Note: Transcripts may contain errors. If you wish to re-use all, or part of, a transcript, please contact CBC for permission. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting in print. Copyright © CBC 2017

The AIH Transcript for November 2, 2017

Hosts: Carol Off and Jeff Douglas

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

CAROL OFF: Hello, I'm Carol off.

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

[Music: Theme]

JD: Tonight…

CO: Skiing isn't believing. The Supreme Court says a ski resort development can go ahead despite the opposition of a B.C. First Nation. A local chief says that's an attack on their religious beliefs.

JD: Fighting rapid fire with fire. A survivor of the massacre in Las Vegas goes to Washington where he is outraged to find that bipartisan support for a ban on so-called “bump stocks” has evaporated.

CO: Sneaky moves, but not a movement. Occupy Wall Street co-creator Michael White tells us about his encounter with people who wanted him to share his expertise on protesting but turned out to be Russian trolls.

JD: Now every crowd will have a silver lining. An Ottawa doctor wants to work with organizers of large gatherings, like music festivals, to stop sexual assaults and she has created an app to help them do it.

CO: A buffet for buffing buffs. An Ontario man starts a YouTube channel where he thoroughly reviews carwashes after discovering they fascinate his son who has autism.

JD: And…Turnip the volume. Well, the truth is I don't know how much water would displace, but a Newfoundland woman has grown a breathtaking turnip as big as a small child, which of course, no small child would ever actually eat. As It Happens, the Thursday edition. Radio that takes the scenic rutabaga.

[Music: Theme]

Back To Top »

Part 1: Supreme Court of Canada: BC ski resort, Occupy Wall Street's Micah White

Supreme Court of Canada: BC ski resort

Guest: Jason Louie

JD: In Ottawa this morning the Supreme Court set a landmark new limit on the charter’s protection for Indigenous beliefs. The Ktunaxa First Nation had tried to block the development of a ski resort in Jumbo Valley, the mountain wilderness near in Invermeer, B.C. They argued that the double diamond runs would drive the grizzly bears from the area, and that if the Grizzlies go, so would the Grizzly Bear spirit — a fundamental aspect of their religious beliefs. This morning however, all nine judges dismissed the Ktunaxa’s claim. Jason Louie is a chief of the Lower Kootenay band of the nation. We reached him in Creston, British Columbia.

CO: Chief Louie what was your feeling when you read the Supreme Court's decision?

CHIEF JASON LOUIE: I am devastated. There's no other way to explain it. After the decision and then different news organizations posting the story on social media, and just reading comments from people from around the country, it's just mind blowing at the mentality of where people are at with this.

CO: Can you explain what's at stake here for the Ktunaxa and this area that you call Qat’muk. What do your people believe will happen if this this ski resort goes on to that site?

JL: Well, for me personally there's two sides, two aspects of this. There's the environmental aspect, that building a ski resort on a glacier system is not good for the environment. And also knowing that this is a grizzly bear habitat, that it's going to affect the grizzly bear population in a negative way. And then the spiritual side of things is that this is our belief system that this is the land of the Grizzly Bear spirit and it's been put into jeopardy. If this goes through and this is built that it's going to have negative impacts on the environment and negative impacts on our spiritual practices.

CO: I want to ask you about the Grizzly Bear spirit that's in jeopardy here. The Supreme Court has ruled that under the charter it can protect people's beliefs. But in this case you're asking, they say, to do more than just protect beliefs. They write that in this decision that you're asking the court to protect the presence of Grizzly Bear spirit in the area and something they do not have the power to do. What do you say?

JL: What do I say? I say, well why was it so easy that one time the law of the land said that Indigenous people across this country had to be Christians, had to practice the faith, or we would go to prison or we in some cases, some people even lost their lives if they weren't willing to comply. So we're supposed to be in the age of reconciliation. There needs to be more than just words, it has to be actions and the actions of the Supreme Court contradict the ideals of reconciliation and Article 25 of the United Nations declarations on the Rights of Indigenous people.

CO: And do you know if the Supreme Court took that into consideration?

JL: I really don't know. But I the justice, or I should say the legal system, has rarely been on our side. So this was a conscious decision by the Supreme Court to make this judgment. You know, it's a pretty lengthy document, but the language in the verdict is very appalling. And it's going to take a while to read through. I have read through it in its entirety but it's going to take a few times to read through it just I'm, I'm at a loss for words on some of the language that was used.

CO: In the dissenting voices on the Supreme Court justice Moldaver wrote that the he said “the development of the ski resort would desecrate the area of Qat’muk, and this is a quote, cause “Grizzly Bear spirit to leave, thus severing the Ktunaxa connection to the land. As a result the Ktunaxa would no longer receive spiritual guidance and assistance from Grizzly Bear spirit. All songs, rituals and ceremonies associated with Grizzly Bear spirit would become meaningless.” But in the end all nine judges dismissed your case. What do you make of that?

JL: I'm baffled. How can he say that and then have this judgment? It just makes no sense at all. It makes absolutely no sense at all.

CO: But he seems to concede that this is going to do what you say. But he says they have no jurisdiction to protect that.

JL: However, there is jurisdiction to protect churches in this country, to protect other religious buildings. But for us this has been here since time immemorial and they're saying it can't protect that.

CO: So I guess what this is saying is that if it's a building, if it's an actual concrete thing that's been constructed, that is something sacred. But if your church, if your place of worship is the outdoors, it is nature, it is this glacier then that can't be protected. Is that what you have to conclude?

JL: That rings true. It has to be a building it can't be an outdoor place of worship but it does not coincide with how things have been since time immemorial. We live off this land and this is where our place of worship, is so to speak.

CO: So the Supreme Court has, in the end, ruled against your petition. What options does that leave for you?

JL: Well, right now there aren't a lot of options — perhaps trying to rally the environmentalists of this country and the world. I mentioned earlier that I am at a loss and this is this is just raw emotion right now, so I can't speak to what the next steps are. I'm not the spokesperson, our executive council of the nation have not met on this matter, but we will in the future and we will have more of an idea what we're going to do moving ahead. We're down right now, we've never been out. From the beginning of time throughout our history, we've had so many things against us but we just keep getting back up and moving forward. And that's what we're going to continue to have to do int the future.

CO: Chief Louie, we will be watching and I appreciate speaking with you today.

JL: Thank you for your time.

JD: Jason Louie is the chief of the lower Kootenay. We reached him in Creston, British Columbia.

[Music: Ambient Guitar]

Occupy Wall Street’s Micah White

Guest: Micah White

JD: This week, U.S. lawmakers held up examples of Russian-made ads and post from social media networks. They were designed to target American voters. One fake Facebook group, Heart of Texas, convinced Texans of a plan to declare independence. The group United Muslims of America was revealed to be neither American nor Muslim. And then there is Black Matters, a name that sounds a lot like Black Lives Matter, but was actually cooked up by Russian trolls. Micah White was familiar with the Black Matters front group long before it was exposed this week. Mr. White is the co-creator of Occupy Wall Street, and he says Black Matters, along with all these other Russian online front groups, are part of a disturbing trend. We reached Micah White in New York.

CO: Micah how did you first encounter this fake group called Black Matters?

MICAH WHITE: Well, a person named Yan Big Davis wrote to me through my website basically asking to do an interview about protest and activism. The email, still from the beginning, was kind of weird like that English was kind of awkward and everything. I didn't immediately reply, but eventually I was like ‘hey why not?’

CO: And then what did you learn about the group and who is actually behind it?

MW: After I did the interview I thought it was kind of weird. I mean, the call quality was terrible. His English looked very strange and idiosyncratic. I mean, at that time, 18 months ago, it's not like I assumed Russia. I thought maybe he's an African immigrant, but absolutely I was like, ‘this is very strange, this person is obviously not a native English speaker, let alone an American English speaker.’ But then just a couple of weeks ago an investigative journalist from Russia got in touch with me and was like “Did you know that this organization you did an interview with is actually front group of the notorious troll farm in Russia?” And of course, I did not know that, And it’s been kind of an interesting revelation.

CO: This troll farm is the same sort of centre that has been putting out the other fake activism, fake sites. Is that right?

MW: Yeah, they seem to be the ones who are behind a whole range of activities. I think they got started by posting pro-Putin comments on Russian blogs, and then they moved into trolling Western democracy activists, and now and now they're moved on to actually creating fake look-alike American activists organizations that do protest in America, but are actually controlled by Russian citizens.

CO: So why do you think that this guy targeted you, this Yan Big. Why would he attempt to co-opt you?

MW: I don't know. I mean, I think about that, I don't know for sure. I mean, I think part of it is just trying to establish legitimacy for his organization front group through associating with me in some way. But I don't know. I mean, I think what's funny is that I am an African-American, I am an activist, but I think that Yan Big Davis was probably the first person to interview me and really from the perspective of ‘you are a black activist.’ Which I think was kind of interesting that Russia was the first to really do that.

CO: And the name Yan Big Davis, I mean that's quite the handle.

[LAUGHTER]

MW: The whole thing about it is so funny. But floating around out there probably is another Russian front group that hasn't been unmasked that did use perfect English, that did have a normal sounding name and all kinds of stuff.

CO: Now it seemed that the other fake online groups were aimed at the right and the ultra-right of the spectrum, they seemed to be stirring up Trump views. So why would they target the left?

MW: I think Russia, first of all, is very sophisticated. So I think that they're probably pursuing multiple strategic objectives and they might be playing both sides of the spectrum. I imagine that they're creating left wing groups and right wing groups. I think that what is happening though is that superpowers are realizing that they can use social activism to effect social change in adversary countries, much more cost effectively without having to go through traditional military channels. I think what's happening is that activism is becoming kind of a pawn for the grand geopolitical games that make up our world, and I think that's a really dangerous situation that we're moving into, that activism is being used in that way.

CO: I mean you're Micah White, you're the co-creator of Occupy Wall Street, the author of The End of Protest, you didn't fall off the turnip truck yesterday. I mean, you know how this stuff works, you know how activism works. If you thought that Black Matters was a legitimate group, what does that say about the rest of us who are trying to sort this through?

MW: I think that for sure as soon as I talked to him and I saw the interview I knew something was up and I thought I was suspicious and I didn't go any further. But I think a lot of activists did go further, like there's actually activists who did go to protests, or did do self-defense classes and stuff like that. So I think on the one hand it's kind of a wake-up call for contemporary activism, to realize that our tactics have become so predictable that it's very easy now to be mimicked by foreign governments. I mean, we're at a point now where one of the groups that the troll farm created has more likes than the actual Black Lives Matter Facebook page. So you have to start thinking “Well doesn't that mean we should abandon these old ways of doing activism?” And that's kind of the direction I'm thinking as an activist now.

CO: You have warned, and we've talked about this before, you've warned about the whole problem of how people respond to activism now, you've called it click-tivism. People want to participate but they don't really want to get up off the couch, they don't want to put down the phone. And so people become, it would appear, agents for all kinds of propaganda because it looks legit, and they feel that hey they're taking part in something. Is that a danger that we have become kind of lazy about our activism?

MW: Absolutely, I think that the situation has revealed that it's even more dangerous than we realized. The danger was that it's ineffective forms of activism, ineffective forms of protest. But now we're seeing actually that it makes us susceptible to being used by anti-democratic forces, by foreign forces, because something about activism has become so scripted. And I think that the journalist in Russia who actually revealed this whole situation, I think he said something like tens-of-millions of people were somehow implicated in this either by seeing a tweet or retweeting a tweet or liking a post. Like millions and millions of Americans engaged in some way with the content created by these Russian fake activists. And so this should be a wake-up call for American activists to change the way we do activism. And I do think that has to start with some sort of rejection of the easy social media that makes it so simple to be co-opted nowadays.

CO: Do you worry though, that it also might just make people cynical, feel that “well you just can't trust anything” it's like fake news, people can't tell the difference in fake news and real news so it's all fake. And if some of this activism is fake activism then let’s just rejected. You obviously can't participate in this society with any honesty and integrity.

MW: Yeah, I think that is the second danger. I mean, the second danger really is that it's so fundamentally de-legitimizes the contemporary activism. People now can justifiably say “Hey is that group real or is that a Russian front group?” Are those people protesting or are they actually like Chinese front group, or North Korean front group?” And I think that that could have been one of the strategic objectives that Russia wants because I think that by de-legitimizing protest in western democracies you actually hurt Western democracies.

CO: But you obviously kept an open mind. You're savvy and yet you decided you would take a call from Yan Big Davis. Do you think that people should, with some skepticism, still take chances, still be open?

MW: Well, I think that what's going on is that we're entering into a kind of new stage of social activism. I mean, if you look at, for example Occupy Wall Street, it spread to 82 countries, or the Women's March. I mean, people all over the world now participate in the same social movements. And so in certain sense it doesn't matter where a movement is started from. I mean, Occupy Wall Street was created by Canadian magazine, even though we think of it as an American movement, and then spread to countries. So in some ways I think that if Russia wants to create social movements in America that then boomerang back and start social protests in Russia, maybe it's an OK thing. I think that where the danger is when those social protests are confined to America or used to destabilize America. So I think that as social activists we might have to dance with the devil a little bit, but I don't know if you could have a completely pure activism now that doesn't involve some sort of foreign influence. It just seems like that's the way, it is it always involves some sort of foreign influence now.

CO: Now Micah, as always, very interesting to speak with you. Thank you.

MW: Thank you Carol, it was wonderful.

JD: Micah White is the co-creator of Occupy Wall Street and the author of The End of Protest. We reached him in New York City. We have more on this story on our website: www.cbc.ca/aih.

[Music: Ambient Tones]

Toddler-sized turnip

Guest: Ansley Barnard

JD: Journalists, reporters, we often try to put things in perspective for people in the hopes of conveying something's magnitude, its size, weight, its height. And that's why we're so often told how many Olympic size swimming pools worth of oil has spilled somewhere. Why football fields are so often used to explain how far something traveled. Now it's debatable whether those comparisons encourage any real understanding at all. But, this week a CBC reporter in Newfoundland made a comparison that was both helpful and evocative. The headline reads “Turnip as big as a toddler.” The turn up belongs to Sherry Burry. She grew it in her garden, and yesterday she spoke with the CBC's Garrett Barry about it.

SOUNDCLIP

SHERRY BURRY: Well, our turnip is a large turnip, I have to say humongous turnip even — it's 21 pounds and we didn't do anything with it all summer it just grew, and it grew, and it grew until we harvested it just last week.

GARRETT BARRY: So how big is a 21-pound turnip? Can you try to describe it for it me? How heavy is it, how can you hold it?

SB: It's pretty heavy, I guess it's like a big sack of flour in comparison to weight. As for size, I would say it's the size of a big balloon when you blow up a balloon. We did have a little one there, I think she's six months old and it wasn't that much smaller than her.

GB: You say you didn't do anything special with it?

SB: We didn't do anything special, other than what we normally would do. We put compost in our soil and manure. We did cultivate it twice last year, we usually only do it once. I don't know if that may have been the key. But other than that, no we didn't do anything special, we didn't even water our garden this year.

GB: So what are you going to do with the turnip now?

[LAUGHTER]

SB: I'm not quite sure in regards to if we're going to be able to eat it all. But we plan on saving it for Christmas dinner this year. If there's any leftover, maybe we'll make soup for the whole town.

JD: That was Sherry Burry from Catalina, Newfoundland, speaking with the CBC yesterday about her 21-pound turnip — 21 pounds — that is about nine-and-a-half kilograms. And it's big, it's impressive, but there may have been bigger ones — there have been bigger ones, way bigger than say, a toddler. According to the Guinness World Records website the heaviest turnip weight 17.7 kilos. That’s about 39 pounds, which according to one website is about the weight of a microwave —hope that helps.

[Music: Jazz Band]

Pricey scotch/From Our Archives: scotch whiskey

JD: It seemed like the shot of a lifetime. And because he could, 36-year-old Zhang Wei seized it. The chance to taste a one-hundred-thirty-nine-year-old bottle of single malt scotch, a pleasure for which he was prepared to pay dearly — 9,999 Swiss francs to be precise — nearly $13,000. That is the largest payment ever for a single shot of whiskey, which Mr. Zhang made while in Switzerland last summer. While at the Waldhaus am See hotel in St. Moritz, Mr. Zhang paid a visit to the property’s famous whiskey bar, The Devil's Place. There he spied and inquired after an unopened bottle of 1878 Macallan single malt. The hotel manager informed him it was not for sale, but when Mr. Zhang pressed further, the manager called his father, who as the former hotel manager, had purchased the bottle 25 years prior. Father convinced son that Mr. Zhang's offer was indeed a once-in-a-lifetime shot and he should acquiesce, which he did. Mr. Zhang later wrote online quote “My grandma who accompanied me on this trip was only 82. Yet the alcohol was 139-years-old. Same age as my grandma's grandma. To answer you all. It had a good taste. It's not just the taste but also history” unquote. Except that that history just had a whole lot of cold water poured over it. The hotel subsequently sent a sample of that Scotch to a lab at Oxford University for carbon date testing, and the results revealed that the Scotch was in all probability distilled between 1970 and 1972. The hotel manager has since traveled to China, and when he broke the news in person to Mr. Zhang and refunded him his money, he insists Mr. Zhang was not angry, thanking the hotel for its honesty. And so I guess, even if the news was hard for him to swallow, he figured the Scotch was still worth a dram. And that story reminded us of a larger controversy that has long swirled around Scotland's finest export. Back in 2008 Carol spoke with David Williamson, manager of the Scotch Whisky Association, at the time Mr. Williamson was welcoming the UK government's decision to tighten restrictions on how whiskey is classified. And as he explained, the prevalence of spirits of indeterminate origin dressed up as single malt scotches was a long lasting headache for the industry.

SOUNDCLIP

DAVID WILLIAMSON: What we're actually talking about here is locally distilled spirit that's not whiskey in the first place, nor Indeed Scotch whiskey, but which is being passed off Scotch whiskey through the use of, for example, Scottish imagery — Tartan, a bagpiper on the label or other indications of Scottish origin. By putting in place this protection when and the Scotch whiskey industry it goes to court in a particular market, it will be much easier to take that action with comprehensive and consolidated legislation in place. Of course Scotch whiskey is very much an international spirit, it's enjoyed in 200 countries. Last year over a billion bottles of Scotch whiskey was shipped from Scotland, so it's an international industry. It's sold in these 200 countries and with that we have to have the highest levels of protection. For example, what will be, the very first time, put in place is compulsory labeling requirements so that if it's a blended Scotch whiskey that category name will appear prominently and consistently on every bottle sold, and over time that will help to build understanding of the different categories of Scotch whiskey worldwide. Now with that you will find products being sold in different markets that will try to suggest Scottish origin through a range of different ways. That’s separate to this particular legislation but it's important that this industry takes action against those sorts of products because we need to make sure that consumers, when they buy something that they think is Scotch whiskey, they get what they're buying.

JD: From October of 2008. That was Carol off in conversation with David Williamson, manager of the Scotch Whiskey Association.

Back To Top »

Part 2: Bump stock lobby, festival assault app

Bump stock lobby

Guest: Robert Gaafar

JD: It has been one month since Stephen Paddock opened fire on concert goers in Las Vegas. He killed 58 people, injured 546. And the gun modification that allowed him to cause such devastation, a bump stock, can still be legally purchased in the United States. A bump stock, of course, allows a semi-automatic rifle to be fired as if it was fully automatic. And despite an outpouring of bipartisan support for a ban on the devices immediately after the shooting, there has not been a single hearing or a single vote on that issue. Robert Gaafar survived the Las Vegas shooting and he was in Washington yesterday to ask lawmakers why they have gone silent. We reached Mr. Gaafar in New York.

CO: Mr. Gaafar, first of all, a month after the Las Vegas shooting, how are you?

ROBERT GAAFAR: I'm doing good. Every day gets better and there's obviously not a day that goes by that I don't think about, and don't replay the events of that night. Being back at work and being home with family and kids and stuff, it helps a lot. So I’m doing well.

CO: Why did you think that you should take on this task of trying to see that bump stocks, these devices, should be banned?

RG: I feel kind of personal responsibility now. What I witnessed — the sounds of the gunfire, the sound the screams, the sheer panic and horror that I felt — it's just not normal. It’s not normal in our society, it’s not normal anywhere.

CO: When you were there, when you were hearing those rounds of gunfire that you just mentioned, what does it sound like, what did it feel like? I mean, we’re understanding that this bump stock can convert semiautomatic rifles into functioning, fully automatic ones, which apparently the shooter had. What was it like for you?

RG: It felt like a war zone there, and with the initial couple of shot, we thought there were fireworks, to be honest, because the final performance of Jason Aldean was going on. Then the terrorist basically opened his first clip of just a pop, pop, pop, and that's immediately when they stopped the performance and the lights went dark on stage, and immediately just kind of hit you that that was gunfire, not regular gunfire. The repetitive noise of a pop, pop, pop, was just not normal. It was kind of like, “Is that a machine gun, an AK-47? How could somebody have that?

CO: And when you discovered in fact it was something legal, and it's something that does mimic that of a machine gun, what was your reaction?

RG: I mean, just as everyone else’s — complete shock and just like dumbfounded that this is legal.

CO: Yesterday you marked the one month anniversary since this shooting by being on Capitol Hill to talk about what should be done and about bumps stocks. What did you accomplish there?

RG: We were invited by Every Town, which is Bloomberg's gun violence prevention organization, and they've done a great job from the state legislature side of things to pass gun prevention law. So personally it was more so just to share my story, what I experienced. And also really just to kind of bring it back into light that it's been a month and nothing has been done. And for me it's a personal responsibility now that what I experienced should never happen again. I just feel like every day that goes by that we don't do anything is another day that something like this can happen again.

CO: This is the odd thing, isn't it? That just within days of this shooting in Las Vegas, for the first time we actually saw some momentum, didn't we? I mean, both Republicans and Democratic lawmakers were talking about ‘OK we need to legislate bump stocks.’ There had already been proposed legislation to ban bump stocks in some places. And this is something that even the National Rifle Association appeared to be calling for some regulations. What happened to that momentum?

RG: I think it's kind of par-fo- the-course of what always happened. Listen, we had 20 school children slaughtered a couple of years ago at Sandy Hook and if anything was ever going to happen it was then. And the fact is nothing happened, politicians completely chickened out, and they really showed their true colours in terms of just caring about collecting money from gun lobbyists. So I think in terms of our situation right now with the bump stock regulation and so forth, the NRA leadership loves to basically play a ‘let’ kind of slow this thing down.’ And that's always been their strategy from day one, especially saying “Let’s not politicize these types of events” and stuff, which was a complete joke. We need to politicize these types of events, we need to do something. We need to do something now.

CO: So on Tuesday we saw a group of bipartisan senators propose a bill that would require someone who wants to purchase a bump stock to have a rigorous background check, fingerprinting and a $200 registration fee. Do you think that that is going to happen?

RG: You know, from some of the discussions that I’ve had, I wish they would go further than just outright ban it, but you know it is it is a positive step in the right direction.

CO: You know, we spoke with one woman who was a victim of this shooting and she was recovering with leg injuries, and we asked her what she thought of the talking about gun control after the event, did she think that it was inappropriate to politicize it, and she said “yes.” She was from Las Vegas, she said yes she didn't think it should be used as an opportunity to discuss gun control. Do you think that there is some percentage of the American public that supports the view that there shouldn't be any controls?

RG: Sure. I mean, I think there's always the percentage of the country that believes it's the second amendment, we shouldn't have any rules regulations stuff like that. I mean, there's already certain senators that already came out right after saying ‘I'm for the second amendment.’ You know ‘there's no laws that would have prevented this’ and so forth. And I'm just, I'm sorry, I just can't disagree anymore. I think if you're an elected official you believe that law does make a difference. And if you're just unwilling to even vote on a law and say ‘no.’ It's not about courage, it's just show some leadership. So for me personally, if assault rifles were banned this would have never happened.

CO: All right we'll leave it there, and I'm glad you're doing better. Mr. Gaafar I appreciate speaking with you. Thank you.

RG: Thank you. Thank you for the time.

JD: Robert Gaafar is a survivor of the Las Vegas shooting. We reached him in New York City.

[Music: Electrc Guitar Strums]

Sound of the Day: car wash reviews

JD: Clint Baker may very well have the cleanest car in Canada. In the past year alone he has gone for more than 100 professional car washes, and he does admit he likes to keep his ride clean. But Mr. Baker's car washing habit is also because of his nine-year-old son Vince, who has autism. As Mr. Baker told the CBC. It was one of a very small number of things that stimulated him. And so last summer Mr. Baker started a YouTube channel to share videos of their carwash critiques. It is called Reviews by Vince, and the channel now has hundreds of subscribers, many of whom also have autism. Here's a clip from a recent review of a car wash in Newmarket, Ontario. This is our sound of the day.

SOUNDCLIP

AUTOMATED CARWASH VOICE: Please proceed in to the wash.

CLINT BAKER: Let’s see what we have here. Oh a freestyler, what the heck is a freestyler? This is a new one.

VINCE BAKER: We’ve never done one.

CB: Never done a freestyler before. It’s like a really lime green side spray, I've never seen that before either. Pre-soak? Oh, now the foam at the back. It’s still saying, oh, there we go. It’s super clean. If you liked it give us a thumbs up and subscribe if you have not yet and we'll see you on the next one.

JD: Our sound of the day, Clint Baker and his son Vince revviewing a carwash in New Market, Ontario. You can find more carwash reviews on their YouTube channel Reviews by Vince.

[Music: Trance Hip-Hop]

Festival assault app

Guest: Kari Sampsel

JD: Kari Sampsel is a doctor in Ottawa and she is working on an app — the two things are not unrelated. The app is called NightLight, and it is the result of an idea she came up with following her research on sexual assaults during big gatherings — gatherings like music festivals. Kari Sampsel is the medical director of the Sexual Assault and Partner Abuse Care Program at the Ottawa Hospital. We reached her in Ottawa.

CO: Dr. Sampsel, what have you heard about the incidence of sexual assault at big gatherings that makes you think something like this is necessary?

DOCTOR KARI SAMPSEL: Well, research that I conducted a few years ago, showed that over 25 per cent of the patient volumes that we see at my program here in Ottawa were directly related to big gatherings like parties, like music festivals and things of that nature. And we're likely underestimating that number just because the way the study was done, we were looking to see if that was directly documented in their patient charts, and if it wasn't written down we didn't include them in that group.

CO: And that belies the I guess a common theory, that sexual assault is something that happens in private situations by somebody that the victim knows.

KS: Yes, it's a very different type of situation that we found, that is definitely a commonality to sexual so that we see, but things that are involved with mass gatherings or big groups of people, tend to be someone that you don't know, you may be more likely to have been intoxicated or slipped something there. You're more likely to be unconscious at some point during your assault. So that was very different than the traditional assault, if you can call it that, that people are aware of.

CO: Now what how would this app called NightLight, how would it work?

KS: So there's a couple of different modes that it has. And what we are planning to do is have it embedded within the festival or college or university or whatever’s own app. So you don't have to have something that’s separate or standalone and it works almost like a text messaging system. Say you lost your friend, you wanted to find them, you're feeling a bit uncomfortable. There’s a ‘find my friends’ mode that would send a message out to your friend through SMS or text messaging type of interface that has a GPS location and a map on it, and you can treat yourself to find your friends again. If you find yourself in a situation where you're in need of more help, something that’s maybe more official, you've been assaulted, you've been injured, you're very concerned. You can hit the ‘report emergency’ button and that information will get sent to event security volunteers, whomever this festival wanted to set up ahead of time, as receiving that information. And they will basically pop up with the GPS location of the person as well as a profile picture. So when someone like a security person is searching through a crowd of thousands and thousands of people they know who to look for.

CO: And so what would this do? How would this prevent a sexual assault, or stop one and that's in progress?

KS: So if someone is feeling uncomfortable, maybe somebody is following them around, somebody has grabbed at them, that type of thin, they could alert security and the security could actually get there much more quickly, just because it's more of a targeted search-and-deploy type of operation as opposed to searching through a sea of people. Post assault, it can alert someone to be able to get someone to get help basically. I was inspired to think of this as well after there were a number of media reports last summer of a woman who was at a music festival who had been given something, who had had a drug slipped to her, and was trying to get help and d no one was paying attention to her. They just brushed her off as another drunk person. And so if she had a way to hit for help and indicate that this was something serious, this is something that needed to be taken care of, she could have been prevented to have something happen.

CO: Why have sexual assault so prevalent things like festivals and these big events?

KS: It is the perfect storm, honestly, for predatory behaviour. It's a big group of people, most people are going out to have a good time, they may have had a a couple of drinks and inhibitions are down, so therefore they're not able to defend themselves and fight back the same way that they normally would be. As well as there's lots of dark corners and the cover of people, so to speak. So you could try to grab or grope at somebody in a crowd of 15,000 people that you would not be able to do that in a house party with four people.

CO: Isn't a danger though that this puts the onus, as so many other things do, on the victim or potential victim to prevent an attack, rather than the organization or the institution. Much in the same way that universities will provide self-defense courses, when really what they need is better security and better lighting on campus.

KS: Right. So this is one tool. There is no one single magic bullet that's going to prevent sexual assault, that's going to make this be eradicated from society, it's one way that if you find yourself in a situation where you need help, that you can get that in a rapid way. And while putting the onus on the victim, or the potential victim, at least it puts a little bit more control back in their hand. Nothing is worse than being in a place where you're far away from any kind of help and being and feeling totally helpless.

CO: But what we've seen in the past is that people, organizations, will embrace a technology that's not going to cost them any money and then point to it as part of their security apparatus, and it gives them something to point to and say “well you know we have this we don't need to do more.”

KS: Right. And so that's why the technology piece is just a piece of what the NightLight’s consultancy is doing. Part of it is also education, and planning, and forward thoughts about how to prevent this in a more global scale. So it's hard to change human behaviour, but to try to mitigate all of the other factors with this like lighting, like education for the security people such that they know this is what GHB looks like, GHB is a really common date rape drug nowadays. Do you know how to recognize it? If someone's carrying someone off, maybe they're not helping them, maybe you should intervene at that time. So it's part of kind of a bigger process of trying to be helpful and prevent these type of things from happening.

CO: We spoke with a woman last month in Sweden who is proposing a male-free music festival, no men, or virtually no men, after there were 23 people reported sexually assaulted at a festival in Sweden. Do you think it's so hard to change human behaviour, do you think that that is a route that women would like to go?

KS: I think a lot of people would like, it’d be an interesting. It would be a different atmosphere, absolutely, for having women only versus having both genders represented within there. It's not, unfortunately, the reality in which we live. So I think while behaviour is hard to change, I think having open conversation and opening people's eyes to the reality of what this is like starts that process and starts to make it not OK for these type of things to happen.

CO: We'll leave it there Dr. Sampsel, thank you.

KS: Thank you very much for having me.

JD: Dr. Kari Sampsel is the medical director of the Sexual Assault and Partner Abuse Care Program at the Ottawa Hospital. She is also the founder of an app and consultancy organization called NightLight. We reached her in Ottawa. And if you would like to see a video of how this app will function go to our website: www.cbc.ca/aih.

[Music: Ambient Guitar Plucks]

Dateline: cut, cut, cut

JD: Dateline Washington D.C.

[Music]

JD: Here's a hypothetical scenario for you. You are overhauling the way your company deals with cardboard boxes. Part of your plan involves a system for slicing up the boxes for recycling purposes. But there are a lot of other elements to it. Also it will be staggeringly expensive and you have no idea how you're going to pay for it. You are considering calling it the Cardboard Cuboid Disintegration and Repurposing Project, but your boss has a certain way with words. So you ask her, she has one suggestion. She says the cut, cut, cut project. Now you've worked for quite a while on this. The cutting thing is just one aspect of it, but she is insistent — it's awkward. And now a real world scenario. House Republicans in the United States finally have put together their long promised tax plan. Part of it involves cuts, but it also eliminates state and local tax deductions, shrinks the number of tax brackets from seven to 4 and will, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, cost 1.5 trillion dollars. Now with all of this in mind House speaker Paul Ryan asked the president for help coming up with a name for it. Mr. Trump came back with the Cut, Cut, Cut, Act. Well this was not the kind of input Mr. Ryan was looking for but reportedly the president refused to budge. He had one suggestion it was the Cut, Cut, Cut, Act. He was insistent, it was awkward. And today the Republicans introduced that plan, which has the remarkably dull name, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. It remains to be seen what the full cost of those tax cuts will be, but what may really cost Mr. Ryan himself, is the decision to cut Cut, Cut, Cut.

Back To Top »

Part 3: Info commissioner, 60s Scoop family, Dance your PhD

Info commissioner

Guest: Suzanne Legault

JD: Imagine Canadian politics without the sponsorship scandal. That is the world that Canada’s Access to Information watchdog asked MPs to consider when she appeared on Parliament Hill yesterday. Suzanne Legault, the Information Commissioner, was there to warn MPs about one particular government bill. It promises to make it easier for Canadians to know what their government is really doing, but it might just make it easier to cover things up. We reached Commissioner Suzanne Legault in Gatineau.

CO: Commissioner Legault, the government says this bill is designed to deliver true openness in government. So why are you so concerned?

COMMISSIONER SUZANNE LEGAULT: Well, I'm very concerned because, as I stated in my special report to Parliament on this bill, that most of the measures actually have a regressive effect on Canadians Access to Information rights.

CO: Anything specific? Just tell us what how it is regressive?

SL: The bill actually adds several requirements when people make access requests to the government. So now people will have to identify all three criteria that they've named in there, which are you have to identify the subject matter of the request, you have to identify the exact type of records that you're requesting, and you either have to have the date of the record or a timeframe for the record. And that's a new requirement that would basically render some requests that are routinely made currently not available to for the government not to respond to. For instance, one of the requests that I mentioned when I was testifying in committee, was the request that was in part the basis for the sponsorship inquiry a few years ago.

CO: Under the Chretien government.

SL: Yeah, and I actually have the request right now in front of me in the Gomery Report, and the request was all records detailing the sponsorship budget within in public works since 1994-95 fiscal year, and that request was made in the year 2000. So that request actually does have a subject matter, it does have a timeframe, but it doesn't have the type of record that's being requested, and on the basis of C-58 that could have been refused.

CO: So you're saying that if Bill C-58had been in place, it's likely, it's possible, we would never have known about this sponsorship scandal under the Liberal government?

SL: It's quite possible.

CO: One of the biggest complaints that people who tried to get Access to Information that we've had is how slow it is, how long it takes for the process, and that it actually impedes the transparency just by virtue of by the time you get the records it's way past the public interest in that. Doesn't this speed it up? I mean, isn't that the point of these changes, is that if you narrow it down to what subject matter, what type of record, give it time frame. Aren’t those reasonable requests in order to try and make this system, make this process more efficient?

SL: Well, I mean, of course if you restrict access rights there are going to be less people being able to make valid requests under the current regime. The government is saying that that's a valid public policy stance in matters of Canadians quasi-constitutional rights to access government information. What I'm saying is that under the current regime those requirements do not exist. Those requirements are going to result in the fact that making access requests to the government is going to be more difficult for Canadians. It's certainly going to be a lot more difficult for investigative journalism to occur in Canada, in my view. It's also going to be very difficult, as was stated before the committee the national director for land claims research, it’s going to be more difficult for Indigenous communities to get information in relation to their land claims because they don't have all of this information. The government has all this information. That's why the Act as it currently stands is actually appropriate in that respect. It says that you can make an access request, it has to have sufficient detail for someone in the government to be able to identify the request and the records, and they have a duty to assist you if your request is not sufficiently clear and they're having a difficult time answering it. So that already exists in the act. Now what they're saying is they're really going to restrict it.

CO: If the point here is to speed things up and I guess making it harder to submit a request then how do you propose the government should balance efficiency with transparency?

SL: Well, I mean, they should really look at their information management practices, which is one of the big issue in Access to Information. One of the reasons why requests generate a lot of records oftentimes is because of poor information management practices, that's certainly one thing. And the second thing that we see across the government is that there is a significant level of over-redaction of records before they are released. And that requires a lot of time of government officials to really process records and disclose records. It takes a very long time to do a lot of redactions to record. I'm not saying that reductions are not appropriate, but my experience as Information Commissioner is that is an extensive amount of over-redaction.

CO: And we saw that, certainly, that was the complaint that we heard many times during the Harper government. But we have spoken with people who use the access laws quite a bit, who say that it's worse under the Trudeau government, that it’s more difficult to get information and there's more redaction than they've ever seen before. Have you cited that?

SL: What I've noticed and what I've reported on in my annual report this year is that there had been a slight decline in terms of the actual amount of requests where all information is disclosed and that's under this current regime.

CO: So do you think that things are worse or better under the Trudeau government than they were under Harper.?

SL: I'm saying, at this point, the evidence basically what it points to is that there's been certainly a slight decrease in terms of the total amount of disclosure under this government, and at this point it's a slight decrease. What I'm saying also, is that there's a decrease in performance in terms of timeliness, and that was data that is basically the first three quarters of a year of the Trudeau government, which is the data that I have available, which is the government data. So that's what I'm basing my assessment on, and what I said in my annual report was that the Trudeau government should really pay attention if they really want to be open and transparent they're really going to have to focus on this issue of transparency and the culture of openness that they are saying they want to develop. It's going to require the government to do a lot more work than it’s doing ,and to pay serious attention to these issues.

CO: Well I'll take that as a yes. That it is worse under the Trudeau government. Commission Legault, thank you.

SL: Thank you very much.

JD: Suzanne Legault is Canada's Information Commissioner. We reached her in Gatineau, Quebec.

[Music: Industrial Bass Tones]

From Our Archives: Iona Opie obit

JD: two kids go down the hill with a pail looking for water, at least one ends up breaking his crown. A girl relaxes on a tuffett when a terrifying spider shows up. Tragically, every single one of the king's horses and every single one of his men, are unable to reconstruct a guy who had just been minding his business and sitting on a wall. A lot of nursery rhymes are dark, and some — most even — are weird. And for the late Iona Opie researching, and sometimes debunking, the stories behind nursery rhymes was a lifelong passion. Ms. Opie and her husband Peter published a number of books on the lore of nursery rhymes, including the Oxford Dictionary of nursery rhymes. It traced the histories of many of our favorite nursery rhymes. For example, she linked the classic verse “Jack Sprat could eat no fat” to a sixteenth century term for dwarfism. Iona Opie died in October. She was 94 years old. Well back in 1993 Ms. Opie appeared on As It Happens. She spoke with our former host to Michael Enright about the secret origins of Humpty Dumpty.

SOUNDCLIP

MICHAEL ENRIGHT: All right Ms. Opie, perhaps you can help us then on this debate. Was Humpty-Dumpty an egg or of all things a siege-tower.

IONA OPIE: Humpty-Dumpty is an old international riddle and the answer is an egg. It is known in France as Boule Boule, and although it ws only recorded for the first time in 1803 in England, we do expect that it, because it's international, it probably goes back to medieval days. But where are you getting the interpretation about the siege, is a Professor Daube of All Souls College in Oxford, and he amused himself by making up historical meanings for nursery rhymes. He did a series of them in the Oxford magazine in 1956.

ME: You mean he just made up interpretations?

IO: Yes he just made them up to amuse the readers of The Oxford magazine and he thought that Humpty Dumpty could well be interpreted with this siege machine that a Dr. Chillingworth had invented during the Civil War. It was a sort of bumpy thing that could, he thought, be taken for an egg.

JD: From the archives, that was Iona Opie in conversation with Michael Enright on As It Happen in 1993. Ms. Opie, an expert on nursery rhymes, died last week. She was 94 years old.

[Music: Upbeat Orchestra]

60s Scoop family

Guest: Kevin Broadbent

JD: Kevin Broadbent is home for the first time in his life. During the 60s Scoop Mr. Broadbent was taken from his mother by government officials and adopted by a non-Indigenous family in Timmins, Ontario. He knew nothing about his family. He knew only that he had been born in Fort Francis, Ontario, and that he had been taken from his mother at birth. Two years ago, a lifetime after he was taken from her, Mr. Broadbent finally met his biological mother for the first time. He also learnt that he was truly from Rainy River First Nations, near Fort Frances. Now Mr. Broadbent, his wife Hayley and their five children have packed up their life and moved from London, Ontario to be with the family he never knew. We reached Kevin Broadbent in Rainy River First Nations.

CO: Kevin, what was it like to arrive in Rainy River First Nations yesterday?

KEVIN BROADBENT: Really emotional. Just finally feel like I was belonging somewhere.

CO: And how did your kids — you've got five children. How did they respond?

KB: They are so excited. They are also very sad to leave their friends but we have many cousins and family to lean on for support up here. I think we're going to be just fine.

CO: And these are cousins that they didn't know they had until just recently, isn't that right?

KB: That's right. It’s like 14 cousins in total.

CO: And you, you have family that you didn't know you had, and now you're meeting them and getting to know them.

KB: Yes I am, and they tell me all the time “You look so much like your sister, you look so much like your other sister.” And I never had any of that growing up. It just felt so good to be home.

CO: How many siblings do you have?

KB: I have two younger sisters and two older sisters.

CO: And these are people, you're now in your 40s, starting to get to know.

KB: That’s right. Yes, my two older sisters, they were also scooped all around the same time. They were old enough to remember being taken, I do not because I was taken right at birth.

CO: When you say that they were scooped, and this is this is the story, isn't it? You and your sisters were part of what's called the 60s Scoop, and you were taken from your family and given to other families who adopted you. And how old were you then when you when you were taken?

KB: The day I was born. I didn’t even get to be held by my mom.

CO: Where did you go?

KB: Actually I don't know. There is a period of four to six weeks I don't know where I was, but after that I was adopted by a family in Timmins and they came to get me from Fort Frances.

CO: What was life like growing up with that family in Timmins?

KB: I consider myself very lucky to have the family I did. They loved me for who I am although they couldn't teach me or share about my culture. Not only didn’t they know about it, the information just simply wasn't available.

CO: And did you know you had another culture, did you know your past — where you came from?

KB: I did not know. The only information I knew was I was Ojibwe. I was born in Fort Frances and I was told that my mom couldn’t take care of me.

CO: And did you feel that there's something missing a you were growing up?

KB: I did feel like I didn't belong. The family I grew up with is very English and I don't look English. There's a difference right there. I used to lay awake at night staring out the window at the stars thinking I was a little alien baby and sometimes someone would come back for me.

CO: Who did you think would come back for you?

KB: I don't know, my family I think.

CO: How did you finally find out where home is?

KB: The only progress I ever got was I found the adoption records that had my mom's name on it, but I didn't know where she was from. My wife decided to do a little looking at her own. She searched the name on Google and through Facebook and we found some matches, but it was an obituary on Google she found for my grandfather. I had the same name as my mom and the reservation she was from. Having that information made me feel somewhat connected, I knew where I was from.

CO: Can you describe that first encounter you had with your mom?

KB: Shortly after, when her band flew her down to London to meet me, I got to see her coming down the ramp at the airport and I'm on the bust through the barriers and give her a big hug. She eventually made her way and we got that first hug in. I was 41-40 at the time. It felt so good. I was so, so happy to finally see her, to finally hold her.

CO: That was the first hug wasn't it, because your mother never got to hug you even when you were born, that was your first hug?

KB: And after I met my mom she told me more from her story, that after I was born the nurses said they were going to clean me up and they never brought me back.

CO: Does your mother have all her children back with her now?

KB: Yes.

CO: Now that you're back with yours, and now you've got five children, so these are her grandkids.

KB: Five new grandkids.

CO: What's it like for your mom to see these grandchildren and to have them now in her life?

KB: Really grateful. When I first met my mom a couple of years ago she got really sick. She had a perforated ulcer, she almost died on us. So she has her health back and she's getting stronger every day. She not only has her baby back she has all the grandkids.

CO: What do you think life is going to be like for you and your family in Rainy River First Nations?

KB: I think we’re going to have so many opportunities that we didn't have in southern Ontario. Just being rooted back home opens so many doors for us. Just knowing where I'm from, I was not only able to finally get my status paperwork's in motion, but I have status for the children as well.

CO: And so your life will now start again in Rainy River First Nations.

KB: It’s a brand new start, that's right. We have a very empty house at the moment, our moving truck doesn’t arrive until Wednesday.

CO: But you’re home.

KB: I am finally home.

CO: I'm glad you're all home, and thank you Kevin, take care.

KB: Thank you very much.

CO: Bye, bye.

KB: Bye now.

JD: Kevin Broadbent was taken from his mother at birth during the 60s Scoop. We reached him earlier this week at his new home of Rainy River First Nations.

[Music: Woodwinds]

Dance your PhD

Guest: Nancy Scherich

JD: Imagine you're at a party and someone is trying to explain their Ph.D. research project to you. You might be tempted to start doing your own research on the location of the bar, but now picture that same person explaining that information, imparting that information through dance. You would be transfixed. And people are, every year, at the annual Dance Your Ph.D. competition. Nancy Scherich is this year's winner. We reached Ms. Scherich in Santa Barbara.

CO: Nancy, first of all, big congratulations on winning the Dance Your Ph.D. competition.

NANCY SCHERICH: Thank you, thank you.

CO: First of all, what is the topic of your Ph.D. research?

NS: I study representations of the braid group. And that's a little difficult to explain and that's the reason why I made a dance video.

CO: Well, OK, just remembering we're all laypeople out here. So what does that mean, what does braid theory mean?

NS: So braids are exactly what you imagine, like braiding your hair or braiding a ribbon. To a mathematician a braid is a diagram that we draw with tangled strands, and that they have to follow certain rules, but at their core they are a diagram of tangled strands.

CO: And so then how do you apply that to dance?

NS: Yes so, as you might imagine, trying to do mathematics with a diagram of tangled strands is not super intuitive. So this translation process takes a difficult object and makes it a little more mathy, if you will. So the way that I worked dance into this process or into my research, is to use aerial silk's to describe and to dance out what braids would look like, and then used other dance forms to describe this translation process.

CO: What are aerial silks?

NS: Aerial silks are a large piece of fabric, a very long piece of fabric, that hangs from the ceiling. And so you can hang or sit and tangle yourself up into this big, long string of fabrics. And so it was a perfect apparatus to represent braids and braids theory because literally braids are tangled strings, so the dancers tangled themselves into the fabric.

CO: Now I've seen the video of your dance, of your Ph.D., and there's two parts of it, aren't there? I mean, there's an, I guess, a quieter part where you do have these strands, and the suspensions in the air dancing part of it — and then it gets very dramatic. And there are tensions, a lot of tension among the various players, and then it takes a turn. Can you describe what happens in this dance, the drama of it?

NS: You know, I had to think of a way to make the math interesting to people, because in general mathematics is kind of a subject that's hard to relate to, it's very abstract and it doesn't really exist in our physical world. So I had to add characters and add some sort of drama to make it interesting and relatable. So the drama is this: all of the braids want to go into this nightclub and the nightclub represents sort of the realm of the matrices. And inside that nightclub it's black light, it's really lively, it's fun, it's super cool, and all the braids want to get in. But the reality is, part of the representation process, or the translation process, is that not all braids get translated. Some of them get sort of lost in the translation process. And so the drama starts when one of the braids, which is played by me in the video, she tries to go into the club and gets rejected and then is taken back to sort of the aerial realm instead of the matrix realm. Back in the aerial realm we learn that braids that don't get translated they in fact get annihilated by the representation. And so I represented, or I depicted the annihilation, as sort of like a murder in the aerial scene.

CO: So when you when you sat down to turn your Ph.D. research of braid theory into choreography, how did you do that? How did you think up this — is that how you actually imagined it when you were even creating your thesis?

NS: No not at all. The first step was out of years and years of work that I've been putting into this thesis, I had to really boil it down and figure out what was the small story that I wanted to tell, because there's no way I could tell all of my thesis and all of my research in a short dance video. I had to boil it down and pick just a very small category to talk about. Once I had that idea I started building a story, building characters and sort of let the mathematics drive what information would have to be given. And so the choreography was actually the very last step. I choreographed it maybe a day or two before we filmed, but the story and the costumes and sort of the feeling and the expressions and the characters, that all came way before the actual dance choreography.

CO: Do you think it's possible to actually teach math this way, to actually create a drama to show it this way, especially for those, I include myself in this, those who break into a sweat in the close proximity of math.

NS: I think there is a lot of potential actually. You know, when I first heard about this competition and first thought about math and dance, my reaction was just, “No way. There is no way we could combine these two things are too different. Mathematics is too abstract, dance is too physical and realistic” but now that I've spent a lot of time thinking about it and made this video I do think there's a lot of potential. Most people are really afraid of math and they hate it. The very thought of having to do math or even talk about it is just repulsive. And so what is beautiful about dance and using dance to help teach mathematics is it is a relatable and enjoyable subject that most people like. And so if we could use dance to sort of ease someone into the idea or ease someone into even thinking about talking about math, you know dance is a good sort of first step there.

CO: Well Nancy thank you for turning math into something beautiful.

NS: Thank you very much. Bye, bye.

CO: Bye, bye.

JD: Moonwalk and division. Nancy Scherich is this year's winner of the Dance Your Ph.D. competition. We reached her in Santa Barbara.

[Hip-Hop]

Columbus, GA “We Do Amazing" slogan

JD: From a design perspective the new logo for the city of Columbus, Georgia is busy, I think you could say there's a lot going on. Uncharitably you could call it a dog's breakfast, except that a real dog wouldn't eat it — he would be too confused. But it is a full rebranding and so there is also a verbal component. And from a grammatical perspective the city of Columbus’ his new slogan is — bold, linguistically innovative? Again, ungenerously could say it's jibberish, but let's not overthink what's already been overthought. I'll just describe it. At the top you've got the name Columbus, which as the Columbus Ledger Inquirer described, it is quote “Spelled with a variety of fonts, undergirded by blue, red, green, gold and burgundy blocks symbolizing the city's diversity, as well as its river, military, business and architectural background, according to community leaders” unquote. Peter Bowden, the CEO of the local tourism bureau said that there are different fonts because our community is made up of different people, but when they all come together it makes a community — well maybe. But then there's the slogan, which Mr. Bowden says has a little bit of attitude. And that slogan is “Columbus, Georgia. We do amazing.” And that's it. It ends there again, from the newspaper quote “Bowden said the tagline also speaks to the new generation of millennials and generation zed emerging on the scene. It is also an incomplete sentence which can be filled in with various community offerings such as art, music, food, venture sports etc.” unquote. Maybe, although it probably won't be filled in with we do amazing-ly coherent graphic design. I don't know maybe I'm being too critical because, you know, really maybe I'm amazed.

Back To Top »

Provide Transcript Feedback

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

November 2, 2017 episode transcript

More Stories Like This