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The AIH Transcript for January 23, 2018

Hosts: Carol Off and Jeff Douglas

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

CO: Hello, I'm Carol Off.

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

[Music: Theme]

JD: Tonight…

CO: Brothers up in arms. Well, the twins themselves aren't upset that only one has been granted U.S. citizenship because they're toddlers. But one of their fathers is suing the State Department over a policy he says discriminates against same-sex couples.

JD: Post-emptying gesture. A humanitarian group in Arizona posts videos of border patrol agents knocking over water jugs left for migrants in the desert — and eight hours later, one of the group's volunteers is arrested.

CO: Horn of Africa. From the start of his career and through 30 years in exile, the late legendary Hugh Masekela used his trumpet and his voice to bravely call for change in South Africa.

JD: Up, up and away with here not-so-beautiful balloons. Jeff Koons’ colourful sculpture of a hand holding inflated looking flowers is a memorial to victims of terror in Paris, but French artists have a deflating response.

CO: Granted an extension. If you're in your early 20s and living at home and your parents are, like on your case about doing stuff or whatever, good news. According to new science you may still actually be an adolescent.

JD: And…Baby you can be driven by car. While her parents were on the road to her intended birthplace, a girl by the name of Mila decided she wasn't into the whole hospital vibe — so she was born in the car. As It Happens: The Tuesday Edition. Radio that knows sometimes you just gotta head out on the highway.

[Music: Theme]

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Part 1: Twins Citizenship, No More Deaths Arrest, Jeff Koons France

Twins Citizenship

Guest: Elad Dvash-Banks

JD: Aiden and Ethan are brothers — they are twins actually. They were born in Toronto about 16 months ago. Since then their two fathers moved the family to California and they want both their baby boys to have U.S. citizenship at birth. But only one of the boys has been granted citizenship. The other is now the subject of a lawsuit against the U.S. State Department. Elad Dvash-Banks is the twins’ father. We reached him in Los Angeles.

CO: Mr. Dvash-Banks, it’s a somewhat complex story, so I'll start with asking you why your boys were born in Canada?

EDB: Andrew and I, my husband, met in Israel in 2008 and after two-and-a-half years of dating we decided we wanted to get married. And as a same-sex couple, at that time it was impossible for us to come to the United States. Because of the Defense of Marriage Act the federal government would not recognize our marriage. And Andrew was not able to sponsor me for a green card so I can stay here legally. Andrew is also a Canadian citizen and, luckily enough, Canada recognized same sex marriage in 2010 and then we decided to move to Canada.

CO: And then you decided you wanted to have children so you and Andrew found a surrogate to carry your children, is that right?

EDB: Right, that's correct.

CO: Now, so your children were born and they were registered as —both you and your husband's names are on the birth certificate right?

EDB: Right, that's correct.

CO: You ran into trouble is when you tried to get them registered as Americans because Andrew is American and he wanted his children, as one legally can, he wanted his children to be registered as American citizens, is that right?

EDB: That's right. The idea from the beginning was to move to California. And since in 2008 we couldn't do it because of DOMA, after DOMA was struck down into 2013, we started the plans to move to the United States. And then when the kids were born with decided that's the right time. But then when we wanted to give them American passports and American citizenship we went to the U.S. consulate in Toronto and asked to register them as U.S.-born citizens. The consulate official informed us that we would have to prove a genetic connection to the U.S. citizen in order to grant both the boys American citizenship at birth. That's when the problems started. And we later discovered, through a DNA test that we had no intention of doing and we didn't want to do, that only one of our children was genetically related to Andrew who is a U.S. citizen. And the other was genetically related to me. And the State Department denied Ethan, who is the child who was genetically related to me, denied U.S citizenship at birth from him.

CO: Why did you not want to know who is the father of which one?

EDB: I think that when we decided that we're going to get married and have a family all we wanted was one unit. The genetics or the connection, the biological connection, did not matter to us at all whatsoever. We didn't want the kids to start dealing with this ‘Oh you're genetically related to him, and you're genetically related to him,’ they're both of our kids, we're raising them the exact same way, we were there from the beginning, we were in the delivery room and we saw them being born and we were the first people that held them. We saw their first breath and we heard them cry for the first time. So we look at our kids and we look at them equally and they are both of our kids. And I think that what the State Department is doing here is discriminating against us because we're a same-sex couple and creating a divide between our kids.

CO: So the State Department — you may see them as two kids, belonging to both of you — everything's equal, you’re a family unit. But the State Department doesn't see those boys as the same, ones an American and the other isn't.

EDB: Right, and I think that this is exactly what we are fighting against. That's why we filed a lawsuit against the State Department. The State Department interprets the Immigration and Nationality Act law in a way that it requires genetic connection. However, the law itself does not require that genetic connection. So we're fighting for the interpretation of the State Department, which is a memo that was produced by the State Department, and we are fighting for Ethan to get what is rightfully his.

CO: You say that you think this is discrimination against you because you're a same-sex couple, and that was the State Department website says that you can transfer U.S. citizenship to a child born abroad who has quote “a biological relationship or blood relationship.” Is it necessarily because you’re same-sex couples? Wouldn't the same thing happen with a heterosexual couple who didn't have genetic material in a child, there had been a sperm donor, or an egg donor for that child, would that not be the same thing?

EDB: I think that's a really good question. And we actually asked the consular office at the U.S. consulate in Toronto the same question. And I asked her if we were a heterosexual couple, and I was an Israeli woman married to Andrew, who's an American man, both of our names were on both kids birth certificate, would you ever ask who is genetically related to which child? She would never ask us that. And she replied she was baffled and confused and she told us it would be at my discretion to ask or not to ask that question. But I think the problem we have is that when a man and woman come into an office, in that case was the U.S. consulate in Toronto, and brings both of their kids and both of their names are on both birth certificates, why would you even suspect the there was an IVF process, there was a surrogate involved? Maybe Andrew is fertile, which he is a citizen, and that none of the kids would be related to him. And if I was a woman I'm his Israeli wife, she would never be able to know that and she would never ask that because she assumes we are both parents of both kids and she assumes that we have genetic connection because we are on the birth certificates of the kids. So that's the discrimination part.

CO: Okay, so you're saying it's not that the law is discriminatory, it's the way it's applied.

EDB: That's correct. And that’s interpretation of the State Department. Because again, the law itself does not require a genetic connection. That's how the State Department interprets that.

CO: We’ve reached you in California, this is where your plan had been to go there with your with your boys and live out your life, a lot of family that your husband has there. What's going to happen? What are the chances that you can have your boys registered as U.S. citizens?

EDB: I think that's a question for the legal team which we have full confidence in. I feel we have a good shot. I think that we will get there, whether we will take a short amount of time or longer amount of time, we are here for the long haul. We are here to make things right. We wanted to get Ethan his U.S. citizenship at birth and to help other couples that will confront this issue in the future.

CO: I appreciate you telling us the story. Mr. Dvash-Banks, thank you.

EDB: Thank you so much.

JD: Elad Dvash-Banks and his partner are suing the U.S. State Department. We reached Mr. Dvash-Banks in Los Angeles.

[Music: Laidback Hip-Hop]

No More Deaths Arrest

Guest: Paige Corich-Kleim

JD: In the Arizona desert near the border with Mexico, volunteers leave behind water jugs for migrants crossing into the U.S. by foot. The group is called No More Deaths. Its members have been doing this for years. They recently captured video, which they released this month, showing Border Patrol agents finding those water jugs and kicking them over. Soon after that video was released, a volunteer from No More Deaths was arrested and charged. Scott Warren is accused of harbouring two people in the country illegally. Paige Corich-Kleim is a fellow volunteer with the group. We reached her in Tucson.

CO: Ms. Corich-Kleim, how did you react when you learned that your fellow volunteer, Scott Warren, had been arrested and charged?

PAIGE CORICH-KLEIN: We were all a bit shocked. Earlier that day, at about 10:00 a.m., we just had a press conference where we had released the findings of a report series that we’re publishing called The Disappeared: How U.S. border enforcement agencies are fueling a Missing Migrant Crisis. And the content of that report was really focused on interference of humanitarian aid, destruction of aid supplies, agents kicking destroying, dumping out gallons of water, and then also harassment of volunteers. So the timing, I think, was really shocking and it felt a lot like retaliation for us releasing this report.

CO: Can you tell us what Mr. Warren has been charged with?

PCK: Yes, Scott Warren was arrested last week and he is being charged with felony harbouring, so those are charges relating to human smuggling. The allegations are that he came into contact with two people at a place called The Barn in Ajo, Arizona and that he gave them food, water and clothing.

CO: I know you can't, but I’ll just say what's been reported, The Barn is considered to be a refuge for people coming from Mexico and the United States. Border Patrol agents, they may approach The Barn because they regard it as a place that was operating illegally. That's the case, yes?

PCK: If that's the public information, that's the public information.

CO: Can you tell us what the content of the videos was that you released to the public?

PCK: Yeah, so over the years through our work we've seen a lot of vandalism of the places where we put food and water. We eventually decided to put some trail cameras near sites that had been really frequently vandalized. And in 2010 we got our first video of agents walking by the water-drop site. And then one of the agents kicked over all of the water gallons. 2013 we actually had volunteers in the field that were approached by some agents on horseback. They kind of taunted them and dumped out all of the water. And then even went so far as dumping the water into one of the agents’ hats and trying to feed it to one of their horses. And then our most recent videos we caught in 2017, you see an agent come into the picture. He bends down and one-by-one takes every single gallon puts it in front of him and then stands them with a knife.

CO: What was the water intended for?

PCK: We as an organization, our mission is to prevent death and suffering on the U.S.-Mexico border. We call them water drops, but they’re sites in the desert where recovered human remains have been found, where we’ve seen a lot of trash, or where we’ve mapped trails, and so we just leave water and food and blankets at the sites to prevent further deaths.

CO: This stretch of the southern Arizona, the desert near the Mexican border, it's pretty rugged and rough, it's pretty remote too. How long is the journey across that terrain and what are the conditions there?

PCK: It's usually a three — at least a three day journey — and it's up and down a lot. So you're going up over mountains, around mountains. And then in the summer the temperature almost every day is over 100 degrees. The area where Scott was arrested we refer to it as the west desert, and it is the deadliest corridor in the state of Arizona. And then just north of that region there is an area called the Barry M. Goldwater Range, that is an active bombing range. People are walking on flatter ground but they're walking up to 70 or 80 miles to get to where they're trying to go. And that's based on the U.S. Border Patrol strategy of prevention through deterrence in order to push people into areas, that according to the government, are more enforcement friendly. So areas where people end up being really tired, areas where people are unable to run away from enforcement because there their body is depleted because of the journey.

CO: And we should point out that this preventions through deterrence policy is a Clinton-era border security plan that would force people to go into these more difficult places. Do you have any estimate as to how many people have died crossing?

PCK: The number that we know is how many people have been found that have died — and that number since prevention through deterrence was instated in 1994 is 7,000. That number we think is extremely inaccurate, and there have been estimates that say that there are likely up to 10 times as many people that have actually died while crossing.

CO: Your group has left tens-of-thousands of gallons of water in the desert to prevent them from dying. Do you know to what degree they depend on that water that was spilled by the border agents?

PCK: We saw that 86 per cent of the water that we put out was used, but we don't know how many people really plan on using those drops. We do know that often people are kind of dissuaded from using the water because they're told that they're traps, that order patrol monitors them. There are a lot of, there's a lot of anecdotal evidence that we have that says that even people who need it might not always use it.

CO: But doesn't the border guards — this is for them and extension of the policy of prevention through deterrence, is it not? I mean, as cruel as it is, is it not destroying the water, is it not consistent with the policy?

PCK: I think that's what we believe and we've consistently, over the years, released multiple reports about violence at the hands of Border Patrol and detention. There's over 50 people who have been killed by border patrol directly. It comes at this kind of strange time where the Trump administration is kind of ramping up border enforcement and border patrol also, for the past few years, has been kind of rebranding itself and trying to say that they are also doing humanitarian aid, and saying that what they're doing in the field when they're detaining people and then putting them in prison or incarcerating them that, they're considering those rescues. But we've often, when we've reached out to them for support on a search and rescue or search and recovery, they have not helped us or given us any resources to do that.

CO: Well we will leave it there. We'll be following this story. Ms. Corich Kleim, I appreciate speaking with you thank you.

PCK: Thank you.

JD: Paige Corich-Kleim is a volunteer with No More Deaths, that is a group that offers humanitarian aid to migrants crossing the Mexico border into Arizona. We reached Ms. Corich-Kleim in Tucson.

[Music: Piano Ballad]

Jeff Koons France

Guest: Tania Mouraud

JD: The sculpture is large. It is more than 10 metres high. It is a hand clasping 11 balloon flowers. It is called ‘Bouquet of Tulips.’ It was created by the pop artist Jeff Koons to memorialize the victims of the November 2015 terror attacks in Paris. It is set to be installed outside the Palais de Tokyo near the Eiffel Tower, but some in the French art world are asking for that installation to be cancelled. This week, the newspaper Libération published an open letter from a number of prominent French artists and cultural figures entitled “Non au cadeau de Jeff Koons,” or No to Jeff Koons’ present. Tania Mouraud is one of the artists who published that letter. We reached Ms. Tania Mouraud in Paris.

CO: Tania, what's your problem with the installation of this memorial by Jeff Koons?

TANIA MOURAUD: The thing is that the problem — and there is a problem — and it is exactly the name that you said — memorial — it is not a memorial. Just imagine that a man is painting this flower bouquet to his lover, she's running away, you know, because the piece is so horrible, you know. And so gendered, it is an erection, it has nothing to do with a memorial for all those victims of fanaticism.

CO: Oh my gosh, an erection. For people who haven't seen it, we will post pictures, but describe what ‘Bouquet of Tulips’ looks like.

TM: It will be a sculpture measuring 12 metres high and 10 metres on the base. You know, you see a hand holding a bunch of plastic flowers. And this in the head of the American who is thinking, in my opinion, like Trump. You know, I have a feeling it is Trump giving these flowers. It's absolutely Disneyland aesthetics.

CO: Okay, so you don't like it and it's big and…

TM: I don't care, you know. But it is not the place, you know. It is not that I like it or don't like it. It is not a memorial, it has absolutely no human feeling in it. It's simply a gesture, a gendered gesture of power again.

CO: It's supposed — as we’ve said — the memorial is supposed to be to memorialize the victims of the terror attacks in Paris in November 2015, you feel fails to do that?

TM: First of all, it is placed in an area where there are museums. And this area is very far, and that is how to say, a rich area, you know, an area for the rich and museums and things like that. And the area where the killings have been is a popular area, and it is very far, it is not a memorial for these Bataclan killings. And, you know, when there has been this killing, the people, they humbly put flowers on the earth. And the whole pavement was full of flowers during so many months, you know. And it means that people are bending towards the earth, towards the ones who are lying because they are dead, you know. And here is an erection, you know, in the middle of Paris, with the look of Disneyland. There is no feeling, there is no soul, there is nothing.

CO: But, you know, Jeff Koons, he says this is his reasoning. He said that this the “‘Bouquet of Tulips’ is created as a symbol of remembrance, optimism and healing in moving forward from the horrific events that occurred in Paris.” Do you question his motives? Do you doubt his sincerity?

TM: For me Jeff Koons was a very great artist in the 80s. But now, you know, he knows how to speak. He did a commercial school, so he just the blah-blahing, or maybe this what he's thinking, you know. But I think this bouquet would be absolutely perfect in front of the building of President Trump in New York.

CO: In front of the Trump Tower.

TM: Yes it is the place to be.

CO: But we should get to who is paying for this, because Jeff Koons said it was a gift, he was donating it as this gesture.

TM: It is not a gift.

CO: Where does the money come from?

TM: There is private funding for building the sculpture. But for allowing the sculpture to be put where it is there is a lot to be spent so that the sculpture doesn’t break the — I don't know how you say — you know they have to do a lot of concrete underneath.

CO: The reinforcement of the base.

TM: Yes, thank you.

CO: In fact Mr. Koons — the donation, I guess, consists only of — he's giving the concept of the sculpture and all funds for producing it, that is paid for by fund-raising and then taxpayers pay for the reinforcement of the installation.

TM: Exactly. So the Parisians are paying for this beautiful.

CO: Some have said that Jeff Koons is more accomplished in the art market than he is in the art studio. Would you agree with that?

[CHUCKLES]

TM: I find that a very elegant way of saying that he's a very bad artist.

[LAUGHTER]

CO: I was trying to be polite.

TM: You were perfectly polite.

[LAUGHTER]

CO: Tania, I think we get the idea, and I appreciate speaking. Thank you.

TM: Thank you, have a goodnight.

JD: Tania Mouraud is a French artist. We reached her in Paris. And if you would like to see some photographs of this planned ‘Bouquet of Tulips’ sculpture by Jeff Koons. Check out our Twitter feed @cbcasithappens.

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Part 2: Highway Birth, Hugh Masekela Obit

Highway Birth

Guest: Joe Rand

JD: An Ontario family just welcomed a baby girl into the world. Her name is Mila, she's seven pounds eight ounces. And today she is settling in at her family's home in Burlington, Ontario. Life is relatively peaceful now — but it didn't turn out that way. Yesterday morning her parents, Joe and Heidi Rand, were driving on a highway to the hospital for Mila’s delivery — they didn't make it on time. We reached Joe Rand in Burlington.

CO: Joe, congratulations on your new baby girl.

JOE RAND: Thank you very much.

CO: How's Mila doing.

JR: Mila is doing great. She's settled, sleeping, Mum’s having a nap. And our 22-month-old is sleeping as well, so I'm up doing a little bit of work around the house.

CO: And so Heidi, your wife, is doing good?

JR: Yes, she's doing excellent. I can't believe how strong of a woman she is.

CO: Well she was pretty amazing yesterday, wasn't she? I mean, just how far how far advanced was her labour when you were in the car headed to the hospital?

JR: I mean, to paint a picture or give you the road map, timelines of everything. You know, it started probably around 10:30 in the evening. I was sleeping, at this point, and Heidi it kind of turns over and goes, “I’m get really bad contractions again,” and she has this app on her phone and she monitors her contractions, how far apart they are. And she turns over to me like “Joe, I think this is it can you call the midwife, call your mom, you know we need to make a move to the hospital.” We got in the car and we started driving. Now at this point Heidi's contractions were all over the place. So they were six-and-a half-minutes, two-and-a-half minutes — you couldn't really tell what was going on. All we knew was getting really intense really quickly.

CO: You're driving down 407, how fast are you going as you head to the hospital?

JR: So I'm going 100 kilometers an hour, the speed limit, whatever it was, you know. Again, you have to really be in a situation, because, for me, I'm obviously driving, my wife —most people think she's in the back seat — she's actually beside me riding in the passenger seat. And for me, looking out the window it was really cloudy and foggy on the roads. The was not a car on the road, so I really had to pay attention to what was coming and what was in front of me. All of a sudden she just goes “My water just broke,” and the water released because all that pressure was building up inside, you know, it just kind of left right so she's feeling better. And then I'm thinking ‘Okay well we still have about 20 or 25 minutes until we're at the hospital so I think we're in a good position.’ Within five minutes, Heidi, again, another big contraction happened, she was screaming, I'm concentrating on the road and I hear a baby cry.

CO: Oh no.

JR: We're going 100-kilometres-an-hour and you hear a baby crying. I’m like ‘what the heck is going on.’ And I glance over and Heidi’s got both her hands like down catching the baby. And, you know, I made the analogy of a quarterback kind of grabbing a football from under the legs. At that moment in time I'm like ‘we're not going make it to the hospital, I just have to pull over.’ So four-way hazards on and I pull over to the side of the road.

CO: So the baby —he head was already — how much of the baby was out at this point?

JR: So at this point I just, I couldn't even tell. I just — the head was out, I kind of glanced over like ‘oh my god.’ And I pulled over to the side of the road and Heidi has Mila on her chest. And Heidi managed to take off her pants and a shirt that she was wearing. So she is without any clothing and she's shivering and she's in a little bit of shock. So at that moment, you know, once we were off to the side, I reach around back seat, I'm getting sweaters and blankets and I’m just wrapping her and the baby up and making sure that they’re warm. It was even to the point where it wasn’t enough to cover Mila and Heidi, so I was giving my jacket, and I actually took the shirt off my back to give the Mila to wrap her up as well. Once they were warm I was thinking, what would you do. Do you continue driving, do you call an ambulance? You know, I just needed to be there alert if Heidi needed anything that I could support her. So I called by 911 and the dispatcher, you know, assessed the situation and dispatched the ambulances to come support us. It was at that time he said “Well how long has the baby is born for?” Again, I don't know — a couple minutes or more — maybe five-ten minutes. He said “Okay, well I’m going to need you to tie off the umbilical cord.” So he said “Do you have a pair of shoes with shoelaces? Yes. So he coached me through the whole process of wrapping it around the umbilical cord, four inches from the baby, cut off it if you can. And in that way, I mean, I'm not a doctor in the medical world. There’s obviously a reason for that. You know, so he coached me through it. Once that procedure was complete he just said ‘Okay, well just wait for the ambulance, everything should be good, make sure the baby is warm, make sure Heidi’s warm.’ And I was just comforting her until the ambulances arrived.

CO: Now this fellow at the end of a 911 call, what did he say? At the end of all this, how did he assess your delivery efforts?

JR: He was great. You know, he was calm, which made us calm, and he was just asking all the right questions, just being very supportive. He was actually, you know, once he told me what to do with the umbilical cord to make sure baby and mommy are all warm. I actually had him on speakerphone and he was just asking casual questions I think to make sure that we're okay. He did a brilliant job, like I don't know his name, if he's listening, thank you very much for everything that you did. We're forever grateful because, you know, that situation doesn't happen that often. But yeah, hats off to you, thank you.

CO: No it doesn't happen all that often. And so how will you tell Mila this story of all this someday when she's old enough?

JR: Well, I still have the shoelace tied to the umbilical cord. So maybe when she's old enough that's a good time to bring that out and be Iike “This is what I used to separate you from your mother,” and I could probably tell her this wonderful incredible story.

CO: And are you going to tell her that you compared her to a football your wife to her to a quarterback?

[LAUGHTER]

CO: Wasn't there a better analogy you could come up with?

JR: You know what, we were watching the NFL playoffs that night. So I think maybe it was still fresh in my mind.

[LAUGHTER]

CO: You were inspired.

JR: Yeah.

CO: Big congratulations to you, great addition to your family, a great story to your family lore, and thanks so much for telling it to us.

JR: Thank you very much. Have a good day.

CO: Bye.

JR: Bye.

JD: That was Joe Rand in Burlington, Ontario. His wife, Heidi, gave birth on a highway earlier this week.

[Music: Jazz]

Trudeau at Davos

JD: Justin Trudeau was at the Davos summit in Switzerland today — just in time for his government to sign on to a huge new trans-Pacific trade deal. The Prime Minister delivered a keynote speech to the billionaires-and-their-buddies crowd, and then took a few friendly questions. It gave him a chance to present the new trade deal as a lesson about doing global business in an era of populism and fear.

SOUNDCLIP

PRIME MINISTER JUSTIN TRUDEAU: I mean, this is an example of the pushback against globalization and anti-trade and closing off, that you can move forward but you need to include the things that citizens care about if they're going to get support for trade. And it's not easy, it would have been easier for us to just say ‘okay fine trade is important, we'll sign and we'll try and figure it out later.’ But if we're going to push back against the anti-trade tendency in globalization that will leave us all worse off, we have to put the concerns and the well-being of our ordinary citizens at the centre of what we're negotiating. And that's what all 11 of us have been able to do with the CPTPP.

REPORTER: Do you think it's such a good deal that you can later on here see your neighbour in the south also joining?

JT: We're working very hard to make sure that our neighbour to the south recognizes how good NAFTA is, and that has benefited not just our economy but his economy and the world's economy. But we're also very much open to more trade deals involving more people, as long as it's in the best benefit of all of our citizens.

JD: Prime Minister Justin Trudeau taking questions at the Davos summit in Switzerland today.

[Music: Upbeat Banjo]

Hugh Masekela Obit

Guest: Nduduzo Makhathini

JD: In South Africa today radios and ear buds are bursting with the sound of Hugh Masekela’s trumpet. The jazz musician and anti-apartheid activist died today. He was 78 years old. And to call Hugh Masekela a giant in South Africa would be an understatement. Mr. Masakela took the jazz scene by storm in the 1950s with his own catchy brand of bebop. But the politics of the apartheid regime made it increasingly difficult for him to perform there. When the South African government banned any gatherings of more than ten black people, jazz music was driven underground, and the increasing repression drove Hugh Masekela into exile. Over the next 30 years — away from home — his country was never far from his thoughts, or his music, which became darker and more political. He was never forgotten in South Africa. And finally in 1990, the same year Nelson Mandela was released from prison, Hugh Masekela came home and played — and he continued to play up into the months before his death. Nduduzo Makhathini is a jazz pianist and a friend of Hugh Masekela. We reached him in Johannesburg.

CO: Nduduzo Makhathini, first of all, I'm sorry for the loss of your friend.

NM: Yeah, yeah it is quite a sad moment for us as his friends, fellow musicians, but also just a sad moment for the whole world at large.

CO: And how is the news of his death, how was it greeted in South Africa? Can you describe how people reacted?

NM: Most of the people are shocked and this is partly because of somehow the energy that he had, in terms of, he was a lively person. So it’s difficult to believe that someone like him, as portrayed by most people, they’re saying it's hard to believe that someone as strong as he is gave up.

CO: When you heard the news that Hugh Masekela had died, what went through your mind? What were your thoughts and memories of him?

NM: First of all, you know, I just wanted to pay tribute to him in a way that was possible. So when I got to work the students were talking about it, the staff, you know, everyone was talking about this. Also at the same time, trying to talk about life and a gift life was and and it's these kind of moments that remind us how special certain, you know, human beings are. But also what I want to celebrate now going forward, is sort of the devotion that Masakela portrayed throughout his career, and commitment as well in terms of like just being there for his people, you know. He came out in the 50s 60s, you know they were in exile, you know, because at that time black people had been moved from the cities.

CO: He was performing underground because you couldn't have a gathering of more than 10 black people, so he couldn't do the concerts, the performances he was doing.

NM: So as a result then he went to exile, you know. But for me what really comes through is sort of the courage that he continued to have. If there was one thing that was important to him, it was his people, their cultures and traditions. And this is what I think he represents.

CO: People may not even know that they were fans of Hugh Masekela’s music. I mean, tunes like Grazing In The Grass and Up, Up and Away just were such happy tunes. But at the same time the songs, the pieces that maybe people in South Africa knew better Soweto Blues and Bring Him Back Home, about Nelson Mandela. Was it the political songs that people connected to more in South Africa?

NM: Yeah it was all the songs. But the political songs were just relevant at the time. So, you know, people needed hiding place, so to speak. You know, so the music became our hiding place. This is the space where people could be themselves and rejoice within that music. And also remember that a lot of the songs were banned on radio, so some songs might sound not so political, but it was just like you know sort of using codes because there's a lot of political messages that were put in songs that didn't even sound — some of them sound sounded a bit comical, but, you know, it was just their way of getting your message through. And the black people in South Africa at the time could understand even songs that didn't sound quality were still political, because it was really about the liberation of the people and the emancipation of our people. And this was the key thing, you know.

CO: Can you tell us a bit about his decision? He went into exile, self-imposed, for 30 years he left South Africa. How difficult was that for him to do so?

NM: He speaks about being in exile and starting to dream in English, you know, because he had not spoken his native tongue for a long time. And that just goes to show the damage that was done by apartheid, you know, andexile as well. And he says he was once in New York and he was really almost going crazy, and he was walking and speaking in his native tongue just to himself, almost going crazy. But just because he felt there was there was a need for him to connect with his people, to connect with home. So the issue of your geographic location becomes such an important thing. So if you are disconnected from there, you know, it is something that is spiritually and culturally seen to be quite a disturbing phenomenon.

CO: Just on a personal level, playing with him, knowing him, just being around him, what was it like?

NM: First of all, I was playing with a great master. I was playing with the mentor, someone that I had always looked up to and wanted to play music with. And I sort of had my preconceived ideas about how he would be as an older musician that came from a particular generation, and to my amazement he was one of sort of the most progressive musicians. So I would be playing certain things that I thought were modern and he will be just right there, you know. And he would be excited to be playing music like that, you know. And I think there's a deeper part within himself that was always a child, that was willing to evolve and that was always open and just excited about the very idea of living life and the very idea of existence. You know, up till he passed away, Hugh could still dance on stage. I mean, at 78, I mean, you don't see every other day. So this child in him was something that really came through.

CO: I really appreciate you telling us about your thoughts and memories of Hugh Masekela. Thank you so much.

NM: I appreciate it, thank you so much. Thank you.

JD: We reached a pianist Nduduzo Makhathini in Johannesburg.

Archive: Hugh Masekela

JD: Back in 1984, as Mr. Makhathini said, Hugh Masekela was living and working in New York City. And events back home were on his mind. In that year CBC Radio's Sunday Morning produced a documentary about him. Here's a clip in which he was asked why he was still unwilling to return to South Africa.

SOUNDCLIP

HUGH MASEKELA: The first thing that would happen is that if I stepped into South Africa today, I would actually be saying to myself ‘Hugh you are inferior to the white people of South Africa who say you are inferior,’ — that’s A. B, I would be saying that the laws of South Africa that oppress my people are right, I'm not endorsing this stupidity and madness it's happening. Sinatra probably went because Reagen is his pal and said “Frankie, if you go over there you'll give us some credibility, so our constructive engagement thing won’t look so bad, ‘cause you are the boy Frankie. Do it for the Gipper.” Millie Jackson, Ray Charles, Frank Sinatra, George Benson, they’re having a miserable time because people boycott them when they come there. And just the karma is bad, you know, you can’t play in the wrong thing, especially if you're warned and you do it in spite of that, because, you know, the karma of 22 million oppressed people will follow you all through your life. But, I mean, the situation in South Africa because the present government is terminal, and it’s a racial terminal disease

JD: From a CBC Sunday Morning documentary from 1984, that was the late jazz musician and activist Hugh Masekela.

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Part 3: Dead Sea Scrolls, Music Teacher, Age of Adolescence

Dead Sea Scrolls

Guest: Jonathan Ben-Dov

JD: The Dead Sea Scrolls were first discovered in 1947. But now, more than 70 years later, they still have not all been translated and read. But the list of unread sections has gotten a little smaller. Israeli researchers have managed to piece together and decipher one of the last remaining unread parts of the scrolls. And it wasn't just a matter of carefully applying some scotch tape. The manuscript they deciphered was broken into tiny fragments and those tiny fragments were written in code. Jonathan Ben-Dov is a professor in the Department of Biblical Studies at Haifa University, and one of the researchers who decoded the manuscript. We reached him in Salzburg, Austria.

CO: Professor Ben-Dov, I know this was a labor of love deciphering this manuscript, it took a very long time. What was the most difficult thing about it?

JONATHAN BEN-DOV: There were many points during that jigsaw puzzle together where too many possibilities were on the table. The vocabulary is very formulaic and it's recurring, so it could recur in many different ways, or in some different ways. At some stage we said can we be sure about that. Can we be sure about that fragment, this fragment and so on? Then another new fragment came in and we said ‘oh my god.’ Eventually, I hope everything falls into place. So I'm very happy about it.

CO: It's funny when you say jigsaw puzzle, I think you've said elsewhere, that it was like putting together a jigsaw puzzle without the guiding picture.

JBD: And with about a half of the pieces thrown away and the rest is crumbled — that's about it.

CO: And these pieces of your puzzle, these are tiny fragments, aren't they? I mean, they're old and they're just fragile.

JBD: Lucky for us, I mean, in an interesting way we did not deal with the original fragment. The original fragments have blackened, I mean, since being taken out of the ground. They were lying in the ground for 2000 years, then for 50 years or 70 years now, they've blackened already. So we used the images, not the fragments themselves. Images taken in the 1950s, actually, infrared images taken in the 1950s without them would be lost, we couldn't do anything.

CO: Now that you think you have put it together —what you can put together — what does it say?

JBD: That’s the nicest part, isn't it? So it's actually not that surprising, it's not very mysterious. We were very much looking to see some riddle there. But the truth is we had known already since there was some work on it before us, and a few of the fragments have been assembled already then. We knew that this will be a calendar. So this is what it is, it's a roster of Sabbath and holy days, festival days during the year, during the sectarian year. This is sectarian collection and so the secretary has a different way of counting time. It was a big deal for them to count the time and to make a point that their particular festivals are kept in the right time that they assigned to them.

CO: What calendar is based on?

JBD: It's a very strange and interesting intriguing calendar of 364 days. So it's not the solar year, neither what we now call the Roman Gregorian year, nor is it the lunar year that most Jews use or other people in the ancient world used. So it's year that works with numerical harmony. So 364, this really is neatly divided into seven, into four and into are all sorts of other numbers. There year is very symmetrical and each festival falls on the same day every year. This is crucial for them, it's actually quite nice.

CO: These festivals, these were seasonal festivals, are they more than that, are they religious festivals, I guess they all are in some sense or another religious?

JBD: Yeah. It's a religious setting and there are even priestly names in it, names of priestly families that are kind of typical priestly families that serve in the temple during those festivals and so on. But also every calendar has to relate in some way to astronomy, whether accurate astronomy or maybe just schematic or approximate astronomy. For them it’s important to distinguish the seasons, which they did then the seasons are nicely symmetrical with the transition day between the seasons celebrated as a festival. So that was the contribution of this little piece that we found, it's seasonal day, the Cardinal days of the sun actually. This is what made this little scroll important.

CO: Beautiful. Now it's, you know better than I, that that the Dead Sea Scrolls are probably the most famous, perhaps the most significant archaeological discovery. What was it like for you to approach this task of looking at a Dead Sea Scroll that hadn't been deciphered and say ‘Okay, I'm going to be the person, that my team is going to figure out what this is about?’ Did you approach that with some trepidation?

JBD: First of all, we actually sought this kind of work, because in recent years, or in recent decades, there has been a lot of research — and I should say — excellent research by previous scholars. And 99 per cent of the scholars are out there. There are still things to do, don't get me wrong, but we're in good condition. And a previous scholar, Stephen Pfann, started working on these very large scrolls in the 1990’s. He did good work but he couldn't get to finish it. And so we had the sense well here’s something new. Here's something here's our chance to do something significant, not just studying again another one. But here is our chance to bring to light something that was out there and nobody really knew what was in there. This scroll got really unlucky. I mean, other schools were in a better position or in a better condition and could be read, or maybe was easier to read. So we're actually connecting to that guy back there wrote this draft and we're offering him the chance to come to light. I think that's exciting for me.

CO: Must be. Professor Ben-Dov, I really appreciate speaking with you tonight, thank you.

JBD: Thank you so much.

JD: Jonathan Ben-Dov is a professor at Haifa University. He's worked on decoding the latest of the Dead Sea Scrolls. We reached them in Salzburg, Austria.

[Music: Somber Tones]

Winnipeg Freezing Death

JD: On Christmas Day she was a patient at a hospital in Winnipeg. But hours later 29-year-old Windy Sinclair was found dead. She had left the hospital without telling staff and she froze to death outside an apartment building. Ms. Sinclair had been battling an addiction to crystal meth when she checked into Seven Oaks Hospital — she was also pregnant. Now Ms. Sinclair’s family has learned more from the hospital medical file. It showed that staff noticed Ms. Sinclair was slurring her words and behaving oddly and told hospital staff she wanted to leave. That was just hours before a doctor realized that she was indeed missing. Wendy Sinclair's mother, Eleanor Sinclair, wants answers from the hospital. She spoke to CBC Winnipeg reporter Austin Grabish this week. Here's part of that conversation.

SOUNDCLIP

ELEANOR SINCLAIR: They have a two-hour gap from the last vitals to the time the doctor went to check on her to give her the results from her test. It was like 11:53 and the last photos they did was somewhere on 9:30-9:38. So what happened between that time? They should have called the police. They should have tried harder to find family considering the weather that night, but they failed to do any of that. And when I went to view security cam, the only thing they showed me was when she came in from the ambulance. She walked in herself, and when she walked out, she walked out and she picked something up from the side. I don't know if it was real or not, but she picked something up from the floor. And then she's just around the corner and that's the last time that I seen her — well, they saw her, I guess.

AUSTIN GRABISH: How heartbreaking was it to see your daughter leave the hospital like that?

ES: Oh my god, it was just — especially nobody, nobody going after her. Nobody coming out the door to look for her. It's, it's heartbreaking. Her life didn't matter at all. Throwing somebody out in the cold, that's basically what they did. They didn't try to find her, they didn't call the police where the 911 originated from. If they couldn't find a reliable number. They should have tried harder to find her. They should have had somebody with her at all times. And it even says in her file that she was trying to leave, she was agitated. Why didn't you try harder to keep her in the hospital?

AG: Do you think they should have restrained her?

ES: Yes, they should have. She was clearly under the influence of that crystal meth and I think she took too much and that's why she went to the hospital, because she didn't want to overdose. I want to know why they failed my daughter at this hospital. Why didn't her life matter like anybody else? She's a mother of four. She's my daughter, she's a granddaughter, she's an aunt, a sister and a friend. She needs to be recognized as a person.

JD: Eleanor Sinclair was the mother of Windy Sinclair, who died last month. The 29-year-old woman left a Winnipeg hospital and froze to death.

[Music: Ambient Guitar & Bass]

Music Teacher

Guest: Rebekah Maxner

JD: A woman from Nova Scotia is now part of a quite exclusive group that includes British composer Thomas Atwood, who was one of Mozart's favourite students, and Mozart himself — who was Mozart. Rebekah Maxner is a music teacher and a composer. Recently one of her compositions was published by Canada's Royal Conservatory of Music and overseas by the London College of Music. It is called Jazz Goes the Weasel, and along with works by the two gentlemen I mentioned earlier, it will now be used as teaching material for students around the world. We reached Rebekah Maxner in Hantsport, Nova Scotia.

CO: Rebekah, how did you come to find out that your composition was to be featured in the London College of Music’s piano syllabus?

RM: Well, it was kind of a funny story because I got a random e-mail in my inbox in June, and it said you know we would like to have copyright permission to reprint your piece, so tell us your banking information. And, you know, you get these e-mails from overseas and they say ‘tell us your banking information and we’ll deposit this money,’ and I was like hey no way.

CO: And you’re checking to see if this from Nigeria and it's not?

[LAUGHTER]

RM: Exactly. So what I did was I emailed a couple of my colleagues througho Red Leaf Pianoworks, and we’re a group of Canadian composers, and now we have some international composers as well, and I asked them “Do you think this is legitimate? Who are these people? And so Martha Hill Duncan said yes it sounds legitimate. And I went to my bank and they said ‘well you can tell them your information,’ and eventually I really was published. And so it was — it started off that way though thinking it was just a hoax.

CO: As you would, you’d think that was a hoax when you an email like that. But what does, I mean, so you will be alongside the likes of Mozart in the syllabus. What does that mean? How will they use your composition?

RM: Well, it's in the grade one piano exam book. So children who are playing at this level of music would be able to choose my piece. And, at first, your piece is just going to be in a book and it's kind of a far out idea. But when I actually received the book in the mail and I opened it up there are only nine pieces in the whole book and mine is one of them. And so, yes, Mozart is one of the other composers and there's Bartók and there's Diabelli and, you know, all these classical composers you revere your whole life and now you are right beside them — and it's quite a fun feeling.

CO: I can't imagine what that feels like to open that book and see that. You had no idea when you saw that you were among this nine.

RM: I know, it's like I feel very chosen.

CO: You are. And your composition, the title is Jazz Goes the Weasel. How did you come up with that title?

RM: Well, I was just kind of trying to come up with ideas of music that kids would like. And there was a piece that I was playing by a Canadian composer, Boris Berlin, and its Old MacDonald Had A Farm. And so it was just, you know, kind of his own rendition of this for children. And I said ‘Oh wouldn't it be cool if Old MacDonald Had The Blues’ instead. So I tried to rework that piece in a blues style and that worked. And once I was on to this idea and I thought well, can I take other children pieces and jazz them up in today's styles. And Pop Goes the Weasel — pop is popular music it's just the style of music. But I thought instead of using Pop Goes the Weasel which would be too redundant, I thought of changing it to Jazz Goes the Weasel instead and made it really jazzy and it just worked. It worked for that piece and it has been picked up by the Royal Conservatory of Music and now the London College of Music and it's just really fun.

CO: Well congratulations on that. We've figured out how we can get you to play it for us over the phone. So let’s have a listen to it.

RM: Okay.

SOUNDCLIP

[Music: Piano]

CO: That was really fun.

RM: Oh thank you.

CO: Kids must love playing that.

RM: Well, I think so. I mean, it's the kind of peace that they can relate to. It's a nursery tune that they've been singing all their lives and it's kind of put in a fun little style that sounds bigger than it really is. It sounds like mature jazz music, yet it's written in an accessible way that they can play it themselves.

CO: Now that this piece, this composition, is in this book how will it be used? Who will use it, and when will they use it?

RM: Well it's in the 2018 book and the way they published their books in London is they run for three years. So for three years this will be one of the three selections in list C that the students in London, and globally, because this is an exam system that has exams set centres all over the world, that children in all these places can choose to learn my piece towards their Grade 1 credit.

CO: So Jazz Goes the Weasel is on the exam.

RM: It totally is. And what I think they're trying to do by putting music like this in their book is they're trying to appeal to children and give them music that they'll really love to play. So there, of course, there's the requirement to learn a classical piece and that would be by Mozart or Diabelli, and children love that music too. But I think exam centres are really trying to be current. I think they're trying to give kids sounds that they hear today so that they feel like it's relevant to what they experience in their day-to-day lives of music.

CO: And who knows what budding young jazz pianist you might inspire by getting them to play this piece.

RM: I know, I'm hoping I inspire lots of kids, it just gives me such great joy to think that right now somebody might be practicing my piece and loving it. That gives me great joy.

CO: Rebekah, it's a great joy to speak with you and congratulations.

RB: Thank you so much.

CO: Bye-bye.

RB: Bye-bye.

JD: Rebekah Maxner is a composer and a piano teacher. We reached her Hantsport, Nova Scotia.

[Music: Industrial Hip-Hop]

Age of Adolescence

Guest: Susan Sawyer

JD: Let's say you're in your early 20s and you still live in your parents basement — no judgment and no shame in that. Of course, your folks will probably ask you where you're going when you go out and you might have to borrow their car to do that — and bring it back before curfew. Then again, they will occasionally feed you. So it's not a bad deal really. Only problem being that sometimes you're going to feel like you're still a teenager. And now researchers are suggesting that maybe you are — kind of. An op-ed published in The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health Journal suggests we should reframe adolescence to encompass the ages between 10 and 24. Susan Sawyer is the lead author of that op-ed. She is the chair of Adolescent Health at the University of Melbourne. But today we reached her in London, UK.

CO: Professor Sawyer, I know a number of people in their early 20s, I'm sure you do too, and I don't think they would take kindly to being cold adolescent. What do you say to them?

DOCTOR SUSAN SAWYER: I think it's fascinating to think about this period that we call adolescence and what we really mean by that. And if you mean by adolescence, the equivalent of a teenager or a child who doesn't have adult responsibilities, then if I was a young person in my 20s I wouldn't like it either. But what we mean by adolescence is something very different. It is this life phase between childhood and full adult responsibilities. And when I talk to young people in Australia about this expanded definition and describe what it is that I mean, then overwhelmingly the young people at least that I speak to go on yeah I get what you mean.

CO: So what is that, what do you mean?

SS: Well when I ask young people ‘Well, have you completed your education. Have you found your life partner? Are you financially independent of your parents?’ And most young people in their early 20s that I speak to in Australia would answer no to those questions. And that doesn't mean that they're not adult in terms of having a heap of adult responsibilities, but it doesn't necessarily mean that they have the same life experiences, and if you like, fully responsible as you and I might be some period later.

CO: How much of that is actually the biology or development, how much of it is socioeconomic forces? I mean, it takes — you have to have more education before you enter the workplace, you often have huge debts from school. So perhaps a lot of those decisions aren’t based on someone not being ready for it, but because of the economic pressures?

SS: Absolutely. So there are two things that have changed. One thing that's changed is our understanding of the biology of adolescence and some of this is very new in terms of different understandings of the timing of brain maturation. The other thing that's changed is the timing of social role transitions that you've just been articulating then about this extended period that young people have in tertiary education, in particular, and in many parts of the world the debts that accrue as part of that. And when we bring biology and social role transitions together, what we're talking about in this paper is well what does this mean in terms of the policies that we should be putting in place to maximise the acquisition of assets that young people should be gaining across the adolescent years, that then place them in the best position possible in terms of maximising what I refer to as young people's life chances.

CO: So we're seeing the age for things like health care benefits they're all creeping up as young people stay home longer. Do you imagine that laws and social programs would go in the same direction if we accept that adolescence should extend the age of 24?

SS: I think it's not just the upward expanding, because in terms of our description of what adolescence is, what we are highlighting is that this is a very significant period of human development. That development happens when young people are both protected — so legal frameworks or access to health insurance with family insurance schemes, as you were mentioning, these are some of the things that we believe should be extended upward in age. But we are actually then calling for a whole lot of other aspects to be extended downward in age. In the paper we use the example of voting. So the Japanese government a couple of years ago, to my way of thinking, rightly lowered its age of voting from 20 down to 18. And we argued that, actually, given that voting is a very safe behaviour, that it is an important activity in terms of supporting young people's understanding of how communities work, democratic processes, that they would be every reason to do what the Scottish Government did a couple of years ago. They reduced the voting age from 18 down to 16. And so I think in this paper what we're trying to do is to say there is no single right age at which you become an adult.

CO: You're talking about the ability to exercise judgment and the maturity that you're mentioning voting. What about the age of buying liquor or joining the military, getting married, consensual sex? Should all of those things change?

SS: Well, in the paper this is exactly what we're describing, that this way of thinking about adolescence as a time of empowerment, of engagement in the world, of creativity, of learning — and also of some vulnerability, helps us to think as a community about the age of what some things should be brought forward, that are relatively safe, like voting, versus the age of things that are perhaps less safe or more vulnerable, such as military service, for example. Where they will be every age to be not having that at 16 and not even having that at 18, arguably, but at an older age. So that it is rather a framework for helping people think about balancing both protection of young people and the empowerment of young people. So let's move beyond in a more nuanced way rather than just thinking that there is a single age at which everything should happen.

CO: Well, I think you're going to generate a lot of discussion at dinner tables of people listening to this Professor Sawyer. And thank you for that, it’s really interesting.

SS: Thanks Carol.

JD: Susan Sawyer is the chair of Adolescent Health at the University of Melbourne. We reached her in London.

[Music: Waltz]

Cranberries Dolores O’Riordan Funeral

JD: She sang like no one else — right down to the hard R's that she never tried to soften because they were part of who she was, they were part of where she was from. Today hundreds of mourners gathered for a funeral service for Dolores O'Riordan in her hometown of Ballybricken, Ireland. The Cranberries singer and solo artist died last Monday. She was 46 years old. The service was held at a church where Ms. O'Riordan had once sung in the choir. Her bandmates were there. Her family and friends were there — and among those who spoke was Canon Liam McNamara who spoke about her voice and her kindness. Here's some of what he said courtesy of the Irish Times website.

SOUNDCLIP

CANON LIAM MCNAMARA: No words chosen by me are adequate to describe Delores, or to accurately state the influence for good she had over the years, throughout the world. She possesses a very special singing voice, we all know that. Intelligent girl as well, we know that too. And she knew well that if she had a talent, she had a duty to develop it. She also knew that talents are given far from Almighty God to be used generously in the service of others, fellow pilgrims on the road of life, which she used. Yes, she did have a unique respect, a deep respect for everybody. Everybody was respected, no matter who they were or what they were. What a great privilege to have this great person to give a little word, give a bit of hope.

JD: That was Canon Liam McNamara speaking at the funeral service for Dolores O'Riordan today.

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January 23, 2018 episode transcript

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