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The AIH Transcript for June 21, 2017

Hosts: Carol Off and Chris Howden

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

CO: Hello, I'm Carol Off.

CH: Good evening, I'm Chris Howden, sitting in for Jeff Douglas. This is As It Happens.

[Music: Theme]

CH: Tonight:

CO: Reaching a crescendo before the performance even began. Our guest says she was assaulted twice at a concert by the Toronto Symphony Orchestra – and she believes it was racially motivated.

CH: A shooting first; he asks questions later. NDP Leader Tom Mulcair applauds Canada's special forces after a record-setting sniper shot kills an ISIS fighter in Iraq – but he wants the Prime Minister to explain how it's not an act of war.

CO: The routes of the problem. When Saskatchewan shuts down its provincial bus service, our guest files a human rights complaint – saying that puts Indigenous women's lives at risk.

CH: Up against the walls. The UK government confirms many other high-rises may have the same flammable exterior that turned Grenfell Tower into an inferno – but our guest says he's sounded the alarm about the material years ago.

CO: Touting his own horns. Earlier this month, Gene Simmons of Kiss tried to trademark one of the most common hand gestures in rock music – the "rock on", or "devil horns" sign – but now, he's retracted his fingers, and the application.

CH: And...holding all the curds. A Canadian living in Boston is repeatedly disgusted by what local restaurants serve up as "poutine." So he shines a spudlight on the mistakes, hoping chefs will stop making such gravy-ous errors.
As It Happens, the Friday edition. Radio that surveys a poutine age wasteland.

Back To Top »

Part 1: TSO concertgoer, Tom Mulcair, Boston poutine

Concertgoer

Guest: Aisha Ahmad

CHRIS HOWDEN: Aisha Ahmad was getting ready to take in the Toronto Symphony Orchestra's performance of Carl Off's dramatic choral work Carmina Burana – when the drama turned to her.
Ms. Ahmad says a man behind her hit her in the neck and insulted her after she tried to take a picture of the stage. She says the incident – and the reaction of other audience members – made her feel that the symphony isn't a welcoming place for people of colour.
We reached Aisha Ahmad in Toronto.

CAROL OFF: Ms. Ahmed you were at the symphony before the show about to take a picture of the orchestra. What happened next?

AISHA AHMAD: Well actually I'd been to the symphony many times and I’m very familiar with the policies on non-flash photography and when you're able to do it. And so as I was taking a photograph before the show started I was struck in the neck by the man seated behind me who chopped to me on the right side of my neck and said “Put that away.”

CO: Can I just ask you. So I mean did you see that coming> You were just looking forward and then it was from came from behind?

AA: It was from behind. So you know, it was right beneath my pearl necklace actually. So it was completely unexpected. And you know, I was struck, it was very audible that he had hit me, people around me had heard it. And so I turned around and I saw this person who had struck me and he said, “You put that away,” and I just very calmly said to him “You cannot hit me. That's assault. If you hit me again, I will charge you.” At that point he called me a child and then an expletive and you know, which was very stunning. I won't repeat the words. But others in the area then cringe to see what was happening because he was vocal, he was aggressive. And they looked at him and they looked at me and very much to my dismay, I hate to say it, but the conclusion that they drew in that moment was that I must have been culpable, that it was just being somehow my fault.

CO: So when you say “they”, who are you referring to?

AA: Other audience members who were adjacent who were in the same section as me. So there were other audience members who then turned around and told me to just stop it already. Be quiet go away.
And at that point I realised that you know I was the only woman of colour in the section and I felt that it was very clear to me that they had looked at the man who had hit me, and they had looked at me and they had decided that I was the one who did not belong.

CO: Can you tell us about this man? What did he look like what did you make of him?

AA: I mean he was an older white male and he seemed very aggressive in his mannerisms towards me.

CO: He assaulted you.

AA: Yes, in the symphony, and so at that moment I exited the hall and I went to security and I explained to them exactly what I said to you. And they, the manager told me that I had to wait until the intermission and so I sat off to the side and I said that's fine, I'll wait until the intermission. I waited about 45 minutes or so until the intermission, around that time. And then at the intermission as people were exiting, when he exited he walked right past security and made in a line towards me and said “You are the woman who accosted me.” At that point, I stood up and stepped back and said “You hit me. I don't want to speak to you and I reached for my phone because I wanted there to be some documented evidence in case it escalated. And at that point he lunged at me a second time in front of everybody.”

CO: But security was already there with you right?

AA: And there were security in the area but he demanded that they come and you know to his defense in some way even though I had made no contact with this individual, I had said nothing aggressive to this individual and he had assaulted me twice. I thought it was really fascinating moment actually. As a woman of colour a person of colour walking around in the world that I could be attacked twice and my attacker could make the assumption that the purpose of security would be to apprehend or harm my body.

CO: You believe this what he did was racially motivated or that it was a racist act?

AA: You know I'm a very polite person so I don't go around using this sort of language. But I was very acutely aware in that moment, that you know in a concert hall where nobody knows who you are or what you do or anything about you, that the only thing that they can see, is really it's a very skin-deep moment. And it's unthinkable to me that someone who did not come from the type of identity background that I did could imagine being struck in a concert hall.

CO: Can I ask you. On your on your Twitter page, you are wearing a headscarf. Were you wearing one at the symphony?

AA: Actually I'm what you would call a part-timer. So sometimes I wear hijab, sometime I don't wear a hijab.

CO: I was not wearing a hijab in that particular moment aside from those who piled on and after this man had assaulted you and the reaction of the TSO authorities who were skeptical of your story and wanted to hear both sides and eventually understood from all the witnesses that what you're telling me was what happened. How can you be sure that the man who hit you was racially motivated?

AA: You know, this is a conversation that you know takes much more time than you and I have in this interview, but it's incredibly exhausting for people of colour to continuously have to go over the fact that you know, these sorts of incidents do not happen to people who aren't subject to our particular identity constraints.
You know, I was sitting in the seat of my very dear friend David Welch who does the exact same things that I do in taking a photograph in advance of this show and no one has ever struck him, ever. And it is actually unthinkable for him to even imagine it.

CO: The police are now involved in this, are they not?

AA: You know I made the decision on the phone with the police officers at the time of the incident as they were then going to make the decision to escort him out of the building. I actually told the police that you know I'm concerned about our limited resources in this city. There may be life and death situations and I made the decision not to press charges in that moment, especially given that they scurried to escort him out as I had made the call. At that point the TSO after the fact decided to put forward an incident report. There were a couple of police officers who came by to speak to me yesterday. I decided that you know, where I would like to rechannel all my energy right now is not in pressing charges towards an individual but rather opening up a conversation about how we can make sure that there aren't any toxic pockets of exclusivity in our city and that we're really opening up our cultural spaces to everybody in our community because Toronto is an amazingly diverse place. And I think that I would have rather redirect my energy in a way that is constructive so that we can initiate conversations and take action so that all members of our community can feel like they can participate.

CO: We will leave it there. We will follow that conversation. Ms. Ahmad, thank you for speaking with us.

AA: Thank you so much. Have a great day.

CH: We reached Aisha Ahmad in Toronto. The Toronto Symphony told us that the man accused of hitting Miss Ahmad has been banned from future concerts. A representative also said quote “In the past decade the Toronto Symphony Orchestra has made great strides in welcoming a huge diversity of audience members. I'm sure there's always more we can do” unquote.

[Music]

Sniper: Mulcair

Guest: Tom Mulcair

JD: A Canadian Special Forces sniper trained the sites of his rifle on a man nearly 3-and-a-half kilometres away. And fired.
The Commander of JTF2 says the kill shot is the longest ever recorded, and that it disrupted an ISIS attempt to ambush advancing Iraqi soldiers.
But Tom Mulcair says the shot is also evidence of Canada's true role in Iraq. He’s the leader of the NDP and we reached him in Montreal.

CO: Mr. Mulcair, what does this record setting sniper shot tell you about Canada's mission in Iraq?

TOM MULCAIR: Well first of all it tells us that our elite troops have a great deal of skill and that's reassuring for all Canadians. But it also tells us Carol that Mr. Trudeau hasn't been transparent with Canadians about our role in Iraq. You know those special forces don't choose their targets. They're directed by government and that's what we're talking about now. That's the way the military works. Mr Trudeau said during the campaign to help win the election that we would not be involved in a combat mission. So he adopted the NDP’s position during the election, but now that he's in office he's adopted Mr. Harper's position in favour of a combat mission.

CO: You have called in your campaign for an end to Canada's role in Iraq military mission there. Do you know, so what you're saying here. If Mr. Trudeau were more straightforward about what actually is going on in Iraq, would you be satisfied with that or do you want to see the mission end?

TM: It would have to be discussed in Parliament. Canadians get to decide that. And the Prime Minister has to be clear with Canadians and then there would have to be a mandate from Parliament. And you're quite right. The NDP has been clear all along. We've said and we've been consistent that we are opposed to Canada playing a combat role in Iraq.

CO: A combat role or a military role?

TM: What we've said all along we don't want it to be involved in combat, as has Mr. Trudeau. And that's what this is supposed to be about. This is supposed to be about an advise and assist role right now. And that has never, it's never gone beyond that. We do know, and there's a convention that has to be followed that parliament has to be involved when it morphs into combat. According to Mr. Trudeau's own definition this is combat. He said that during the campaign. Mr. Garneau gave a definition of combat that was quite clear, exactly this type of activity according to Mr. Trudeau is indeed combat. So he can't have it both ways. He can't say on the one hand that he's opposed to a combat mission and then bring this type of information out that clearly shows that that's what we're involved in.

CO: There's been a few reports. First of all when Mr. Harper was prime minister, where there was the Peshmerga were saying that Canadians were playing a very large role. That was a Matthew Fisher story from that era, said that Canada was, the Canadian Special Forces were quite involved in the front lines. Ben Makuch wrote in Vice just last fall doing Mr. Trudeau's government that the Canadian Special Forces are very close to front lines, in fact setting up equipment that would indicate that they were being part of battlefront operations. The same time we have heard from Minister Sajan, the defense minister that these are these are examples of Canada defending its training mission, defending its role in Iraq but not necessarily in the midst of combat. Do you think you can draw that line?

TM: They were trying to draw that line and it was perhaps a more open debate for example when we were moving to the front line in Mosul. But what we're talking about here, spotting and then shooting at someone on the other side to kill them, which is indeed what happened here. Well no, I mean there's no debate about that anymore. This is not the type of nuance that they've been able to put up until now. It's quite clear to us Carol, that this is by definition a combat mission. Mr. Trudeau promised we wouldn't be involved in combat. If we have moved into a combat mission, he's also broken his word to respect the convention that Parliament would have to decide.

CO: But how do we know that the shot was not in defense of the mission? I mean is it not possible and necessary sometimes to use lethal force in order to protect the mission? We don't know exactly what happened, do we? And we probably won’t find out because this is the Joint Task Force Two, very secretive operation going on but is it not possible that the shot was done in defense of the mission.

TM: It's the very first thing that I say in my letter to the prime minister today. That it is indeed not clear exactly how and when this engagement occurred. But it does Carol, seriously call into question Mr. Trudeau's claim that Canadian forces are not involved in direct combat because by definition, that's what this is. And it's not just the NDP’s definition, it's Mr. Trudeau's own definition.

CO: Do you oppose scared of being part of any defeat to defeat ISIS in Iraq?

TM: We oppose any combat mission that hasn't been discussed in Parliament and we've been clear on that. I personally was in the streets with a heck of a lot of other Canadians as early as 2003 to oppose George W. Bush's plan for a war in Iraq because we thought that it would have terrible outcomes. And 14 years later, I don't think anybody's going to contest that. But the NDP’s been clear, a combat mission has to be discussed debated and voted on in parliament. Mr. Trudeau used to believe in that when he was in opposition. We still believe in it.

CO: And you might support a combat mission if it went through that process.

TM: All political parties have an obligation to look at the facts and come to a decision. But the facts that we have before us now is we have a government that promised that there would be no combat mission. Mr. Trudeau’s broken that promise and Canadians are allowed to hold him to account for his own promises. It's important to be specific when it comes to military engagements. There can be no blanket approvals in advance and we'll look at it case by case.

CO: The sniper shot, three and a half kilometers long, it's been talked about his being and a remarkable achievement on the part of Canadian snipers. There’s laudatory headlines. What do you say to that?

TM: You're right because in preparation for this interview, I did a quick look around the news sources on the internet and it is something that's being talked about around the world. So I guess we can always be proud to learn that our elite forces are of that caliber. Their skill sets are second to none. That's one thing. The other thing is what are those skill sets being used to do? And that's a political decision. That's a government decision. So Special Forces don't get to choose where they're going to be shooting. Governments get to choose if and when and where they'll be shooting. They're directed by government. That's how the military functions in our society. And that's why we're saying there's something missing here.
We can't be celebrating a spectacular shot and not ask the question, “Hold on, Mr. Trudeau promised that there wouldn't be a combat mission. And by his own definition, this is combat.” That's what we're talking about Carol.

CO: We'll leave it there for now and we will try and get answers to this questions. Mr. Mulcair, thank you.

TM: Thank you very much Carol. Bye bye.

CH: Tom Mulcair is the leader of the NDP. He was in Montreal. And you can hear that interview again on our website, cbc.ca/asithappens.

[Music]

Boston poutine

Guest: Spencer Buell

CH: "Boston has a poutine problem."
That's according to Canadian Spencer Buell, a staff writer for Boston Magazine. He's fed up with the phony poutine served in the city's pubs, restaurants... even Fenway Park. And so he's made a list for the magazine about what poutine is... and more importantly, what poutine is NOT. We reached Spencer Buell in Boston.

SPENCER BUELL: Spencer, what's the problem with Boston's poutine?

CH: Well it seems like for some reason just as poutine is starting to catch on in Boston, instead of giving Bostonians a really good quality traditional poutine, restaurants have gone in a really disturbing direction and have given us some really odd versions of this dish that I love so much. Now for example there is one restaurant they do this thing called 50 states of poutine which is where they feature another version of poutine every week that's based on one of the American states. And when they featured the great state of Ohio, their version of routine was a pile of fries with a big handful of spaghetti and chili and grated cheddar cheese. And it's really a problem.

CO: And this is not the only place that has this poutine challenge. You make a list. It seems odd that you actually have to point out that poutine is not soup.

SB: Right. And that was this one restaurant that the way that they serve their protein is just this metal bowl that looks filled to the brim with the gravy and it has a little potato gnocci floating in it and some flecks of cheese. And my problem with what's going on in Boston right now is that when they see poutine on a menu, basically the word has come to mean just a pile of stuff with other stuff on it. So long as there's a little bit of cheese inside. And so people just think of poutine as a category and not as a dish with origins and that's worth celebrating.

CO: But what does the word actually mean? Doesn't poutine actually mean kind of like a mess.

SB: Right. It just means like a big mess.

CO: So I mean–

SB: Which I mean, fair enough, these are certainly messy that’s for sure.

CO: I mean so they're just maybe reinventing it. Is there anything really wrong with that?

SB: Well my problem is, you know I've come to love traditional poutine and I just wish that Bostonians would get a chance to appreciate it as much as I do. And not for example you know, when they think about poutine, think about something like what's offered at Fenway Park, which is a lobster poutine which is covered in lobster bisque. I think I think people should at least understand the baseline of what protein is before they're exposed to some of these horrific alternatives.

CO: What's a baked potato poutine?

SB: Oh this one was really bad. So this is this is a baked potato that has had gravy injected into it, which to me, does not qualify something as poutine. Just because it has gravy as an ingredient does not make it poutine.

CO: You said this is all these weird proteins like spaghetti protein, and baked potato, lobster bisque poutine. This all started when Boston caught on to the great tradition of poutine. What brought poutine to Boston in the first place?

SB: It’s not clear exactly what brought it here but it really does seem like in the past couple of years, it's been popping up more and more on menus. It's become sort of a food trend. But again, what we get is you know either odd experimentations that don't need to happen. One thing I'm particularly not a fan of is the incorporation of tater tots into poutine. I don't understand what the problem is with regular fries. But another issue is with execution. In many cases, the version of poutine that people are presented with is just coagulated goo of gravy and cheese. It's a sort of flat cheesy mess.

CO: What actually makes a good poutine? What's a classic perfect protein in your mind?

SB: For my money, I just take a good hand-cut fry, cooked a little bit a little bit darker than usual, with a good quality flavorful gravy and cheese curds that are so fresh that they squeak when you bite into them.

CO: The squeaky curd is key, isn't it? They have to squeak in your teeth when you chew them.

SB: Exactly. And if it doesn't, then it's sincerely missing something.

CO: Maybe people who are making these monstrosities in Boston just can't get the ingredients. Just don't know or don't know how to prepare it. I mean do you think it's just that, it's just it's kind of wow poutine, they want poutine, let’s just give them whatever.

SB: Well you know, I think that it's worth the effort. And I think maybe it wouldn't be quite as disturbing as it is that we've got all these perversions of poutine rather than the real thing. If there were a lot of places that were making that effort and they're really, the places that are doing that are few and far between.

CO: Have you seen, have you tried anything an experimental poutine that you actually thought that's, that's good.

SB: You know I tried when it was like an Indian butter chicken poutine. Instead of gravy, it had curry. And I have to say like, as far as a bar snack goes, it was fine. You know, it was fine. Any time you mix heavy, you know hearty gravy sort of ingredient and a starch and a cheese, it's just going to be good. It's sort of like pizza in that way. Where it's even when it's not good, it's still kind of good. That's what makes this problem sort of insidious is that it's kind of going to be OK.

CO: You know here As It Happens, there’s in the past week or so, there's been a huge debate about the whole idea of putting pineapple on pizza and people who consider it to be just heresy and those who swear by that once they discovered pineapple on pizza, they had died and gone to heaven. It was the best thing they ever had. And you can't… so there is there is some experimentation sometimes that yields maybe, you know when you get away from pepperoni and peppers and try something else that maybe it works.

SB: Sure. I don't know that I would agree with you that putting pineapple on pizza was a good idea. I understand that that was a Canadian innovation as well.

CO: Yes.

SB: And again I should mention that Canadians are not immune from this. I will remind people of the poutine pizza pop, which is like a microwavable treat stuffed with gravy and cheese. And I don't know.

CO: I remember that.

SB: We have our own checkered past with this as well. But as far as you know I think again, from my money, a good traditional style pizza done really well with like a really great crust and simple ingredients. For me, it reads like a shrimp scampi pizza or whatever other kind of thing you're going to do.

CO: All right and I finally, before I let you go, I understand you have heard from a Montrealer who hates Boston's poutine so much he came up with a strategy to cope. Can you tell us about that?

SB: He did yeah. This was amazing. I was so happy to get this e-mail. He said he shares my concerns about poutine. He hates Boston routine so much that we started showing up at restaurants with a bag of his own cheese curds for them to incorporate into the meal. And I think this guy is a national treasure. And I have yet to do that myself but maybe I'll give it a try.

CO: All right. He’s certainly a hero down there in Boston with his cheese curd bag. Spenser, it’s good to talk to you. Thanks.

SB: Likewise. Thanks so much.

CH: Spencer Buell is a writer for Boston Magazine. We reached him in Boston. And there's more on that story on our website, cbc.ca/aih.

[Music]

Devil horns follow

CH: You couldn't accuse the band Kiss of not seizing opportunities with both hands. Kiss action figures, Kiss shampoo, Kiss condoms, the Kiss VISA card. And for the die-hard Kiss fan who actually dies, there's the 7000-dollar Kiss Kasket, so you can forever rest in non-peace beneath a lid featuring an airbrushed image of Kiss.
But sometimes, when they're trying to seize an opportunity, their reach exceeds their grasp. Or, at least, Gene Simmons's does.
As we told you earlier this month, Mr. Simmons had filed an application to trademark a hand gesture, quote, "with the index and small fingers extended upward and the thumb extended perpendicular." Unquote.
In other words, Mr. Simmons was claiming that he invented the "rock on", or "devil horns" gesture. And that he did so during a concert on November 14th, 1974. Because there's nothing more rock 'n' roll than keeping a journal of every spontaneous onstage hand gesture.
Anyway, when news of that trademark attempt came out, pretty much everyone extended their thumbs perpendicularly, then rotated their hands so the thumb extended in a downward direction. And for once, Gene Simmons listened to the criticism. Earlier this week, he withdrew the application – apparently understanding the matter was out of his hands.
We'll leave this story with another example of Kiss trying their hand at something that had already been done.

Back To Top »

Part 2: STC bus route, Grenfell cladding

Saskatchewan bus route

Guest: Connie Deiter

JD: Last month, the Saskatchewan Transportation Company made its last bus trip.
The provincial Crown Corporation provided bus transit across the province. Now that it's been shut down, many Saskatchewanians said they won't be able to get around.
Now, a Cree woman from Saskatchewan has filed a human rights complaint with the province over the closure of the STC, saying it puts indigenous women at risk. We reached Connie Deiter in Regina.

CO: Connie, why have you filed this human rights complaint?

CONNIE DEITER: Because I believe that First Nations and Aboriginal women are going to be harmed, possibly members of that community will be killed because of the loss of bus service in our communities, in our province.

CO: And you're talking about, this is since the STC, the Saskatchewan Transportation Company shut down the service.

CD: Yes we as First Nations and Aboriginal women are really concerned that our people are going to be our First Nations women are going to be targeted.

CO: What do you fear when you say that they could become victims. What do you fear could happen to women who travel?

CD: Well in Saskatchewan we have a high rate, well one of the highest rates in terms of murdered and missing women in Canada. We also have the highest rate in terms of women that have been killed on roads and highways in the country.

CO: Now are there any other options? Is there, are there Greyhound busses? Any other way they can get around?

CD: At this point, there is a bus service running east and west along the number one by Greyhound, but there's no busses running in any other parts of the province. For instance not even between John and Saskatoon. I work at a safe shelter in Regina and we've got a number of calls from women who are trying to come to some safety in our transition house and are not able to do that because there is no bus services, no way for these women to come to the safe shelters. And I'm sure that's the case from across from across the province.

CO: There’s another example, an article in The Star Phoenix that there from a shelter where in Moose Jaw where many many many women come to the shelter on the bus.

CD: Exactly.

CO: So they're escaping some kind of danger. And yet you have to be in a dangerous situation in order to get there.

CD: Yes. And many of them will be stuck living in a domestic violence situation or being forced to hitchhike with their kids because there is no services available for them.

CO: Now what are you hoping to accomplish with your human rights complaint?

CD: I would like to see the province sit down again and do some consultation and perhaps come up with some sort of a plan where maybe less designated runs between cities, something that's more in line to their financial concerns. We don't want to see empty busses running. But on the other side is we don't want to see people hitchhiking. And this is going to be happening, and we live in a cold climate and winter is just around the corner and there's going to be people walking. There's going to be people hitchhiking. And quite frankly, there's going to be a death toll out of this. And add to that are the number of people who have been travelling to the major cities for health concerns. [lb\] I have a First Nations friend who is lives in Melville who is unable to travel to Regina now unless she gets a friend or someone to drive her, who regularly took the bus. And she's an independent woman. She likes the idea of paying her own way and whatnot and not having to bother someone to give her a ride to get her health needs met.

CO: Have you seen increased numbers of people hitchhiking yourself?

CD: Oh yes. I have been, I live in Abernathy which is about six miles from my reserve. And I'm out, I travel back and forth and I have seen a family standing on the side of the road with a young child hitchhiking. I have seen young men hitchhiking. And from my friends, for instance I have a friend from Northern Scotchman who has picked up the elder who was hitchhiking with her cane and with her luggage going to visit her family in the south. All of these people would have been riding the bus instead of hitchhiking. So for them, people who have no access to a vehicle, who need to see services, who need to get out of their communities, that is an option that they are going to take in order to reach their destination.

CO: When the government wants this gets one shut down this service in May, it said that it had lost 13 million dollars in the previous year. So the argument is it's not a viable business. Your argument is that it's a human right. So how do you balance those two things. How is it possible given that they are saying that they can't run a business.

CD: Well I think we have to go back. I mean this service has been in existence for I think close to 70 years. Tommy Douglas introduced it as an essential service and I think sometimes the government has to just sort of suck it up and say this is something we need to have for our people who live in Saskatchewan because we are so rural based. As I mentioned before they could be cutting back on the number of routes, not necessarily the routes but the number of times that a bus is travelling in that area as long as there is some access to public transportation.

CO: And why are indigenous people, especially women, so much more than others affected by this.

CD: Because one, we live in poverty too. Two, we're being targeted. Of the 61 women that have been missing and murdered here in Saskatchewan, 44 percent of them were killed by strangers and acquaintances. And we have the majority of our women, certainly they've been killed in residences, but a lot of our women have been killed on roads and highways, who were probably hitchhiking.

CO: I think it's also the case that the communities are rural.

CD: Oh yes. Yeah. There's no reserves in the city. So yes, they would be, they’re in isolated communities, a lot of them. A lot of them live in poverty and don't have access to a vehicle. And they're going to hitchhike.

CO: All right we will be following the developments in this. And Connie, it's good to talk to you. Thank you.

CD: Thank you so much.

CH: Connie Deiter has filed a human rights complaint against the government of Saskatchewan over its decision to shut down the Saskatchewan Transportation Company bus service. We reached her in Regina.
As It Happens reached out to the government of Saskatchewan, but a spokesperson declined to comment because the matter is still before the Human Rights Commission.

Mormon churchgoer

CH: In the Mormon church, the first Sunday of each month often involves a testimony meeting. During which people can stand up in front of their fellow worshippers and express what they know to be true of Jesus Christ, the restoration of the Gospel, and the blessings from following its principles.
So on a Sunday in May, a 12-year-old named Savannah stood up in front of her congregation in Eagle Mountain, Utah, and decided to come out. But before she reached the end, her mic was cut off. Here's part of what she had to say.

SOUNDCLIP

SAVANNAH: Hi, my name is Savannah and I want to share my testimony with you. I believe I was made the way I am, all parts of me, by my heavenly parents. They did not mess up when they gave me brown eyes or when I was born bald. They did not mess up when they gave me freckles or when they made me to be gay. God loves me just this way, because I believe that he loves all his creations. I do believe he made me this way on purpose. No part of me is a mistake.
I do not choose to be this way, and it is not a fad.
I cannot make someone else gay and being around me won’t make anyone else this way. I believe that God wants us to treat each other with kindness, even if people are different. Especially if they are different. Christ showed us this. I believe that we should just love.
I know I’m not a horrible sinner for being who I am. I believe God would tell me if I was wrong. I hope someday to go on dates, go to school dances, to hold hands, to go off to college. I hope to find a partner and have a great job. I hope to get married and have a family. I know these dreams and wishes are good and right. I know I can have all of these things as a lesbian and be happy. I believe that if God is there, he knows I am perfect, just the way I am and would never ask me to live my life alone or with someone I am not attracted to. He would want me to be happy. I want to be happy. I want to love myself and not to feel shame for being me. I ask you…

CH: That was Savannah, of Eagle Mountain, Utah, coming out to her Mormon congregation last month. In the video, you can see her turn to church leaders, who ask her to leave the podium. She did not finish what she had to say.
Her testimony is causing a stir among The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, which considers it a sin for two people of the same sex to marry – though its rules have recently been undergoing changes when it comes to same-sex attraction.
Her mother, Heather Kester, has said that Savannah had come out to her family earlier and asked to be allowed to come out at church for weeks, until her parents finally relented. Ms. Kester asked that Savannah's last name not be used to protect her privacy.

[Music]

Apex predator

CH: Sometimes, As It Happens is like an apex predator: we hunt down a story, tackle it, and sink our teeth into it. But once in a while, we miss some of the meat. Case in point: a story we told you yesterday about actual apex predators. Specifically, California mountain lions.
We told you the researchers had played the voices of Rush Limbaugh and Rachel Maddow, among others, at sites where the mountain lions go to eat their prey. In the vast majority of cases, those voices scared the big cats off. We also told you the researchers were from the University of California at Santa Cruz.
Then we heard from Professor Liana Zanette – who gave us something new to chew on. She wrote: “I enjoyed the segment on 'Apex predators' on Thursday's show, especially as it was my research you were describing. The experiment was actually a collaboration between scientists at UCSC, and my students and colleague and I from Western University in London, Ontario." Oops. Sorry, everyone from Western.
Professor Zanette went on to remind us that she and her colleagues had done similar tests on badgers in Britain. Only instead of playing recordings of Rush and Rachel, they subjected the badgers to even greater horrors: the voices of Carol Off and Jeff Douglas.
She concluded, quote, "Just wanted to emphasize all the Canadian content in the study. It was our American colleagues that chose Rush Limbaugh, even though we offered our recordings of Carol and Jeff." Unquote.
Our apologies to Professor Zanette and her colleagues – whom you can hear Professor Zanette talking about the study on CBC's Quirks and Quarks at noon – 12:30 in Newfoundland. Also, our apologies, on behalf of Carol and Jeff, to the badgers of Britain.

[Music]

Grenfell cladding

Guest: Arnold Tarling

JD: It was added to UK apartment buildings to make them look more modern. But that cosmetic addition may be what caused the fire at Grenfell Tower to become so deadly.
Flammable exterior cladding has been a suspect from the beginning. And yesterday, UK Prime Minister Theresa May revealed that six hundred buildings in the country have cladding similar to Grenfell Tower's. A small number of those buildings have already been confirmed to be flammable. She's promised to make sure residents are safe. But some say the government ignored warnings about the cladding for years.
Arnold Tarling is a building surveyor and fire protection specialist. We reached him in London.

CO: Mr. Tarling, what would you tell people who live in a building that's been confirmed to have this kind of cladding on it?

ARNOLD TARLING: Personally if I was living in one of those buildings, I would be finding friends or relations to go and stay with. I’d get out.

CO: But we know there's already all the people who had been in the building that burned down that they don't have a place to stay. So what's the likelihood that those who live in these other buildings, which could be in the hundreds, could actually go someplace else.

AT: Well that's the point. You play Russian roulette with your tenants or do you put them into accommodation until the cladding’s removed.

CO: Can you explain what made this cladding on Grenfell Tower so dangerous?

AT: What makes this particular material so dangerous is the polyethylene core which is highly flammable, which melts at 120 degrees.

CO: But there's aluminium on either side, is that right?

AT: That's correct. It's like a sandwich with a material inside which is like a solid fuel.

CO: What happens when this catches fire?

AT: When this type of material catches fire, its heat rises and the other material then starts melting as well. You get an effect that’s like a candlewick, and it just goes straight up the candle like on the side of the building. Basically, it will jump around any fire stocks because it's heating up the material above, making that molten. That drips down and becomes engulfed in flames and passes it up. And so it passes every single fire stop in the building. The gap behind it, between the insulation and the cladding also creates a chimney effect causing it to rapidly spread up the building.

CO: When you when you were watching this fire, when you saw this the story of this fire, you were you aware of it? Were you did you know that this was the case with this building, that it had this this kind of cladding on it?

AT: I didn’t know that that particular building had it on it. But I was warning that buildings were being built with it on it and it was dangerous. Different forms of cladding, different forms of insulation which are highly flammable and being used on the exterior of buildings. And it’s wrong.

CO: How did you react? What were you thinking when you saw this fire knowing that that likely it had this cladding that you had warned about?

AT: Absolutely devastated. I said it would happen. I said that we’ll have fires like this in this country and it's reported in inside housing. I said this will happen. And I was saying it’s a British [unintelligible] come from where I was given the chance to speak. You know, it was an accident waiting to happen.

CO: But when you told them when you would try and draw their attention to this disaster waiting to happen, how did they react? What did people say to you?

AT: Well the advisers to government who were there at the meeting made no comment at all. I have no feedback from Inside Housing magazine. I also like thing which goes out to various local councils elsewhere. They have no guidance in any of the building regulations textbooks. I’ve been through four of them.
One of them mentions fire from cladding.

CO: The situation in this one apartment building where at least 79 people are now dead and possibly many others and just hundreds of people are homeless because of it. And when you know you have warned them about that, I don't imagine there is any satisfaction in saying “I told you so.”

AT: There's no satisfaction at all. None whatsoever. And the count of 79 extremely low. There’ll be far far more people in that building who have been cremated. They won't find them. Simple as that.

CO: We're hearing from the Prime Minister, your prime minister Theresa May who is saying that it is the legal responsibility of landlords to insure buildings are safe. What do you say to her?

AT: They are passing the buck. The first thing is that the government should make sure that the building regulations are understandable, that the way in which it is drafted is not convoluted and that it is patently obvious that you don't use these types of materials. It goes back to government in the end and it goes back to their advisers.

CO: What would you say to Theresa May if you could speak to her?

AT: Make an order straight away every single building within the United Kingdom which has cladding on it is brought up to standard. Make it a legal requirement and provide sufficient funds for this to be done because the building regulation rules offices, the building control are complicit, the government is complicit. Both are involved in drafting the building regulations are complicit. Those involved in advising government ministers are very complicit in the fact that this has happened.

CO: Charlie it's very very disturbing picture you paint of what's going on in these buildings. I appreciate you speaking with us. Thank you.

AT: Thank you.

CH: Arnold Tarling is a building surveyor and fire protection specialist. We reached him in London.

[Music]

McFlurry skunk

CH: What we are about to play for you is not the sound of a pet owner coaxing a startled puppy off the road. It is not the sound of a parent trying to get a baby to crawl. It sounds like both those things. But it's actually braver than either one. It's the sound of an act of heroism, performed at great personal risk.

SOUNDCLIP

[Sound: Traffic]

TINA CHRISTIE: Come on. Come here. Come here. Come here. Come here. Come here. Come here. Come here. Come on. Come here. Come here. Come here.

CH: It is the sound of a woman in Kemptville, Ontario coaxing a skunk with its head stuck in a McFlurry cup toward her, so she can free the volatile creature from its plastic ice cream trap. Tina Christie was getting her car washed when the cute putrid creature wandered onto the pavement. She weighed the risks – getting back into a freshly cleaned car smelling of skunk, or being late to pick up a friend, but she couldn't leave the helpless animal. So she kept on coaxing.

SOUNDCLIP

Come on. Come here. S**t. Come here. That’s a boy. That’s a boy. Come here. Come here. Come here. Come here. It’s OK. Come here. That’s OK. There, OK come on.

[Sound of plastic cup being removed from skunk’s head]

Ms. Christie managed to get the cup off without getting sprayed. She posted the video to Facebook yesterday, and asked McDonalds in her post to find an environmental solution to their plastic products. After all, it would stink to see an Ontario skunk added to the Dead Animal collection at the Rotterdam Natural History Museum in the Netherlands – which already features a suffocated hedgehog, its head also stuck in a McFlurry cup.

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Part 3: Encore: The Optician of Lampedusa

Encore: Optician of Lampedusa

CHRIS HOWDEN: It's feared that more than 2000 people have died attempting to reach Europe by boat this year.
Earlier this week, on World Refugee Day, the UN announced three more shipwrecks. From just one of those dinghies, 129 people are presumed dead.
The vast majority of asylum-seekers who arrived in Europe by sea this year have crossed via the deadliest sea passage in the world. That passage is the central Mediterranean, between Libya and Italy.
Emma Jane Kirby is a radio journalist with the BBC. She's been covering the refugee crisis in the Mediterranean. And she's written a book about Carmine Menna, an Italian optician who helped rescue dozens of shipwrecked migrants off the coast of Lampedusa on October 3rd, 2013.
We interviewed Emma Jane Kirby about her book, entitled The Optician of Lampedusa in April. Here's an Encore presentation of that interview.

SOUNDCLIP

CAROL OFF: Emma Jane, first of all, can you just tell us what happened that day off the coast of Lampedusa. This is October the 3rd 2013.

EMMA JANE KIRBY: The day before on October the 2nd 2013, we know that a boat full of migrants, more than 400 came, left Misrata in Libya and made its way towards Europe, drifted towards Lampedusa. And we know that in the small hours of the 3rd of October they were so close to Lampedusa that they could see car headlights on the island, the survivors have told us they could see the car headlights on the island driving around. And they decided to signal that they needed help. So they cut the engine. Unfortunately that meant the billage pump wasn't working so the boats began to flood with water. So they lit a towel and some flares to try and attract attention. Unfortunately they caught the boat caught fire, there was petrol on the deck, everybody ran to avoid the flames and it caused the boat to tip over.

CO: How many people were on the boat?

EJK: There were more than 400 people on that boat. We know that 368 of them didn't make it.

CO: And so they all, did they all end up in the water. Everybody ended up in the water. Of course women and children on those boats are always asked to stay below deck. And we know from the migrants who survived, that the women and children had been up on the deck because they wanted to see the excitement of the lights of Europe, The New Promised Land and they had gone back down below deck to dress themselves up, to tidy themselves up so that they would look good and clean and fresh for their new arrival and the start of their new lives. And of course, when the boat tipped over they were trapped and they didn't have a chance.

CO: The man, this optician. How does he enter the picture?

EJK: So Carmine Menna decided at the beginning of October that he was very tired and frankly he hadn't had much of a summer holiday. He needed a bit of a break. He decided to have a little weekend away with his wife sailing and six friends. One of his friends had an old boat. And off they went on the boat had a great night the night before and the optician wasn't sleeping very well. He woke up and heard the seagulls screaming as he thought over a lucky catch and he couldn't get back to sleep. It was annoying him the noise. So he came up on deck and then he started to hear those seagulls getting very loud and he was very perturbed by the seagulls. Other people on the boat woke up as well, came up to see him and said “What is that noise? He said, “I'm sure it's just seagulls. It's just seagulls isn’t it?” And they said “We don't think it is seagulls.” So they upped anchor and they moved towards that terrible noise. And as they got closer they saw black shapes in the water. The optician at first thought it was fish. I thought the black shapes were fish, but then he saw that these fish had arms and legs and faces and he realised that the sea was boiling with drowning people. And Carol, he was on a boat I should say, it was a small boat. It had a maximum capacity of 10. There were already eight of them on that boat. And there were hundreds of drowning people in the water.

CO: How did they respond to that when they saw those people. What did they do? They knew immediately that they would help. The optician's first thought, he remembers, and it stuck with me when I spoke to him in that interview a couple of years ago when I first met him. He didn't say “I wondered what do I do? How do I save them?” He said “How do I save them all?” Because he realised right from the start that he was never going to be able to save them all. They couldn't, there were just too many of them. So what they did they made a deal with each other that they had to move towards the groups of people that they could see rather than individuals and pull as many people up as they could at once. But remember these people had been in the water a very long time. By that time they'd been in the water several hours. They were exhausted. They had drunk seawater, they’d drunk gasoline. They were covered in petrol and gasoline which made them incredibly slippy to try and pull up. And the optician remembers the pull of that first young man that he pulled from the water. He still remembers the feel of that man's hand in his, grasping it and feeling the bones of that man the young man's hand cracking against his. And suddenly for him, as he touched that young man, he realized that the migrants the migration crisis was real and it was something which now absolutely concerned him.

CO: What you're describing, that moment when he pulled that man, held his hand and pulled him in, is something that is so striking. And we’ve made note of it here just so I could read it to you, I can read it to our listeners.
This is the passage as you describe it of the optician. “He'd never held anyone's hand so tightly before. The intimacy of the gesture with a naked total stranger, it made him wince. Yet when the force of the pull had flung the man up against his bare chest, he'd felt something strangely primeval stirred in him something almost like love.” Why do you think it was such an intimate experience for him?

EJK: Because this was life and death. He realised that, all of a sudden, you know, he was the only person that these migrants had to help them.

CO: He and his friends went into quite an operation it was almost like a triage. And the wives of the men who were on the boat were taking care of those who came up on the surface after the optician and the other men were able to get them in.
They, there's one passage in which that one of the wives gives one of the refugees a shirt to wear that she wears almost like a diaper. So many of these people they're pulling out of the water had lost their clothing and they're naked and they’re, even though they've almost died, they feel shame. So they're trying to help them cover up and. And so they become all involved in something just so extraordinarily intimate as well. And this brings us to the most important theme in the book is that they enter the lives of these people, they become instantly intimate with them. What is it that does that? Why do you think they were so drawn to them?

EJK: I think it's curious, because as I say, the optician just, though he had felt pity for them, he just hadn't seen them as his problem before now, these migrants. Because you know, what could he do to help them. He was just an optician and suddenly he was their only chance of life. He saw people for the first time in desperate need, the most desperate need of all. Desperate to stay alive. And I've met some of the people, a couple of the migrants that he managed to save, and they felt something very very strong too. Because they remember that when they were pulled from the water, it wasn't just that they were helping them and that they were saving their lives, it was the crew, the optician and his friends was sobbing and they were crying. They absolutely felt the pain and the suffering of the migrant people who were in the water.

CO: What happened to that young man.

EJK: The young man with the T-shirt that wore it as a diaper? He went to Sweden. He is waiting for his asylum papers to come through in Sweden. Most of those who survived, the optician managed to save 47 people on that boat made for 10. And every year, they meet up with a few of the survivors, and the first year that they met up with them, they were, they came back to Lampedusa, some of the survivors. That young man was among them and the first thing he did was pull out of his bag that pink T-shirt. So it had meant so much to him as well.

CO: And there was only one woman that they were able to pull into the boat. What was her story?

EJK: We don't know her story. We can imagine it because we know that many of the women who make the passage from Libya to Europe have no money and they are beaten and raped as part of the fee if you like, to get their passage. It's thought that she too is now in Sweden and is safe. Other women were saved by other boats who eventually came on scene, a fisherman's boat. It's a wonderful story that I found out only last October, that one woman was found drowned in the water and a fisherman was heaping bodies onto his boat, dead bodies. And when they came into port, a doctor came and was zipping up the body bags and as he zipped up her body bag, he thought he felt something, some sign of life and he gave her the kiss of life and she was indeed alive. And I saw her this October and she's pregnant.

CO: Good heavens. What a story. And it's these boats these fishing boats and the optician and his friends, how many were they able to pull out of the water?

EJK: They managed to save 47. 47 people on a boat made just 10. And if you can imagine how low that boat would sunk into the water, I've seen a photograph of it actually taken by the Coast Guard when they finally arrived to help. And they’re low in the water that the vendors are skimming the surface. The boat was out of control. They knew that the boat was out of control and that at any moment they too could have flipped over. But they had to save lives. They had to keep doing it because how do you turn your back when there are still hands waving? How do you choose which hand to take? If he took your hand Carol he wouldn't have time to take mine. They were in the most impossible situation and I think the thing that haunts them all the most is that when the Coast Guard arrived, they gave them the order that they have to turn and go back to port. And of course there were other boats by then in the water with the search and rescue operation but they could still see hands, they were still looking for people and they were forced to turn their backs and turn around. And I know that the optician is haunted by that, by the fact he wants everybody to know that he wanted to go back. They all wanted to turn back and help again.

CO: If you're just joining us now I'm speaking with Emma Jane Kirby. She's a reporter with BBC Radio and she has reported extensively on the migration crisis in Europe She's recently written a book we're talking about here about one of the worst shipwrecks of that crisis. The book is called The Optician of Lampedusa.
Emma Jane, in this book, you also describe as you've mentioned earlier that there were other people you profiled, including a grave digger who gives small wooden crosses to the immigrants in a holding center where the people are taken, the survivors are taken once they're found. And this is also a real person you profiled. Can you tell us about him?

EJK: Yes. There were two. There was the grave digger who has the dreadful task of burying those who don't make it. Not very many he can bury now because Lampedusa is a very small place. And of course the mausoleums are getting packed. But he told me, you know, how he was just used to corpses, that was his life, you know, he did it all every day and he was used to death. And then as I talked to him I realized that actually, he wasn't, he wasn't used to it at all. He was almost in tears and he was so angry that this was happening, that he was burying unnamed people all the time. That nothing had been done to stop people coming and drowning in these dreadful boats. And the other person you mentioned is the carpenter of Lampedusa who is a real man Francesco Tuccio, a lovely wonderful man with an incredible faith. And he had the idea of making a cross. It was Good Friday. He made a cross from the washed up shipwrecked boats that float up in Lampedusa and he made a cross from those, from that shipwrecked boat one of those boats, with the nails still in it, very crude and hung it above the altar. And it made such an impact on his parish that many other parishes then asked if they could have a cross. I think almost every parish now in Sicily has one. He also gave for free, he made little crosses for the migrants to have themselves as a sort of symbol of their redemption and hope and new life. And one of our listeners back in London heard that story and was so charmed and taken by it, she was a curator in the British Museum and she secretly commissioned one of those crosses for the British Museum without telling her boss, something she's not allowed to do. And when it arrived from Francesco Tuccio, she dumped it on her director's boss, her boss’s desk. And she said “This is living history. This is what the British Museum should be collecting” and the outgoing director of the British Museum, Neil MacGregor made it his last acquisition for the museum. It now stands very proudly in the British Museum.

CO: You know most of these migrants who were pulled out of the water, the ones who didn't make it, are buried in unmarked graves or without knowing who they are, who is in those graves and I know that this has become something that Europeans are very conscious of.
We’re going to play a short clip of an interview we did in April of 2015 with George Vella. He's the Maltese Foreign Minister. And we're just talking with him here about a memorial service that was held on Malta for hundreds of migrants who drowned off that coast. And here is George Vella:

SOUNDCLIP

GEORGE VELLA: It was very sad but it was, there was a service officiate, there was a service that was officiated by an imam, and also by a Catholic bishop. The most impressing thing was that they were actually attending a funeral service of people who didn't know. There was nothing on the coffin but the number. We speak of the Unknown Soldier. But I think we can have an equally equally significant notion of the unknown migrant. When the people are down at the bottom of the sea, we will never know whether they were males or females, we don't know whether what they looked like, how old they were. I mean it's just one big enigma.

CO: That’s George Vella, and Emma Jane, he's speaking as you said, he’s the foreign minister of Malta. He's referring to the Mediterranean as the grave of the unknown immigrant. And there were efforts, European efforts Italian efforts to try and mitigate the situation, try and help people, try and step up the efforts. What actually has been done on the Mediterranean to deal with the people coming across in these boats?

GV: Let me just say first of all that that extract you just played from the Maltese Foreign Minister is very very poignant to me because, as soon as I finished writing this book, I'd taken some time away from my day job as a BBC journalist.
The first report I did afterwards happened to be in Milan in a place called Lebanof. It’s a pathology lab where they are still trying to identify the 368 victims of the optician's disaster. And I will never ever ever forget being handed a book of photographs, the kind of photographs albums that you and I have at home you know, of our family snapshots, and in it were the faces of all the drowned, all the people I'd been writing about, all the people that the optician hadn't managed to save.
I think it's incredibly difficult to stop people coming. There are so many wars people are fleeing. They’re fleeing hunger, they're fleeing poverty, they're fleeing war, they're fleeing, in Eritrea, a military dictatorship. And it's very very difficult to stop people coming.
Of course after the optician's tragedy, the horror that this had happened so close to the shores of Europe, less than a kilometer. The Italians launched their Mare Nostrum program, which is a search and rescue program using the Italian navy. But there was huge criticism from European partners that this was encouraging more people to come and the Italians couldn't afford the cost of it themselves and had to abandon the program.
There are many other programs, Save the Children, Médecins Sans Frontières, have marvelous search and rescue missions themselves. But the Mediterranean is an enormous, enormous ocean. Who can patrol all of it? And while there is still unhappiness and war in the world, of course more people are going to come and risk their lives.

CO: But how effective have those efforts been. And we're talking about the Italian governments the initiation of the Mare Nostrum, which was one search and rescue operation and Operation Triton I think was the one that replaced it. But the criticism of it has been that it's been more preoccupied with trying to protect borders to prevent people from making these crossings than in rescuing those who were in the water as you say. They're not going to stop as long as they're fleeing from desperate situations.

EJK: There is of course a lot of criticism that European countries are not doing enough to protect migrants and are more concerned with protecting their borders. The Operation Triton that you speak about is the Frontex’s operation. Frontext is the European’s border agency force.
What you should know about from Texas and it doesn't have enormous amounts of funding and it doesn't actually have any operational equipment of its own. It doesn't have any of its own ships. It doesn't have any of its own helicopters or planes. It relies on the generosity of other member states to lend them that equipment for a couple of months. I have been on a search and rescue mission with Triton and I can say that they are extremely serious about trying to rescue people. I went with an Icelandic crew who were operating Operation Triton at the time, and we were out at sea for 36 hours in huge seas, four to five metre waves. I've never been so sick in my life. So you can imagine what the migrants go through on those tiny little boats. But of course, you know the pressure is coming with this wave of populism that we're seeing across Europe as well, that people should be stopped from coming to Europe rather than they should arrive and then we deal with the problem.
There is of course enormous pressures on countries which are the rival countries like Greece and Italy, Sicily, to deal with these people once they arrive. Where do you put them?

CO: I’m speaking with Emma Jane Kirby, a reporter with BBC Radio, who has written a very striking book dealing with the migrant crisis in the Mediterranean. The book is called The Optician of Lampedusa. Emma Jane, I want to return to the idea of empathy which is an important theme in your book. And you just touched on it here with where do you put them? Where do you where do these people go? There are, this optician suddenly finds himself intimate with these people and that's what brings him into their world and realises their plight. What is required? What is it that, how do people come across into that area of saying these are us. These are brothers and sisters, these are these are citizens of the world. We need to help them. And where is the line that they cross in order to become that? And who doesn't cross that line?

EJK: You'll notice, Carol, that in the book I never name Carmine Menna, the optician of Lampedusa. He's always called the optician. And I deliberately chose not to name him because I wanted him to be a sort of every man figure. I wanted us as readers to imagine ourselves in that boat. To put ourselves in the position that Carmine Menna found himself in. What would we feel, what would we do if we found ourselves in that situation? Because we know that other boats were on the water at the time and they chose to go past. They didn't stop. The optician's boats stopped and did all they could. They didn't save them all, they couldn't save them all, but they did what they could.
And I think as soon as he had saved those people, and had seen their suffering, and had seen how ill they were, and how close to the end they were, and realised how precious their lives were. He needed to follow them, as did his friends, he needed to find out who they were, where they'd come from, whether they were going to be alright. He was terrified that actually, what he'd done is save them, yes, but save them into what kind of life? What kind of future? Because it wasn't going to be plain sailing. He knew that. They were going to be put in reception centres. It was going to take an enormous long time for them to be given asylum if they were given asylum and to start a new life. And he was, suddenly realised that you know, this was only the beginning of the journey for them.

CO: And just days after this shipwreck, there was another one with Syrians in it. And this was at a time as you describe in the book, many people in the region are like the optician. He is the every man. As they as they become and come in contact with these people, their sympathy, their empathy grows. But now this has been almost four years since that shipwreck. So how have things changed? Are Italians feeling that strong bond with them still?

EJK: It's very very interesting in Lampedusa. Because Lampedusa used to be a place which was full of tourists, particularly Italian tourists. And since the migration crisis began, since the Arab Spring we have seen, they have seen a huge drop off in the number of tourists who come. People don't want to come on holiday and you know that I've even been actually interviewing somebody when his phone rang, a hotel owner, his phone rang and a guest cancelled on him because he said he was frightened of swimming in the sea and touching a dead body. So of course the island has lost huge amounts of tourism. And economically, that's very painful for many people. But I've very rarely met anybody in Lampedusa who says, you know they should all just get lost. I don't care about them. I think when you are in proximity to people, and you see their suffering, it's very difficult to not see them as they are, as human beings and to realise that they also have hopes and dreams and feel pain and are cold or hungry. Need laughter, need love. And almost everybody I've met on Lampedusa has had kind things to say, has have been empathetic.

CO: What effect has this had on you in covering this story?

EJK: I won't deny that I cry a lot covering these stories, but I think that's I think that's right. Nobody obviously wants their reporters to be crying and sobbing on air, but I get very emotional behind the scenes and I think that's right. Because these are real people and this is real suffering. And I think it's our job as reporters to tell the truth. And what I see is an awful lot of suffering. So I will always tell the truth.
I think you know the book has sometimes been described as an incredibly political book. That's true in so many ways, but in other words, in other ways it's very apolitical. You know we never know how the optician, for example, votes. There's no moral to this sort of modern day parable either. There's no Hollywood ending where the optician suddenly finds Jesus or renounces his old life to join a migrant NGO. He just returns to work, albeit with his eyes very much wide open. And I think that is why Carmine Menna agreed for me to write this book, because he's an incredibly private man. He doesn't like media attention. But you know what is an optician's job? An optician's professional job is to help us see clearly. And I think that's exactly what he wants to do with this book, to pass on the message. Open your eyes. You can be you know, pro-immigration. You can be anti-immigration. You can vote right. You can vote left. That doesn't matter. But who can really accept, who can close their eyes to the fact that so many thousands of people are drowning on Europe's doorstep?

CO: Emma Jane, thank you for opening our eyes as you have done through all of your reporting on the BBC, and thank you for speaking with us.

EJK: Thank you so much for having me.

CH: That was Emma Jane Kirby speaking about her book The Optician of Lampedusa which is published by OR books. That interview first aired in April of this year.

[Music]

Banksy clue

CH: With a slip of the tongue, British musician Goldie may have just confirmed the art world's juiciest rumour – that Massive Attack's Robert Del Naja is Banksy.
Here at As It Happens, we've covered many stories on the famously secretive artist. And it's not the first time someone has linked Banksy to Mr. Del Naja. Last year, someone compared the Massive Attack tour schedule to the locations of Banksy art. And if you combine that with the clue Goldie just dropped – the evidence is pretty convincing.
In an interview with a podcast called "Distraction Pieces", Goldie made a joke about the elusive graffiti artist's success, claiming, quote: "Give me a bubble letter and put it on a T-shirt and write Banksy on it and we're sorted."
But then Goldie backpedalled. And in a moment he clearly immediately regrets, accidentally referred to Banksy by his first name – Robert. Here's the clip everyone is freaking out about:

SOUNDCLIP

GOLDIE: Give me a bubble letter and put it on a T-shirt and write Banksy on it and we're sorted. We’re OK, we’re good. We can sell it now, we can sell it. We can make it something else. No disrespect to Robert. I think he’s a brilliant artist, I think he’s flipped the world of art over.

HOST: Yeah, completely.

GOLDIE: But I think what… the irony in that… if Jazz as a genre, do the same thing as what Joan Baez has done with music.

CH: "No disrespect to Robert" – as in, possibly, Robert Del Naja from the British trip-hop group Massive Attack. In case you missed it, here's the clip again:

SOUNDCLIP

HOST: Yeah.

GOLDIE: No disrespect to Robert. I think he’s a brilliant artist, I think he’s flipped the world of art over.

HOST: Yeah, completely.

GOLDIE: But I think what…

CH: "I think what" – as in, "what did I just say?" Once again, here's the moment Goldie realises what he's revealed, before he shifts the subject to jazz – anyone and everyone's favourite emergency "nothing to see here" decoy.

SOUNDCLIP

GOLDIE: If Jazz as a genre, do the same thing as what Joan Baez has done with music.

CH: As colossal slip-ups go it was well-executed, which is to be expected from a DJ. There was no follow-up question, and as is always the case with Bansky, the mystery remains – and he probably stands to profit off it.

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June 23, 2017 episode transcript

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