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The AIH Transcript for March 15, 2017

Hosts: Carol Off and Jeff Douglas

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

CO: Hello, I'm Carol Off.

JD: Good evening, I'm Jeff Douglas. This is As It Happens.

[Music: Theme]

JD: Tonight.

CO: A moment's peace. In the photograph, a man smoking a pipe listens to music on his gramophone looking out a shattered windows in the rubble strewn bedroom in Aleppo. Tonight I'll speak with the man who took that photo.

JD: Make lakes great again. The Trump administration may be preparing to slash the funding of the Great Lakes cleanup program. A Wisconsin mayor tells us what he's doing to keep that program from being watered down.

CO: All was confusion and then she got the drift. A Montreal commuter says she's thankful to be alive after last night's blizzard turned her 20 minute trip home into a nine hour nightmare.

JD: A decorated general’s stark reality. An Encore presentation of Carol's conversation with General Romeo Dallaire. His most recent memoir recounts the devastating impact the Rwandan genocide has had on his psyche.

CO: Tormenting the stout hearted. Grown adults don't actually cry over spilled milk, but a controversial St. Patrick's Day ad proves that a dribbling pint of Guinness can reduce voltage drinkers to tears of rage.

JD: And the Yellow Rose of textbooks. Books are just one of the many factors that contribute to the distinctive odor of an old library. And our guest is taking all of them into account to recreate the odor of one library in particular as it smelled a century ago.
As It Happens, the Wednesday edition. Radio that figures if it smells terrible, they have only themselves to blame.

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Part 1: Aleppo photo, Quebec pileup, Guinness beer

Aleppo photo

Guest: Joseph Eid

JEFF DOUGLAS: As a photographer, Joseph Eid has gotten used to looking at war from behind the lens. He photographed the war in Iraq. He was in Libya when Moammar Gaddafi was toppled. And for the past six years, he's seen death and destruction in Syria close up.
But when Mr. Eid was in Aleppo last week, he captured something different: a brief moment of calm amidst the chaos. His photograph, which pictures an elderly Syrian man perched inside the ruins of his home, is making waves around the world.
We reached AFP photojournalist Joseph Eid in Byblos, Lebanon.

CAROL OFF: Joseph, can you first of all just describe this remarkable photo. Just what's going on there?

JOSEPH EID: Well it's an old man smoking his pipe and sitting in his bedroom and it’s a destroyed bedroom, listening to old music on his phonograph and contemplating outside the neighborhood while smoking his pipe, taking a break, relaxing.

CO: In the picture, though it's devastated, it's all everything is collapsed and broken, everything looks broken–

JE: Yes.

CO: It looks like it was once just a beautiful room. A great big bed with the headboard and there's great big windows that look out into what was once the beautiful city of Aleppo and everything's in ruin.

JE: Yes everything. Do you know, actually it's like bombed by airplanes. All the area is mostly destroyed. The house is really badly damaged and the room itself, he likes to collect antiquities and everything that he has is an antique and it's a really expensive. He has painting. Even his bedroom is very precious. Even the house. It’s nearly going to collapse.

CO: In the middle of this photo, that's your eye focuses on, is this elderly man and he's sitting on the side of his bed listening to a record on an old style phonograph. What's the music? What's he listening to?

JE: He was listening to a North Arabic song from the 50s. I used to hear my grandfather listen to it when he wanted to relax in the afternoon. And I am not a fan of this music, but for his time, he recalls the golden era of the Arab world, when all the Arab world was in a boom and it was the golden age.

CO: Everything except for the phonograph and it looks like his pipe is the only other thing that's not broken.

JE: No, his pipe actually is broken. When he wanted to show us that phonograph is working. And he said OK listen, I cannot listen to music without smoking my pipe. So he went to the other room. He brought his pipe and I noticed that the pipe is broken and he taped it with a scotch tape and he lit it and turned on the phonograph and after listening to his favorite… the guy’s soul is broken but he is just fighting, fighting.

CO: Where did he tell you? In what way is his soul broken?

JE: Just to look, from a rich guy who had an enterprise, had all these vintage cars and antiquities and money and properties in Aleppo. He lost everything during the war. But he insists that nothing is going to break me. I felt that he was almost broken but he's fighting back. He doesn't want to admit it. To admit that he is devastated by the war. He told us that “Nothing is going to break my will. I'm going to start from zero. I'm going to start again. I’m going to repair my cars, I’m going to repair my house. Nothing is going to stop me.”

CO: You said he was in the cosmetics industry. I understand he manufactured lipstick at one time.

JE: Lipstick, yes. In the first floor of his house, you enter inside and you smell the lipstick smell all over, you know. And he has mixtures of different colors and different ingredients for how to make lipsticks.

CO: And what about this collection of antique cars?

JE: Yes, he's… you know his father started this. He had around 30 cars or something like that. Most of them are damaged now. Ten of them were stolen. Some of them were removed by the municipality while they were cleaning the streets after the army went inside. And what remains is mostly damaged. They need a lots of repair.

CO: And what kind of car? What's left of his collection?

JE: Vintage between 40s and 50s. You know, most of them are American made cars from Cadillac to Plymouth, and Chevrolet, and two horses car, the very famous iconic Horses car. The French one for Citroen and a Volkswagen, an old Volkswagen.

CO: And you say that he's defiant. He's not going to break. Is he alone? Does he have a family?

JE: He has a family. He has two wives. And they live outside of the city and he has eight children. Most of them the grown up. Some of them are outside the country, in Germany and Italy. In Europe.

CO: You probably know that today is the sixth anniversary of the war in Syria. This is the beginning of the seventh year. What do you want people outside of Syria to learn about the situation from seeing this photo?

JE: Well as Abu Omar says, he has the will to start again and to fight. I think it’s a strong message for all people and for all the Syrians to not lose hope.

CO: You know that people who have seen this photo everywhere, they're just celebrating it as something very special. And the Washington Post said this is a novel in one shot. Why do you think it has touched so many people, has resonated so much?

JE: Well I think that people these days they are fed up with violence, starting from me. You know, as a war photographer. I just turn my head most of the time when I look at news. Fed up with beheadings, with ISIS, with bombings, with suicide bombers from Iraq to Yemen to Syria to Libya to whatever. People want peace. They want something that touches their spirit. They are longing for something that arises from ashes and gives a little light, a little hope that life can come back to normal, that all of this nightmare that humanity is living now can end one day.
I think like Abu Omar is doing. I think it can be reached on day.

CO: Joseph, thank you for this photograph and thank you for speaking with us.

JE: You are most welcome.

CO: All right, good night.

JE: Good night.

JD: Joseph Eid is a photographer for AFP. We reached him in Byblos, Lebanon. You can find more on that story on the As it Happens website, cbc.ca/aih.

[Music]

Brazil soccer mom

JD: Bruno Fernandes de Souza was a very popular goaltender who played for several of Brazil's top teams. But in 2010, his career ended in disgrace, when he was charged with participating in the kidnapping and brutal murder of his girlfriend, Eliza Samudio. In 2013, he was convicted and sentenced to 22 years in prison.
Last month, he was released on a legal technicality, pending an appeal. And, in a shocking development, the Brazilian soccer team Boa Esporte has just signed him to a two-year contract.
Now people in Brazil are outraged. Not least, of course, the family of the late Eliza Samudio. Earlier today, Eliza's mother, Sonia Samudio, spoke with the BBC through a translator. Here is part of what she had to say:

SOUNDCLIP

[Sound: Sonia Samudio speaking in Portugese]

TRANSLATOR: It's extremely upsetting for me as a mother, seeing him going on with his life as nothing has happened. It's a bad example, a bad example for society. He left the jail laughing, laughing at society, laughing at justice. We still live in a very much a world we can't tolerate the number of women being killed anymore. There's so much cruelty every day. I mourn every day from my daughter because I don't have her with me and I'm very worried about my grandson.
The day will come when he will ask me about what happened to his mother and I'm supposed to say what?
He knows from the beginning that his mother died when he was a baby. She's now in heaven. I try to protect him as much as I can but I'm afraid of how he will react once he knows what happened. If I could take this burden away, I would. I'd give my life for that. But I can't. It's sad when you see someone who abducted and killed your daughter, leaving jail with so many fans. It's a slap in my face. They take their wives and kids to watch a football match with him. Is this an example of a true sportsman they want for their children to look up to?

JD: That's Sonia Samudio of Brazil speaking with the BBC through translation. Ms. Samudio’s daughter Eliza Samudio was brutally murdered in 2010. Brazilian soccer goaltender Bruno Fernandes de Souza was convicted in 2013 and sentenced to 22 years in prison for his role in her kidnapping and death. He was released last month pending an appeal. And earlier this week again, he was signed for a two-year contract with Brazilian team Boa Esporte.

[Music]

Quebec pileup

Guest: Jennifer Villegas

JD: "Unacceptable." That is how Quebec's Municipal Affairs Minister is describing the response to last night's snowstorm. And that's in a province where winter weather that would make history in Toronto or Vancouver is taken in stride.
Last night, however, the snow just would not stop. Pileup followed pileup. Cars and trucks got stuck in the snow, or they slid right off the road.
But what has the Minister outraged is the follow-up. There are reports of people dying in their cars as they waited for help.
And in Montreal, a crash on Highway 13 turned Jennifer Villegas' commute home into an ordeal. We reached Ms. Villegas at home, finally, in Lachine.

CO: Jennifer, how long does your trip home usually take?

JENNIFER VILLEGAS: About 15, 20 minutes.

CO: And how long did it take last night?

JV: It was nine hours.

CO: Nine hours. What happened?

JV: I was... we knew that there was a snowstorm coming and I was expecting some delay into the drive back home. But I didn't expect it to be that long. There was a standstill, there were closures of exits and some trucks having difficulties going into inclines and being slippery and all that and being detoured for everyone. And that created a mess and 20 minutes became nine hours. And for some people even longer because I had to get back and leave my car last night and I had to pick it up this morning and as I was doing that, making arrangements for that, I have heard that people that were from the night before we're still trying to make their way back.

CO: And this was all on Highway 13. This is and there were 300 people stranded in that stretch with along with you.

JV: Yes it was apparently, there was a closure between the 20 and the 40, which is a very long stretch of a highway. People were getting impatient. Some people were turning off their engines and saving gas. Some people were worried about that. I spoke to one guy because I had heard on the radio that there was a closure towards the 20 east. So sometimes when I would come out to clean out my windshield, some people would do the same and I would give them an update about I've heard on the news that there's a closure on the 20 east and there was this guy's like “I don't know how far west I could go because he was aware that there was a gasoline station straight up ahead and he was saying how his gas was running low. But at least in my case, I was able to keep myself comfortable. I had enough gas and I was able to keep my car running longer and keep myself warm.

CO: And this is, you’re talking with the snow. As you were sitting there, and these nine hours, there was 35 centimeters of snow fell. Record from Montreal. And elsewhere they were getting 60 or 70 centimeters of snow.

JV: I know. This morning I had to shovel and everything. And this is the most I've experienced for me. And I hear of news where in the Atlantic side of Canada, they would open their doors and have snow covering up the entire doorway. And I'm like I don't know how they do it.

CO: So when winter weather becomes a story in Quebec, you know it's going to be bad because that's I mean is, you guys are not wusses when it comes to dealing with winter. So this this is bad.

JV: This one is definitely something that I'll remember for a long time.

CO: Now when we talk about you getting home, you didn't get home with your car.

JV: So what happened, when we were getting ready to leave. I did see people having trouble and I offered, I saw these two cars. They were having trouble and I saw a woman just shoveling by herself and I'm like OK I can help her I could just shovel. So I stopped by and started shoveling and getting herself out trapped from the snow. And we were able to clear her and then the other car. But then as I was getting back to my car, we were all waiting to make sure that everybody could leave, I realized I lost my key man I couldn't find it along the snow.

CO: No.

JV: So one was kind enough to offer me a ride home, and I do have a spare key, and my plan was to turn back around and wait a bit to get some traffic going again and to have a chance to pick up my car. But then I couldn't contact the taxi and the highway was apparently still a mess. By the time that I did get to contact a cab, the car wasn't there anymore and it's been towed. And then when we went to the towing place, unfortunately we were billed with a $200 fee.

CO: So this inconvenience and the fee, but as you know there are other people who didn't fare very well on this, or there are deaths in their cars, who got snowed in.

JV: Yes. That's very tragic because as much as we want to be prepared for things like this one, it is unfortunate but sometimes very tragic things can happen. And I hope it is not the case. I've heard something about it but it wasn't confirmed and I hope it's not case.

CO: And we should point out that those deaths did not happen in in the crowd of cars that you were in. It was on a different highway. There were several horrible pileups including that highway 10 one which was just extraordinary numbers of cars piled up there, so lots of disasters last night.

JV: Yes. We still have to be as much as we hear about warnings and experiences that we've had in the past. Everyone should still be very careful and heed out warnings even more seriously. So hopefully this will be a lesson for everyone.

CO: Jennifer, I'm glad you’re OK and I appreciate speaking with you. Thanks.

JV: Thank you.

CO: Alright, take care. Thanks.

JD: We reached Jennifer Villegas earlier today in Lachine, Quebec. And officials have now promised to reimburse Ms. Villegas and other drivers for those charges. And this afternoon, Lieutenant Martine Asselin of the Sureté du Québec confirmed that two men did die while waiting for help, after their truck got stuck in the snow in St-Pierre-de-la-Riviere-du-Sud. Here she is speaking with the CBC's Marika Wheeler.

SOUNDCLIP

MARTINE ASSELIN: So both police officer and paramedics tried to attempt to be able to go there by car but it was impossible due to the amount of snow that was around on the road. So around 1:00 a.m., a snowmobile try to reach that place, but they also got stuck in the snow.

MARIKA WHEELER: Alright. So what happens when the snowmobiles get stuck?

MA: Well they walked, they practically crawled through the snow or swim through the snow to reach it’s practically two kilometres away from the exits where they just lost the use of their snowmobiles. So still, they really try to reach that place, and try to dig through the snow to find the car, but they weren't able to find it. So at some point they had to stop because they were freezing in they also need to protect their own life. And they were, they were able to go into a house, take refuge in a residence.

MW: And even then, you continued to explore other options.

MA: Yes we had thought of using the helicopter but it was not an option. Also we looked to hospitals around, if maybe we would have reach a hospital. But no we didn't have that information. So at around 6 a.m., the police were able to proceed to reach the car with the back hose. So we had to remove all the snow and we were able to find the two men in the car. We also found three other vehicles nearby. Three persons, two women and a man that were safely brought back to hospital.

MW: And if I understand, the men who we believe are dead are still in the vehicle.

MA: Yes, at this point yes. We’ll need... someone will need to confirm that. And also the weather doesn't permit us.

JD: That was Sureté du Québec Sergeant Martine Asselin, speaking with the CBC's Lieutenant Marika Wheeler earlier today.

Guinness beer

Guest: Dan Olson

JD: The photo was meant to be artistic. But it has drawn the ire of the Irish.
Earlier this week, Vancouver's Railtown Café posted a photo to promote its St. Patrick's Day event. Prominently depicted is a pint of Guinness. The way it's depicted has people foaming at the mouth.
Dan Olson is the owner of the Railtown Café. We reached him in Vancouver.

CO: Dan, you seem to have put the “Ire” in Ireland.

DAN OLSON: We did. We really annoyed an entire country.

CO: How did you do that? Tell us about this picture.

DO: Well it's funny, the whole thing started yesterday morning when I woke up at about 7:00 in the morning and found about 90 messages on my phone coming through from Facebook and from our website, e-mail address, all people critiquing our pour of our Guinness.

CO: Your pour. Now this is, comes from a photo you published as part of your advertising for St. Patty's Day, right?

DO: Yes. Earlier this week we put a promotional package together and sent it out to help bring some people along and have a party this Friday at both of our cafes. So we did this advertising campaign and it went out on Monday and then by Tuesday morning it was… I did not know what to expect.

CO: Well just describe for us what is happening in this photo that has caused so much grief.

DO: The photo that we used in our in our marketing campaign was improper pour of Guinness. It was coming out of a can. It was frothing over the top like you'd find a Budweiser in a tailgate commercial. So instead of cascading up to have a nice proper head like Guinness is supposed to, it was a mess. So we decided to use that picture in our advertising campaign and it set in the world on fire it seems.

CO: One story in the Irish papers called it “sacrilegious,” “an abomination”, someone else said. I mean this was, it was covered in the Irish media. It's just, the country went crazy and so did the Irish customers here in Canada. So–

DO: Exactly. There was some there was some irate people up there. And believe me, there was a lot of colorful comments and the sacrilegious ones are the only ones that we can say on the radio. But let's just say that Jesus Christ was brought into it on more than one occasion. One comment actually said that Jesus wept when he saw our pint of Guinness.

CO: Good heavens. So this is because it was a poor pouring of Guinness then in your picture.

DO: Yeah, exactly. So after our Facebook and our emails and our telephones and our text messages all started to fill up, we decided we needed to apologize. You know that picture was not a representation of us. We actually do know how to pour a Guinness. It was a mistake and we take full responsibility for it and we know that the picture was embarrassing. So we thought that we would apologize and then that's when we started to have some fun with it.

CO: And you've offered what as your penance?

DO: It’s just basically just to get the country of Ireland back on good terms with us. You know we didn't want to be boarding up our windows in fear of potatoes being thrown through. We were getting Facebook messages back that say “Ireland forgives you.” So we know we won and we know that we won their hearts back. And just to go above and beyond what I decided to do was to allow anybody with a valid Irish passport who is of age to come in on Friday for St. Paddy's Day and I will buy them a perfectly poured pint of Guinness and a shot of Jamieson to kind of bury the hatchet.

CO: Oh. So you think you're going to get takers on that one?

DO: I hope so. It's supposed to be a party. So what’s St. Paddy's Day without a roomful of Irishmen drinking Guinness and Jamison.

CO: Tell us about this because there is a proper way to pour a Guinness. What is the art of that act?

DO: The proper way to pour Guinness? I'm more of a Guinness drinker than I am a pourer, but I do know that it takes approximately 119 seconds to pour the perfect Guinness, and it's done in two stages. So I guess on the top, the head is about 65 percent up the pint, let it sit for a minute, and then pour up to the top of the glass. Wait for it to finish cascading, should be a good half inch of head on there and it's ready to drink.

CO: So not right up to the top. You have to have the head that comes right up to the top of the glass, right?

DO: Exactly.

CO: That layer of foam.

DO: Not splashing over the top of the glass as depicted in our previous picture.

CO: But there is an art of drinking a Guinness as well, isn't there?

DO: I guess that is each person's personal taste, to be honest with you.

CO: I mean he said there's some trick of getting at the brew underneath and getting past the foam. You're supposed to actually, I think, I don't drink Guinness but I know that people are very serious about the idea of looking in. You have to even look at it in a certain way.

DO: Well they are obviously, with all the attention we've got with Guinness, people are definitely serious about it. I still, when I'm when I'm drinking my Guinness, I still get a little head Guinness milkshake every time too. So maybe I'm doing that wrong too.

CO: Now what about… is it a myth that Guinness is served warm?

DO: We don't serve it warm. We serve it refrigerated. We don't chill the glasses or anything. But I think I think that people are doing it both ways these days.

CO: I hope you're not getting this wrong.

DO: No. Me too.

CO: You're going to be in trouble. But I'm sure we'll hear from people about all of these things and whether or not you're in trouble again for anything you said in this interview. But at any rate, have a happy Patty's Day.

DO: Yes thank you very much, you too.

CO: Good to talk to, Dan. Bye.

DO: Bye.

JD: That was Dan Olson, the owner of Railtown Cafe. We reached him in Vancouver and incidentally that pour is… you know what? You check it out yourself. We have a photograph on our website, cbc.ca/aih.

Back To Top »

Part 2: Trump: Great Lakes, library smell

Trump: Great Lakes

Guest: John Dickert

JEFF DOUGLAS: John Dickert has his work cut out for him today.
The Mayor of Racine, Wisconsin is in Washington, DC hoping to convince lawmakers not to cut funding for the Great Lakes. Recently, a leaked plan from the Trump Administration proposed to slash money to clean up the lakes from three hundred million dollars to just ten million dollars. As you might imagine, that has alarmed people on both sides of the border. We reached Mayor John Dickert in Washington, DC.

CAROL OFF: Mayor Dickert, what could happen to the Great Lakes if you lose this $300 million dollar fund that the United States government provides?

JOHN DICKERT: You take away the GLRI funding and you're going to see more potential problems with invasive species. You're going to see especially the Asian carp which is now we're finding in the St. Lawrence Seaway as well as in Illinois River, Chicago River. You know, if those get into the Great Lakes, it's almost game over, if not completely game over for the fishing industry because of what the Asian carp do. But protection of our beaches, cleaning of our water, protection of spills. All these things that we deal with, hotspots in cities along the Great Lakes. All these things that we deal with, we won’t be able to proactively work on these issues any more. We're going to be reacting. It costs a lot more money.

CO: Now just to you mentioned some initials. I think the GLRI, are you saying?

DICKERT: It’s the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative created years ago in the Obama administration to protect the Great Lakes.

CO: The project of funding the Great Lakes and try to restore them started quite early, with even George W. Bush was the one I think who declared him a national treasure, the Great Lakes. And Barack Obama took it from there. So it's been, there's been tremendous bipartisan support for trying to do something with the Great Lakes. Do you think that that's going to end under President Trump?

DICKERT: Well I hope not. You know when you look at the fact that there is bipartisan support up here not only in the house but in the Senate, and everyone understands not only the importance of the Great Lakes, but the importance of protecting them. I equate it to cancer. If you get cancer early and they find it early, they can oftentimes treat it quickly and done. You're in remission. Whereas, if you waited for it to get to stage four, then you're spending a whole lot of money and the opportunity to save someone's life, and even tougher. Same thing with the Great Lakes. And you can see this on areas like Lake Erie. When you don't work together to help preserve and protect and stop the nutrients from coming in, they decimate a lake like Lake Erie.
If you do work on those things, and we work together in the [unintelligible] valley to help protect. And I have to tell you, the Canadians are doing a magnificent job of it. Then you end up paying for it in the long run. If we don't want to do that. So what we're going to do is educate the president, the administration, the Congress and the Senate on the importance of this and try to get them to see the light.

CO: Just to stay on the politics for a moment. What kind of support do you have among lawmakers? I mean, this is an area that has a lot of people who put Mr. Trump into office are in these areas. These are these are Trump lands. So what do you think the pressures will be from lawmakers in that region to try and see something that is sustained and this Great Lakes project?

DICKERT: Well that's all we're up here to do. We're talking to the folks in those areas and the ones that are on the Great Lakes so far what we've heard, and I think we'll continue to hear, is strong support. I think this is the one with clean water. The Great Lakes are, because there's such a treasure, I think you find universal support for this. When the Obama administration cut back GLRI funding from 300 to 250, there was a strong outcry. I was up here back then lobbying and we got the funds set back in. And that was a bipartisan and both houses as well. So what I'm hearing so far, and what I'm hoping for is that everybody sees that this is not one of those things that you can just toss by the wayside and hope that we can deal with it later. And so far, that's what we're hearing from folks on both sides of the aisle.

CO: This cut is on the table. 97 percent cut of the U.S. funding, the U.S. part of the funding for the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative. What are you hearing from those Republican lawmakers that's concrete?

DICKERT: Well what we're hearing is that they understand the importance of it. And since they are willing to fight with us last time to get it done last time, we're hoping and anticipating that they'll do the same thing this time. We do not want to see a cut at all. And the reason that we don't is because this is only a very small percentage of the amount of money that goes into the Great Lakes and its protection. And we have a lot of work to do. So what we're hearing so far and we're going to be doing to the rest of the night and tomorrow, is that we hope to hear the same conversations and continue on the same conversations.
But part of our job here is to educate everybody on what happens if you were to make these cuts and what is the result of that and how does it impact our people? What is the long term cost of that? And I think that's the piece that a lot of people don't understand. The long term cost this is huge.

CO: Just give us an in a nutshell, what is that? What is your pitch when you're talking to them?

DICKERT: Well I'll give him a perfect example of my beach in Racine, Wisconsin is rated as one of the best beaches in America. Every year we make roughly in our small city, we make roughly about $5 million in tourism revenue a year off of that beach. If we were to close that beach down, then our little city would lose five million dollars in revenue because we hold not only beach events there, we have about 200,000 visitors to that beach every year. We call triathlons there, we hold both shows there. We hold jet ski races. All those things that would be in jeopardy. So just for our little city, you’d see a five million dollar reduction in tourism revenue. Now multiply that by the hundreds of cities along the Great Lakes and you'll see the economic disaster that this could create. You know it's a very fragile system and it's not something that you can just ignore because once you do, it goes bad fast.

CO: We’ll leave it there Mayor Dickert. Thank you.

DICKERT: Thank you so much, I appreciate talking to you.

CO: Take care. Bye-bye.

DICKRT: Alright, bye-bye.

JD: John Dickert is the mayor of Racine, Wisconsin. We reached him in Washington D.C.

[Music]

Library smell

Guest: Jorge Otero-Pailos

If you're the kind of person who revels in the sheer volume of volumes, it's the smell of home. If you're the kind of person who was only ever there to do last-minute research for a doomed essay, it's the smell of terror. Either way, the distinctive smell of a library can trigger some powerful memories.
For researchers at Columbia University, that scent conjures a wave of nostalgia. Which is why they've been sniffing dozens of books and materials at New York's Morgan Library and Museum over the past year. It is forward-thinking research, but their project goal is retrograde: they're trying to capture and recreate the library's original scent, going back to the early 1900s.
Jorge Otero-Pailos is leading this project. He's also a professor of Historic Preservation at Columbia University. We reached him in New York.

CO: Professor Otero-Pailos, what does the Morgan Library smell like?

JORGE OTERO PAILOS: Well it smells very different than it used to smell when it was built in 1906. The library has undergone a lot of changes and it's been remodeled and restored. And so one of the things that makes a library a library is that it smells like books. But in this particular case, the library underwent a renovation where the books were put behind glass, so that’s something striking when you go in is that you don't smell the books.

CO: And what do you think it smelled like in 1906?

JOP: Well we're trying to find out. We're in the midst of a very experimental research project to try to figure exactly that. And we are using different types of technologies in order to do that where we're sampling the books that are in the collection, the tapestry from the 16th century that is hanging on the wall. We've sampled even the cigars that JP Morgan didn't get to smoke. He was an avid cigar smoker but there were some that he didn't get to before his death. And those are in the collection. And from all of those materials, we're trying to get as scientifically as we can to an approximation of what it might have smelled.

CO: Why do you want to know what the library smelled like in 1906?

JOP: Well I work with historic buildings and historic preservation. Part of what we do is to try to understand and make, communicate to the public, the relevance and significance of historic buildings to our lives. But some of these buildings sometimes we forget about. And so part of what we do in the Columbia Historic Preservation program, and part of what I do, is to try to bring these old objects, these old buildings, back into the public consciousness.

CO: What's the story behind J.P. Morgan creating this library?

JOP: Well you know, J.P. Morgan was a scholar in many ways. He was an avid collector of books. He collected a number of manuscripts. You know, for me the important thing is, that libraries are not just about J.P. Morgan. There's a larger social story here to be told. His archivist for example, his librarian, Belle da Costa Greene, was an African-American who really built up the collection for J.P. Morgan. And so her story is bound up in this place, but also the story of all the workmen that built the building. When you're looking at a space, when you're looking at a historic building, obviously the client, the patron, is a big part of it. But there's also that larger world that I think we're all concerned about. And that's what comes out through the smell, because the smell, you know, brings out all of these different aspects of building.

CO: So that's a bit of history but what's the science. How are you actually collecting these smells?

JOP: Well it's very interesting. What we're doing is we're putting if you can imagine, a glass dome, over the objects or pieces of the library, the tapestry from the 16th century, or the fireplace, or the bookshelves. And in that glass dome is a little, almost like a hair coated in a gel. And if you can zoom in microscopically into that gel, that gel looks like and it's structure like a spider web. And that spider web, then we're sucking air through it. The reason why objects smell is that they're actually giving off pieces of themselves. The molecules that are giving off from objects or the things that go into our nose and then we smell them. So what that little gel inside the glass dome does is trap all of those molecules and then we take it to the lab. To analyze that, we put it through mass spectrometry, and then we get a list of all of those molecules.
But the interesting thing is that our nose doesn't smell. All of those molecules we only smell let's say two, out of maybe three 300 molecules that we will get. So then there is a process of actually singling out all those molecules and then actually smelling them and saying well this one doesn't smell anything like the object, or this one does. And then selecting those to come up with the final molecules so we're going to use in the reconstruction.

CO: And what do you mean with the reconstruction? How will you use these smells once you've got them?

JOP: You know, at the moment, we're trying to figure out what is the most meaningful moment that we would like to work towards, and what moments do we have the most information about. We're very interested in the fact again that the books have been placed behind glass. So we would like to, you know, figuratively break the glass so that people can go in and smell. Very interested in that 1907 moment when J.P. Morgan was there with all the captains of industry. We’re doing research as to who was there, what did they smell like? You know, what does a person smell like when they're in panic? You know, there's a very distinct signal to body odor when you're panicking. You know, the kind of dress that they wore. So we're doing a lot of really deep research into also the environment, whether it be air outside of the library smell like, it's a very different type of pollution up in the air. All of that is being part of the research that we that we are doing. And what we hope to do is to recreate it, put it back in the space in some way, a very experimental way. And we're in dialogue with the JP Morgan Library and with the curators there. Christine Nelson and with the director of Colin Bailey about you know possible ways to do that. This is very experimental, very daring of the library to be collaborating with us in this way. But the idea is to really convey it to the public and to share this this research and this information.

CO: It sounds quite interesting, Professor Otero-Pailos. I appreciate speaking with you. Thank you.

JOP: Thank you.

CO: Bye-bye.

JD: That was Jorge Otero-Pailos, a professor of historic preservation at Columbia University. He and his team are currently trying to reconstruct the smell of the historic Morgan Library and Museum. We reached him in New York City. And we have posted that interview, and more on that story on our website, cbc.ca/aih.

[Music]

Library steak sauce

JD: Someone had a plan. And they shelved it. And then they keep on shelving it.
The public library in Avon Lake, Ohio, is a busy, engaged one. It has an enormous collection of local history, special activities for kiddies, and more than 27 thousand members. It's an A-1 book circulation facility. It is also an A-1 bottle storage facility.
You see, since the beginning of the year, a mysterious visitor has been hiding empty bottles of A-1 Steak Sauce in the Avon Lake Public Library. As of today, the number of bottles is up to 30. The bottles have been discovered on the shelves, tucked in behind the books; hidden in the newspaper and magazine sections; and stashed among the audiobooks. And they're not just empty. As the library's public relations coordinator, Jill Ralston, told the local paper: "They're real clean, like they've been put through the dishwasher."
Like most libraries, Avon Lake's does not serve steaks, so these bottles aren't coming from inside the building. And a theory that someone was drinking booze out of the empty A-1 bottles doesn't pass the sniff test – although someone is obviously hitting the sauce pretty hard.
So right now, all we know about the case of the A-1 bottles is that someone goes through cases of A-1 bottles. Then fastidiously sanitizes them. And then plants them in various spots around the Avon Lake Public Library and waltzes out, mission accomplished. Who's doing it? When will they stop? Why did they start?
These questions and others are haunting library employees right now. And let's hope they get some answers soon.

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Part 3: Encore – Romeo Dallaire

Romeo Dallaire

JEFF DOUGLAS: Veterans advocates are busy making last-minute appeals tonight. They're fighting to make sure next week's federal budget does everything it can for soldiers whose service has left them with PTSD.
But for one of those advocates, this is also the time of year when, 23 years ago, the events that would cause his own PTSD began rushing to their end.
In April 1994, Romeo Dallaire was the Canadian Lieutenant-General in charge of the UN peace-keeping mission in Rwanda. Then the genocide began. Here is General Dallaire speaking to As It Happens at the time.

SOUNDCLIP

ROMEO DALLAIRE: If you stated that all hell was breaking loose in Kigali, that would be a reasonably fair statement. The problem comes from essentially, during the night, mostly the presidential guard has gone on a rampage killing, destroying, massacring and mutilating and a few other things.

JD: That was Romeo Dallaire seaking to As It Happens in April of 1994. Back then he was the Canadian commander of the UN peacekeeping mission in Rwanda and the events he described would form just a part of what we now call the Rwandan genocide.
In October of last yea, the retired senator and lieutenant General Dallaire joined Carol here in the studio to discuss his memoir about the events of that spring and the wounds that he still carries. The book is called Waiting for First Light: My Ongoing Battle with PTSD. Here's their conversation from our archives.

SOUNDCLIP

CAROL OFF: General Romeo Dallaire, welcome to As It Happens.

ROMEO DALLAIRE: Been a long time.

CO: You have been on this show many times even talking to us from Rwanda.

RD: Yes. With your predecessor Michael.

CO: Michael Enright. You continue to try and tell the story of what happened after you returned. You have told that story of what you saw, what you encountered, hundreds of times, if not more. What I've learned in this extraordinary book is what was going on in your head during all that time. Can you just describe for us the sounds in the images that play in your head from that time over and over again since 1994?

RD: The terrible thing about this, when your mind is injured, as it gets to be because of the horrific traumas that you go through, sounds and so, as you ask, they come out often unexpectedly when I'm watching just normal news from Syria or somewhere and talking about refugees or talking about bombing and so on. I don't see it as images. I hear them there. I go back and I hear the people in the compound in the King Faisal hospital area with James Rubinsky where over 100 were killed by bombs and splattered all over the place and the screaming and the yelling. I smell the smell of the cordite and the smell of blood and the dung and everything that's around it. I feel the warmth and I feel the fear. This reality show, comes back digitally clear every time you find yourself facing one of these types of events either in newscasts or simply reading on something.

CO: And are you right back in Rwanda? Are you right back in the genocide when that happens?

RD: You literally relive it. There are mornings, some mornings, I'll wake up and for a few seconds, I'm actually back in my office, actually hearing the sounds of the fighting going on, and then it dissipates. It's real. Absolutely, completely real. And the best you can do is try to control that. The nights are the worst times because there's nothing to stop anything from invading you.

CO: And what is it? What are you actually, what is the replay? What is the actual events of that when… triggers that and you are back there again? What is happening?

RD: What happens is that you become physically we say emotional, but physically engaged, because a scene will reappear. Once in Sierra Leone, we're crossing the street and there was a vendor with a machete chopping up a coconut and I went nuts and was trying to kill him because it had launched me into a five, six minute teleprompter of the whole the whole slaughter of Rwanda, and I was seeing it there and I couldn't control my body from stopping going after this guy and people did ultimately stop me. So there are triggers that happen at night. By sounds, smell, or just the invasion of light that opened up these doors of events. And then you relive them. They don't dull. This stuff does not dull. It stays vivid and powerful. The only thing that you can handle is the fact of finding ways to avoid falling into these sort of scenarios that you will have time to think about it or conversations or smells or activities and that prosthesis protects you. But if you don't have that, and it takes years to build that up, you're continuously vulnerable. And the ultimate vulnerability is that the nighttime can be very long. And so you can go and push yourself to the extremes of suicide, and it hurts.

CO: But I wonder, you know one part of the story that needs always to be told is that not just that you were in the middle of the genocide, you were the one in charge of the peacekeeping forces, you were the one trying to cope with all these people who you tried to protect and while others were being slaughtered. But you did mutiny. You did defy the United Nations and what it wanted you to do. They told you to get out. They told you that this is not peace, there's no peace. Get out. You stayed. You took as many people you could into your protection and you did everything you could for this one group of people. You defied orders in order to… Does that ever replay for you? A moment when you realized in the midst of all the impotence you felt that you did take charge of something. Did you get any satisfaction from remembering that?

RD: My response to the secretary general on two occasions of refusing a direct legal order. I mean I was a career soldier, 33 years by then. It was something unheard of. A legal order being refused. So my defiance of that order, I find no particular great sense of value in that because it was instinctive. It was who I was. It was being Canadian, it was my upbringing. It was it wasn't tactics, it wasn't strategic, it was wrong. However where I might, and it's a rather interesting question is, I never had that before, where I might find a certain maybe satisfaction of having taken that decision, is when I went to my deputy right after who was a Guinean General, a lovely man, and the bulk of the 400 soldiers I had were from his country. And I went to him and I said I have refused a legal order, but I said “The order is immoral because we've got all these people we're protecting and if we left, they would all be slaughtered. But ethically I can take that decision but I can't impose it upon you.” And I said “Henry, you have to decide whether or not you want to stay with me and your soldiers.” And he said “Sir, we're not going to be defeated in Rwanda.” And his response was the greatest feeling I had of that whole period.

CO: But does that replay for you? In the midst of all… and this book is so full of the darkness that you have lived in since the genocide in Rwanda. But at the same time, there are these moments these moments of small triumph, and I wonder if they are anything that you can turn to in these dark moments that you say, yeah I did that. I accomplished that.

RD: It’s funny, they don't come to the fore. A successful negotiation of a truce where I was able to get people through, or a negotiation between the two factions to get them together to start negotiating. And I mean there are a number of these types of things, but they pale in front of the failure. I mean it's one thing to say that you've made these succession you've got them finally negotiating, but we're already knee deep in bodies and we can't even breathe the air because it's so rancid with burning bodies with… we see a pile of bodies burned with diesel oil because that's the only stuff we had left. And there's not only the site but the smell. You know it's not a smell. It's like a fine rain that enters your pores and your body smells it. And so you live in this constant atmosphere of death and destruction and you can't get away from it. And so it's a real bubble in which it's difficult to find positive.

CO: I have a General Romeo Dallaire with me in studio talking about his extraordinary memoir Waiting for First Light.

RD: You can call me romeo.

CO: I’m can’t. I have a hard time calling you Romeo–

RD: I know a few people that I find it are privilege to be able to be called by my first name.

CO: And I must say that this cannot and will not be a normal interview in the sense of having distance from you, from the subject, from the author because, as you know, I was involved in some of the stories that you told in this book. And I was meeting with you during these times, I was interviewing you. And I have to say that when I now read this memoir and understand what was going on in your head, what was going on in your whole being, I don't know how you did it. The man I spoke with was yes, troubled. Yes, going through a great deal. But you were doing so much work. You were accomplishing things. You were doing things within the Canadian forces that were very large files. To me you seemed like somebody who was, despite everything, keeping it together. And I think the phrase you heard, as you say in the book, “You're back in the real world now.” It seemed to me that you were but you weren't. That's what I find so shocking about this book.

RD: All I was doing was camouflage. I was really just trying to kill myself by working. Because I had been unsuccessful in other ways. It was the safest place to be, safest in the sense of having a focus, by just honorably driving myself into the ground, often hoping that I'd have a stroke or something that would turn me into a vegetable and I wouldn't have to hurt anymore.
I remember a few people asking me why are you so busy? Why are you doing things? And I used to get all kinds of criticism often? And I mean Elizabeth, my wife and so on. People say you start working, slow down and so on. And I came up with this phrase I used to say, you know “It hurts less when I'm busy and working.” And it was true. It created a defensive mechanism to all that memory and all that guilt of Rwanda from simply overwhelming me. But in so doing, it required so much energy and so much time that I was actually realizing finally, during my therapy that came out, that all I was trying to do really is camouflage also, trying to get rid of myself.

CO: But this work you were doing wasn't just busyness. You were involved at the time the Canadian Forces when it was in crisis. This is a time when peacekeeping, which we consider ourselves to be the preeminent peacekeepers. There was no peace to keep. We were sending Canadians into situations in Africa and former Yugoslavia. And these men and women were coming back seriously damaged. The same time as you write about in this book, your bosses wanted to keep insisting that this was not a mission problem, that this was just people going through things. And they wanted you to confirm that and you didn't. What is it that you wanted people to know about? What you understood these soldiers were coming back with?

RD: You know if you remember the first book, Shake Hands–

CO: Shake Hands with the Devil.

RD: Yeah. It was a time when I was actually suicidal and attempting as I was writing it. And I mused a long time on the first phrase. Is how do you start a book? And I wrote that my first love and real love is the army. And so, when the uniform came off, was one of the most horrific times of my life.
I found that the love for the army guided the energy and the drive. And so I felt the pain of many of the soldiers who were crashing. I was answering phone calls from prosecutors and judges saying “How the hell does this guy end up in my court. You know, when he was a good soldier but he came back from a mission and he's into booze and beating his wife and families breaking up.”
I lived these soldiers who were dying of suicide from the injuries. I went on even to the Governor General, at one point when I was a senator, because I wasn't getting any satisfaction from the chain of command, and he was the commander in chief and I asked him to help me influence the chain of command to say that we're losing guys and girls because the chain of command is not taking care of them. They've abdicated it to the medical people. And the medical people are there simply to support the chain of command that's there to take care and to love those soldiers.
And so it was that overriding factor. I know nothing else but the army, and the love the army. And that it is. It's a profession that has an ethos and so on. But to me it was it was a life, it was a vocation.

CO: And you were ordered out of it.

RD: Yeah. That's a very polite way of saying it. It was done delicately. Maurice Baril was his Chief of Head Staff. I remember him crying over it when we were talking about it. But it was seen to be for my own good, in one sense. And the because I was told, you either keep on this wonder stuff, I was going through, tribunals and everything else, or you concentrate on the work. But you can't do both because you're crashing. And I said I never abandoned Rwanda. So they said, we're going to have to let you go. We can't we can't deploy you as a general because you can't command troops anymore due to the state of mind you're in. So I was thrown out medically. And that's exactly how you feel. That's exactly how I feel. No matter how nicely they do it, so you leave, having done your duty and paid that price, and your family. But you feel as if the organization has thrown you out. And that's why I am so adamant in Veterans Canada becoming part of national defense. Not a separate department. That soldiers must never feel that that covenant, that loyalty that we instill in them, that day they put that uniform on. That that stays for life. It doesn't disappear because all suddenly uniform comes off. But when the uniform comes off, it's a break by the institution to that loyalty, and you're not allowed to do that. Not when people commit themselves to unlimited liability when they commit them and their families to the risking your life and the rest of the life of your family.
And so there's got to be a way that you can continue to make them feel that they are still part of an entity. You are respected and we want to support you, and you can still provide stuff to us. Last summer, I hired veterans to be trainers of trainers for the work I do on child soldiers overseas. I am getting veterans who've served three or four missions who are now going to be my trainers.
There must be a cradle to grave of commitment. And so it's not a contract, not a social contract. It's not a workman's compensation. It's a covenant.
My dad told me the night before I left for a military college. He’d been a career soldier, and he'd done six years of war. And he said “Romeo,” he said, “you'll never be a millionaire,” which is right. But he did tell me one thing. He said, “You are joining a service and don't ever expect to serve with people saying thank you.”

CO: Can I just say on behalf of many many people, this country, thank you.

[Sound: Romeo Dallaire’s laughter]

CO: Thank you for what you did. Thank you for not just what you attempted to do in Rwanda, what you succeeded in doing in Rwanda, and what you have attempted to do by declaring your own post-traumatic stress disorder, by putting yourself out, by exposing yourself, in order to help other soldiers. Can I just say on behalf of Canadians, thank you?

RD: Let's hope the stuff and the book will help them and their families, and we might even save a few lives.

CO: I’m speaking with Romeo Dallaire about his book Waiting for First Light. One thing that struck me personally, reading this. You describe the distance you had with your family and that you were not living with them in Quebec City because you had to work first of all, and because then you were in treatment. And sometimes they just didn't entirely understand why you weren't with them. And when I saw you, whenever I saw you, you were always with people. You were surrounded with people. You were always had activities going. What I’ve learned from reading this is that you were incredibly lonely. You were so alone. Why didn't you tell people that? Why couldn't you draw on them and tell them how much you needed them?

RD: The injury does it. That’s one of the facets of this terrible injury. You don't seek people to communicate with. On the contrary, you try to avoid them. And I was public because I was doing public things and moving stuff. But the minute I go back to the hotel room, it was total isolation, and it was not self-protection but protecting others.
If you started to talk about what it was, people would turn off or they'd ask a stupid question or they'd be so emotionally wrought, that you know you feel terrible that you created that sort of atmosphere. And that was the dominant element with my family. They had seen some of it, and particularly when I crashed in 98 for six months. They saw this this person who would sit there alone just crying, or never able to read or do anything. Who aimlessly walked around and they didn't need that. Beth was controlling the family anyways and they were in Quebec City and they were in their schools, and her family. And Beth had her family and so they were safer. So it was more keeping them safe although my youngest son about a year or so ago said, “You know, he said, “Dad, maybe maybe it would have been better if we had been with you.” And that really caught me by surprise

CO: There were people. You did have friends, there were people close to you. One of them, Brent Beardsley, you’ve mentioned. Dear man who has been with you through everything. Another person you write about in the book is a mutual friend. This was my friend, Sian Cansfield. And when you were looking for someone to help you with your book Shake Hands with the Devil, I recommended her because she had worked with me on the book I wrote about you. And she met a tragic end, and it must have been difficult for you to write.

RD: I rest my case of why I don't want to bring people into this. It totally overwhelmed her and we spent hours and days in interview, and she was an outstanding interviewer, of what had happened. And she was living, nearly smelling the horrors of what we went through and the traumas and the decisions and so on. And she had established a link with me that was so powerful because she was living what I was living, she had become an alter ego in life and it consumed so much that it in the end overwhelmed her and I… the way I saw it was she needed just some time to rest away from this, and catch her breath like I did with a number of my soldiers when they were overwhelmed, like pull them out for a couple of days and let them see the real world and then come back and refreshed. And she never came back.

CO: Sian jumped to her death off the Blue Street viaduct.

RD: I can't stand going by there.

CO: You and I were both at her funeral and at her grave. Did her death change you? Change your perception of something that you were wrestling with which was your own suicide urges? Did that alter your view of suicide at all?

RD: No because of the four real attempts, three of them happened after that. Unsuccessful, only because there were people who were around and I was too stupid to know how to do it properly. So no, it didn't. All except for the fact that it I closed in more. I locked out people more. Because that price was already too high. And the only guy that I felt would be able to handle it is because he lived it with me was Brent. And that last summer he ran our veterans program for us at Dalhousie, and it was so powerful, the experiences of those veterans as we worked them through our program and so on. Brent completely broke down and he's now in another rebuilding of himself. That's twenty two years after. So you don't, you don't want to bring people into this. You want to tell them about it. You want to help them avoid falling into it. But you don't seek to bring them in.

CO: Do you regret having worked with Sian?

RD: I regret being so inept at not realizing that it was killing her. It was stupid not to see it because she was she was living every moment. Because as you know, the book we went through every page of my day timer and dissected everything and so she was going downhill and the personal relationship was also so powerful between us. I mean it was it was an extraordinary human experience. The only person who really ever at time, ever even came close to touching me, my soul, my heart. And it destroyed her.

CO: I am speaking in studio with Romeo Dallaire. Romeo, why did you decide to tell the story? Why did you write this… this very very personal and painful account of what happened and for you since 1994? No holds barred. I mean you go right to your soul in this book. You expose a lot of yourself. Did it make you feel vulnerable to have shown so much of what was going on inside your psyche?

RD: Although I worry about how my children will react, and I do at times worry about how people will react because but some people don't even believe in PTSD. I really didn't give a damn ultimately of letting it out because there's an ugly side to this injury that doesn't get enough exposure, and you might as well tell it, the real essence of the injury and the essence of the injury is not just being able to hold a job or losing patience or going into drugs or alcohol or pornography or whatever. There is an inner war that never ends.

CO: In this book you wrote “Rwanda will never end and I will never be free. I know there is no remedy for what I saw, what I did and did not do during those three months in hell.” It's clear in this book that you are not going to be able to heal. Is there any way that you can find hope?

RD: Oh wow. That I think is the optimistic perspective as you go towards the end of the book. And I spend most of a chapter on the child soldier work. That you're able to find something, particularly if it's helping other human beings, I think that that is something that helps you come out of it and that's why I've committed all my money from the books and stuff and my effort in helping these kids. I was in South Sudan with my executive director, Dr. Whitman. And UNICEF had called us in because they couldn't move on the military side who were all recruiting child soldiers by the thousands. And so we arranged that I go and meet just one of the 11 major rebel leaders and try to see if there's room there for an old general to talk to a general still in uniform and maybe influence him. And after not quite two hours of discussion on all kinds of stuff, I was able to get the last 300 kids that he had under his command out of his command and hand them over to UNICEF. So that's the hope. That it actually might be saving kids.

CO: There is light in Waiting for First Light.

RD: Well remember, first light means there's going to be more after it.

CO: Romeo Dallaire, thank you.

RD: Carol, you're a lovely lady. Thank you.

JD: From our archives, that was retired Senator and Lieutenant-General Romeo Dallaire speaking to Carol last fall. His book is called Waiting for First Light: My Ongoing Battle with PTSD. It's published by Random House Canada.

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March 15, 2017 episode transcript

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