that's when all the white food came in. You know the mac and cheese, potatoes, the meat loaf.

VOICE 1: Bannock is traditionally—it's from Scotland. And we, I guess, have adapted it and we took it in and we made it ours and it's ours now. [laughs] You know?

VOICE 2: Now that I know how to make bannock, it gives me a real good sense of pride and also strengthens my identity as an Aboriginal woman. You know. I can go home and make this for my family now. I can make them bannock pudding, which they all love. [laugh]

VOICE 1: This place first started off selling Navajo Indian tacos. If you want to get politically correct, it's Navajo or whatever, but we just say Indian tacos, right? But at every pow-wow, you have to have an Indian taco. An Indian taco is fry-bread and then you have a sauce on it with basically like you know tomato and spices like that. And then add your cheese, lettuce, tomato and onion, sour cream and salsa on the side. It's delicious. You have to try that. That's one thing that you can’t get really anywhere in the city. So here we have trapper’s snack, which is a fry-bread or bannock with Klik luncheon meat on it.

VOICE 2: To me, when I see that word “trapper’s snack”, I think of someone on the trapline back up in the bush and they can't carry a lot of supplies with them and food. So something like carrying just some flour and lard and some—

VOICE 1: Basic necessities, yeah.

VOICE 2: Yeah. And a can of Klik, you know you just open it up, cut it up, fry up your bread and put it together and there's your trapper’s snack. [chuckles]

VOICE 1: My grandfather was a trapper and Klik was definitely something that they did have on that trapper’s line.

AMT: We’ll hear more about Canadian cuisine coast to coast in my conversation with Lenore Newman. She's just written a book called Speaking in Cod Tongues. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. Thanks for listening to The Current.

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January 10, 2017 full episode transcript

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