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 2018

The Current Transcript for August 10, 2018

Host: Laura Lynch

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

LAURA LYNCH: I'm Laura Lynch and this is the summer edition of The Current. This morning we are tracking a breaking story. At least four people have been shot and killed. Two of them police officers in Fredericton. One suspect is reportedly in custody. We will go to Fredericton for an update later on. But first…

SOUNDCLIP

I saw kids who started to draw tanks. People without heads. War pictures. Things like that. And after many sessions before they started to go back to their normal life and drawing their dreams like rainbows.

LL: Art as therapy. Ousama Alkhatib, a refugee from Syria has seen it work with children whose lives have been fractured by war and violence. But there are so many adults and kids alike coping with that kind of trauma after coming to Canada. Some specialists say the people we welcome here need much much more support. That's in half an hour. After that...

SOUNDCLIP

I believe that you made an appointment for the project Haircuts By Children. We look forward to meeting you and cutting your hair.

LL: So what happens when you give 10 year olds the scissors, and the hair dye, and the permission to start in on your tresses? Later on, how one Canadian man's performance art confronts our adultarian system and raises questions about why we have so many rules around keeping kids out of economic and political activity and decision making. But we start today with how we choose to remember...

SOUNDCLIP

In order to really commit to reconciliation. We need to remove the statue of John A. Macdonald from the front steps of City Hall.

LL: Last night the Mayor of Victoria, Lisa Helps, joined with a clear majority on council to vote for the swift removal of a statue of Canada's first prime minister from City Hall. And that has reignited a debate about monuments and how we remember our past. I'm Laura Lynch. This is the summer edition of The Current. [Music]

Back To Top »

How 'counter-monuments' can solve the debate over controversial historical statues

Guests: Cindy Blackstock, Karen Franck

LL: For 36 years a statue of Sir John A. Macdonald, Canada's first prime minister and former Victoria MP, greeted visitors at the front door of Victoria City Hall. But come tomorrow the statue will be gone. After city councillors voted to have it removed, the city's conversations around what to do with the statue actually stretch back to last summer when two local First Nations made the argument, it was a painful reminder of a colonial legacy. In fact the system of residential schools was established under John A. Macdonald's government. The Mayor of Victoria, Lisa Helps, says removing the statue is an important part of the process of reconciliation.

SOUNDCLIP

We'll remove the statue from the front steps of city hall. We'll store it safely in a city facility and continue the conversation with the Nations and with the community about the best way to tell and show the complex history of John A. Macdonald. And so the statue will probably reappear somewhere else in a different context.

LL: The decision to remove the statue is part of a nationwide debate about how to commemorate historical figures in Canada. And it has been controversial in Victoria. Here's what some of the discussion there sounded like this week.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: History is always being retold as new facts emerge. And so I would say the very fact that we're having this conversation is giving a more nuanced view to history. And I would also say you know I believe in complexity and to have a debate about whether to remove the statue or not doesn't do justice to history.

VOICE 2: I support it 100 percent. I think what we choose to celebrate and prioritize and privilege within our society, it's more than just symbolism.

VOICE 3: He was one of the founding fathers. First prime minister and so on. And I think he should be left where he is. But obviously, students and whoever should be informed of everything about him. He wasn't perfect.

VOICE 4: There's a robust discussion now around leaving monuments or symbols such as statues up and giving greater context [inaudible]. My point of view is that there's never going to be an eraser of the legacy of John A. Macdonald and other people that had similar ideas of genocide towards Indigenous people. That is always going to be there. And I also support there being some sort of plaque talking about why there was a decision to remove the statue. I think that is important but I think they're not mutually exclusive. I think we can have both at once.

VOICE 5: It's not even a nice looking statue [laughs]. You might as well take it down if you can use it to make some nails for something. If there's a history there then maybe it might be better just to kind of cut him away from public view.

VOICE 6: I don't know what exact answer is but I think there is some importance in honouring our history. I think sometimes we go a bit overboard with this being politically correct but that's just my opinion.

VOICE 7: I mean look around the world right now, we live in one of the best countries in the world. And obviously John A. Macdonald had a significant role to play in that. Part of Canada's history is the residential school system. John A. Macdonald had a significant role to play in that as well. So we need to tell a very complex history of this man and that's what we're intending to do.

LL: Victorians aren't the only ones having these conversations right now. Earlier this week the Bank of Montreal responded to years of criticism by removing two stone plaques from the facade of a historic building in Old Montreal. It proclaimed Paul de Chomedey sieur de Maisonneuve, the founder of Montreal, had killed an Iroquois chief with his own hands. The bank replaced the plaques with new ones, removing the part commemorating the killing of the indigenous leader. But Michael Rice, a Mohawk man who first complained about the plaques in 1992, doesn't think the banks should have to take down the plaques.

SOUNDCLIP

It kind of like whitewashes the history but it also sidesteps the bigger issue. It doesn't deal with the unresolved issues. And if we want to have reconciliation in this country we have to start putting out more balanced information on these historic plaques and monuments. And then we have to have more open dialogue and have to look at you know both the good and the bad in history. What I want them to do with this is to put a plaque underneath to say that from the Iroquois perspective they were defending their territory. That's why there was conflict with the French. But the fact that the plaques are changed, it now changed the whole context and tone of what could have been a learning opportunity.

LL: Rice is a history teacher and a Native Studies specialist in the Sir Wilfrid Laurier School Board in Montreal. He's worried when colonial monuments disappear or are altered, that students will miss out on the chance to learn bigger lessons about history.

SOUNDCLIP

And when you start changing things you start removing those opportunities where students can clearly see the bias and they have an opportunity to discuss well why do you think the authors or the creator of these monuments wrote the text in such a fashion? And that's where you create an opportunity for people to do some critical thinking and discussion.

LL: Well my next guest has experience dealing with historical monuments in Canada. Cindy Blackstock is the executive director of First Nations Child and Family Caring Society of Canada. She is in Ottawa. Hello.

CINDY BLACKSTOCK: Good morning.

LL: What do you think of the City of Victoria's decision to take down the statue of John A. Macdonald? And the controversial plaque in Montreal?

CINDY BLACKSTOCK: Well I think it's really important that the last part of what the mayor said which is to continue the conversation to ensure that something is put there that actually educates Canadians about John A. Macdonald. His full history and what the legacies that he left meant for the country. And it's important to note that not all legacies are of equal weight. And we can talk about that later about Duncan Campbell Scott who Macdonald hired personally and who oversaw the residential school system. He was a poet. And a confederate poet, considered to be one of Canada's great poets but he was also one of the engineers of the residential school system. Clearly his poetic legacy is not with the same weight as his residential school legacy.

LL: You were involved in changing the plaques for Duncan Campbell Scott and also for Nicholas Flood Davin. Both architects of the residential school system. Tell us what the plaque said originally.

CINDY BLACKSTOCK: Well for Duncan Campbell Scott his plaque was really an exalting plaque. Talked about his role as a Confederate poet. His receipt of doctorate degrees. Honorary doctorate degrees. And was silent on the question of residential schools. So it was important that when we were to replace Duncan Campbell Scott's plaque that we did a fulsome telling of history. It's no good to make Duncan Campbell Scott a complete villain because then he becomes discarded by the contemporary generation as just an evildoer. His actual life was much more complex than that and so we have to recognize that he was a Confederate poet but we also recognized his leading role in not only being an architect of residential schools but by ignoring and indeed retaliating against those who spoke out about the harms that were being done to children in those residential schools. So now it includes the phrase cultural genocide from the TRC report. Nicholas Flood Davin did not have a plaque. And so he of course was a member of parliament. And he was the founder of a newspaper in Saskatchewan. And we recognize all of that but we also recognize that he was sent by John A. Macdonald down to Carlisle Industrial School in Pennsylvania and there he met a guy named General Pratt whose former job was running military prisons for the United States. And so he brought that same kind of idea about how to run a military prison into running these schools for Native American children. Davin thought it was a great idea. Brought it back to John A. Macdonald who said to implement them immediately. So his plaque recognizes his role as a journalist, his role as an MP, and also his role in residential schools.

LL: Now you also were inspired to campaign for a plaque for Peter Henderson Bryce. Tell me why.

CINDY BLACKSTOCK: Yeah he's one of Canada's great heroes. And this whole going back and retelling history not just about replacing plaques, it's about honoring the people who actually have something to teach us about what's best about humanity. And Dr. Bryce was one of those folks. In 1904, he was one of the leading physicians in Canada. He was the president of the American Public Health Association. And he wrote Canada's first health code which was modeled throughout provinces around Canada and in the United States. He took a post then at 1904 at Indian Affairs and was sent out by Duncan Campbell Scott and others to do a survey of the health of the kids in residential schools. What he found is that the kids were dying at a rate of 25 percent each year. And if you followed the kids over three years it was 48 percent. And in one school with complete records it was 67 percent were dead from preventable causes. Bryce was outraged because one of the things he found is that First Nations kids were getting about a third of the health care funding of all other kids. And so he came back to Ottawa and said look equalize the funding, implement a bunch of practical reforms that we could save these kids lives. Duncan Campbell Scott said no it's too expensive. The expense was ten to fifteen thousand dollars which is a paltry sum for a country that was running you know budgets of about 100 million. And so Bryce refused to be silent. His findings were released to the newspapers and it was on the front page of the Evening Citizen and many other newspapers across Canada because editors were outraged that this was happening.

LL: Right. So you wanted to give him a plaque to recognize his role in all of it. I just want to ask you, yesterday the former MP Jason Kenney who is now the leader of Alberta's United Conservative Party tweeted, Let's stop the historical vandalism. Let's stop this radical out-of-control political correctness. Let's stand up with pride for our own history and those who helped build it like Sir John A. Macdonald. What do you think of that?

CINDY BLACKSTOCK: It's interesting when I read those posts because I wonder how closely they've actually read the history. For example with John A. Macdonald, he was definitely a man of his time but so too were the 50,000 people in Quebec who protested against the unjust trial and the execution of Louis Riel. Those were people of the period too. Those were Canadian citizens and Macdonald famously writes about these protests in Quebec at the time saying that he, that being Riel, shall hang and every dog in Quebec shall bark. And so we can take from that that Macdonald really saw citizens who disagreed with him about his treatment of Indigenous peoples, as dogs. That's the type of history we need to understand. We need to understand that all of the misbehaviour of some of these folks with residential schools cannot be explained by the fact that there was people of that same period who knew the behavior was wrong and in some cases as in the case of (Duncan) Scott, a guy said that in the Canada fails to obviate the preventable causes of death, it brings itself into unpleasant narratives with manslaughter. So some thought it was criminal.

LL: Now we've got just about a minute left. You returned earlier this week from a trip to Berlin. How does Germany approach historical monuments differently from Canada?

CINDY BLACKSTOCK: I think one, it's starkly different. They don't ignore their history. They put it predominantly in all parts of Berlin particularly around the places where the government control led to the horrors of the Holocaust. And so it's done in a way that's instructive to this generation. It doesn't hide that history. And it's not seen as a threat to the good accomplishments that the German people have contributed to Canada or to their country, that's celebrated as well. But they are truth tellers. And we haven't got to that phase in Canada. Somehow we still want to whitewash our history. And that's beginning to change and I'm really happy to see that.

LL: It's an interesting discussion Cindy Blackstock thank you for your time.

CINDY BLACKSTOCK: Thank you for having me.

LL: Cindy Blackstock is the executive director of the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society of Canada and she was in our Ottawa studio. Figuring out how to deal with monuments to historical figures whose activities are now deemed by many to be unethical, actually has a common quandary around the world. In Australia statues of Captain James Cook who led the colonial claim to Australia in the 1700s have regularly been defaced and vandalized. Now the government has announced plans to redevelop a James Cook Memorial Park in Sydney, making it a place of commemoration and recognition and understanding of two cultures and in their words, the incredible Captain Cook. My next guest has written about the idea of the so-called counter monuments. Karen Franck is a professor in the College of Architecture and Design at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. She's the co-author of a book called Memorials as Spaces of Engagement. And we've reached her in Plainfield, Massachusetts. Hello.

KAREN FRANCK: Hello. Good morning.

LL: I wonder what your thoughts are about how this debate over monuments is playing out here in Canada.

KAREN FRANCK: It's remarkable how much it's playing out in the United States as well. I think it's tremendously useful dialogue and I'm really amazed how the presence of these monuments has sparked this dialogue. So even though we have very serious and I would say justifiable critiques of the monuments, if they weren't there we wouldn't be discussing these pasts. So they've sparked a discussion that's very useful. Without the presence of that monument in the City of Victoria there wouldn't be as clearly and I would say also eloquent discussion of this person's weaknesses and strengths. So I find it just remarkable that monuments that for years we ignored and passed by everyday are now sparking this kind of debate.

LL: Why do you think so many people just want to get rid of these statues memorials rather than changing them or enhancing them somehow?

KAREN FRANCK: Well I think many people who are degraded and insulted by the monument have been tolerating them for years. We think of the Confederate monuments in southern United States, they symbolize a continuing oppression of people there. Of black people there. So it's like adding one insult to another. It becomes the embodiment of a whole history. It becomes far more than that statue. So by removing the statue you're trying to redress the wrongs done in the past. The fact is a monument can't bear all that burden of telling history.

LL: So let's talk about some other monuments that you know about. There's one in Hamburg, Germany that's considered the original and this is the label on a counter monument. What can you tell me about that?

KAREN FRANCK: We need to make a little distinction here, the term counter monument is an English translation of more than one German word. And counter monument is sometimes used by James Young to mean a monument that doesn't have monumental qualities.

LL: Okay.

KAREN FRANCK: Another kind of counter monument that we talk about in our article is a monument that is actually opposing another monument.

LL: And is this the case in Hamburg?

KAREN FRANCK: Yes it is. And that's where the German term [German term] originated. There's an existing monument in Hamburg that glorifies war that was built by the Nazis and for a long time in Hamburg there was a desire to probably remove this monument but in the end what the city decided was to leave it but to hold a competition with a monument that would express the opposite point of view. The critique of war. And an Austrian artist won that competition and his original design was very powerful. It really made it clear its opposition to the original monument. I can talk about design if you like.

LL: Yes, go ahead. Yes please I would like to hear.

KAREN FRANCK: So the original monument is a very large stone block with soldiers parading around this block. And the other original monument was repeating the same soldiers but having them basically walking into the ground surface and eventually becoming pavement of the surface as if they had been buried. So it was an incredible contrast to the original monument. It wasn't built and instead a series of rather abstract figures was built in its place which is much more ambiguous and signifies such things as the firebombing of Hamburg and it's quite difficult to interpret. I think the original design would have been much clearer.

LL: But there's also a counter monument in Australia called Reconciliation Place. What does that look like?

KAREN FRANCK: Well that again is a series of sculptures. I think now there are 14 of them that represent different aspects of the oppression of the Indigenous people in Australia. The one that we illustrate in the article is about the separation again of children from their families by putting them in boarding schools as happened in Canada. But it's hard to understand that sculpture, you really need additional text. So this is the idea I've come away with from the discussion so far that we expect monuments to do so much today and I'm not sure they can. So then we add text which is more explanation of the history that the object, the art object itself, can't tell. I think maybe we're expecting too much of the artwork.

LL: There's also the type of monument that isn't entirely new and separate memorial to some of more painful and shameful parts of history and you call these, anti-monuments. What do you mean by that?

KAREN FRANCK: Well I mean that they're not affirmative of the past. So monuments to the Holocaust are not affirming or celebrating something that happened in the past but acknowledging it and trying to acknowledge the pain and suffering that it caused. Originally monuments were only on the positive side to glorify something that happened in the past after World War Two we adopted this other purpose.

LL: We'll have to leave it there Ms. Franck thank you.

KAREN FRANCK: Thank you.

LL: Karen Franck is a professor in the College of Architecture and Design at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. She is the co-author of a book called Memorials as Spaces of Engagement. And she spoke to us from Plainfield, Massachusetts. Over to you now, what do you think of Victoria's decision? To let us know head to our website cbc.ca/thecurrent. Click on the contact us button. The CBC News is coming up next. Then, coping with terror and trauma. Refugees in Canada look for ways to heal from the wounds you don't see. I'm Laura Lynch and you're listening to the summer edition of The Current.

Back To Top »

Children at daycare shielded in windowless room amid fatal Fredericton shooting

Guests: Harry Forestell, Rachel LeBlanc, Robert DiDiodato

LL: I'm Laura Lynch and this is the summer edition of The Current. We're going to turn now to a breaking news story. Earlier today at least four people were shot dead in a residential area of Fredericton. Two of them have been confirmed as police officers and an unknown number of people have been injured. Police say they have a suspect in custody. The nearby neighborhood was in lockdown but that has since been lifted. Earlier today I spoke to CBC News' Harry Forestell as the story unfolded.

HARRY FORESTELL: Good morning Laura.

LL: How much can you tell us about what's happened?

HARRY FORESTELL: Well we know there are four fatalities. We're in an urban neighborhood. Residential neighborhood between a subdivision and a couple of low rise apartment buildings where most of the action seems to have taken place. There have been a couple of dozen emergency vehicles here fire department, ambulances, and of course police, municipal Fredericton police and RCMP vehicles as well as an armored vehicle used by the Fredericton municipal police. Sometime at around 7 this morning, residents of the area that I've spoken with told me they heard a bevy of shots. Dozens of shots. And one young man I spoke with looked out his apartment window to see what he described as two uniformed bodies on the ground and officers trying to get them out of the way into an armored vehicle. He went out to help. He was told they didn't need his help and he was taken to a safe area. The individual who appears to have been shooting was in an apartment building initially according to residents and shooting from a window. I talked to another resident who said that his apartment had actually been aimed at by the shooter and shots had been taken in his direction. Right now it looks like a fairly calm situation. There isn't a lot of rapid activity. There are uniformed SWAT officers and municipal force here as well as RCMP well-armed and ambulances waiting with stretchers at the ready.

LL: Now the police are saying now that there are four fatalities. You spoke to one witness who said he saw two uniformed officers. Have you got any other information about the other two?

HARRY FORESTELL: We don't have any other information about the other two. All that we know is that there are four fatalities from this event. Now there was also another number of shots just a little while ago just before I arrived here about half an hour ago and we're trying to find out whether that was involving the apprehension of the suspect. But from where I am I can't say definitively whether an individual has been arrested or not. I'm looking at SWAT officers guiding another person across the street right now from that block of low rise apartment buildings I spoke of earlier.

LL: So Harry what are police saying at this point?

HARRY FORESTELL: Well very little Laura that's part of the problem. I mean obviously they have to deal with the situation on the ground right now. And now they have been telling people in this area which as I said is an urban neighborhood but it's you know a nicely laid out subdivision across the street from these apartment buildings and up the street is a large mall that serves the area and a smaller urban mall with a Tim Hortons and a Subway right behind me. So police have only said that they wanted people in this area to stay in their homes and not go out on the street and keep the doors locked and await further information from the emergency services.

LL: Harry I've got to ask you I mean this obviously raises memories of what happened in Moncton in 2014 when Justin Bourque went on a shooting rampage and five people were shot. How top of mind is that for you right now as you look at what's unfolding?

HARRY FORESTELL: Oh that's top of mind not just for me but for everyone here. I mean we're talking to some of the residents of the apartment building who were ushered out by police to an area of safety. And that's in the back of everyone's mind. That horrible incident in 2014, RCMP officers were shot and killed by a roaming gunmen in Moncton. And that whole neighborhood was of course shut down. This at this moment doesn't have the sense of vital urgency. It feels as though police know exactly what's going on right now whereas in 2014 there was a lot of uncertainty. You'll remember Laura the hunt for the gunmen in Moncton had the whole city on edge. This you know is the capital city New Brunswick. Fredericton is a quiet urban centre. People just obviously don't expect this kind of activity. But they have the lesson of Moncton in 2014 to look at. Nobody expects this kind of situation in any community in New Brunswick but you know this sort of thing does happen.

LL: One of the things that arose out of that whole incident in Moncton was the question of how well-armed the police were there and I'm wondering if you're seeing a difference this time around because of that.

HARRY FORESTELL: Oh absolutely. The officers we're seeing, both RCMP and municipal police, are carrying carbines. They are well-armed. They're wearing protective vests. As I mentioned there is a City of Fredericton armored vehicle that has been moving around the neighborhood. There's no question that the lessons of 2014 have been well learned in that respect. These officers are not taking any chances. They're distributing bulletproof gear and making sure that they are well-armed.

LL: Harry we'll leave it there for now we may come back to you. We appreciate your help. Thanks a lot.

HARRY FORESTELL: No problem.

LL: That is Harry Forestell, CBC News reporter, in Fredericton, New Brunswick. We're going to go now to a children's daycare that actually is on lockdown. Rachel LeBlanc is the director of the daycare. Hi Rachel.

RACHEL LEBLANC: Hi.

LL: How are you doing?

RACHEL LEBLANC: I'm okay.

LL: Can you tell me what you heard this morning?

RACHEL LEBLANC: Yep. When I arrived at my work this morning I got out of my car and I heard four gunshots. Like a crack crack crack crack. Like a handgun I guess. And I wasn't so startled by it because I did see the cops arrive at the location before I got to work. So there was no one there when I passed the building. I didn't know anything was going on until I seen all the cops show up. And then when I got to work like I said was when I heard the gunshots.

LL: But you didn't think too much of it because you thought the police had everything under control?

RACHEL LEBLANC: Yes.

LL: So what happened next?

RACHEL LEBLANC: We went about our normal business, having our kids arrive. It was just getting on the radio. I didn't know the extent of it. So I called the non-emergency line here in Fredericton and the woman was very urgent with me telling me to go on lockdown.

LL: So what did you do?

RACHEL LEBLANC: We went on lockdown.

LL: Tell me what that consists of. How many kids did you have in there? What did you do?

RACHEL LEBLANC: I don't want to comment on the amount of kids we have in here because I have before and the news are saying how many kids we have here and I just rather not say. But we do have kids and we had to lock all the main doors. And we did put them in a room that had no windows and we shut off the lights.

LL: Okay well because that's my next question, how are the kids doing?

RACHEL LEBLANC: They have no idea what's going on. Currently, we did split them up into their classrooms now because everything seems hopefully that it's calming down. The doors are still locked and we are allowing no kids to come in and no kids to go out including I guess their parents as well and our staff. So that's what we're doing at the moment.

LL: I guess you've been hearing from some of the parents of the kids who were there this morning.

RACHEL LEBLANC: Yes we have been. They have called to check in on us because like I said when it was 7:30, that's when we open, that's when it really started happening. So we all didn't really know much of what was going on but they have called and we have assured them that their children are safe in our care and we will update them when we need to.

LL: I imagine you've never been through anything like this before.

RACHEL LEBLANC: No I haven't. None of us here have. We find our neighborhood to be quite safe here. And we were talking about Moncton a lot this morning as well and that's how we're feeling right now and we were just kind of still processing what's happening and we're just trying to focus on the safety of the children here.

LL: What were you saying to each other when you talked about Moncton and what happened there in 2014?

RACHEL LEBLANC: Well this was when we didn't know like how many shooters, like if there was a shooter. Like we didn't know everything behind it. We were kind of in a fog. And I'm guessing that's probably what happened in Moncton. I mean at the very beginning of something you don't really know what's going on. Anyway so I just mentioned to the girls like this feels just like Moncton shooting because it was so close to us and we were just scared seeing as we could hear the shots and the sirens we just felt like we just felt like Moncton I guess.

LL: Rachel that is completely understandable. Please take care of yourself and your kids and thank you for speaking to us.

RACHEL LEBLANC: Thank you. Okay bye.

LL: Bye. Rachel LeBlanc is the director of a lock downed children's daycare that is near the scene of the shooting. Now we are starting to hear from political leaders. There is a tweet from Prime Minister Trudeau, awful news coming out of Fredericton he says. My heart goes out to everyone affected by this morning's shooting. We're following the situation closely. And Premier Brian Gallant of New Brunswick has issued a statement regarding the shootings, we are all shocked he says and saddened to learn this morning of the ongoing tragic incident in Fredericton. On behalf of all New Brunswickers I offer my condolences, thoughts, and prayers to the victims and their families. During this difficult time our thoughts are also with the courageous women and men on the frontlines working to keep us safe. I would ask New Brunswickers particularly in those areas identified by police to keep informed about the situation as it develops and follow the instructions of law enforcement officials. Now as we said the police say they do have a suspect in custody. However they still are keeping locations within the area on lockdown and we're joined now by Robert DiDiodato he is on the line. He's a resident who lived right at the bottom of the street where the shooting took place is that correct Mr. DiDiodato?

ROBERT DIDIODATO: Not quite at the bottom. It's about 150 meters away so it's close to it.

LL: Okay tell me what you saw or heard this morning.

ROBERT DIDIODATO: Well around 7:00 o'clock local time I was just reading in my living room, which would be on the front end of the house, I heard some noises that I initially thought were firecrackers. There was like a pop. Then pop again. And another pop pop pop. And maybe a couple more after that. Sounded peculiar. I was trying to convince myself it was a firecracker. Opened my front door just to go out and try to confirm that and then at that point I could hear another sequence of noises that were much louder very similar and louder so I just closed the door and went back inside my home.

LL: What was your feeling at that point?

ROBERT DIDIODATO: Well my hunch was that it was a gunshot. You know just it was the sequence that was unsettling. It was like a pop pop pop. I just thought oh there is just something wrong here and you know I guess within a minute or so I could hear the sirens of various kinds of sirens getting closer to the side so I presumed it was gunshot at that point.

LL: Now we were speaking to our reporter earlier who said he'd spoken to an eyewitness who had seen two uniformed people shot down in the street have you been able to see anything?

ROBERT DIDIODATO: No I can't confirm that. There's a lot of uniformed, both RCMP and local police. You know initially with a wide perimeter from the area and then you know over time just gradually getting closer to the area.

LL: Now the police say one suspect is in custody what's the atmosphere like?

ROBERT DIDIODATO: Well within the neighborhood which is ordinarily a very peaceful neighborhood, I mean everybody is you know I think certainly on edge. They were certainly a couple hours ago for sure. As you can imagine you know police in the area. So you know there's a lot of you know phone calls and text messages and so forth among people so I think just generally speaking, people are maybe a little more relieved now but there was a lot of anxiety earlier this morning.

LL: Understandable Robert DiDiodato thank you.

ROBERT DIDIODATO: You're welcome. Thank you.

LL: And just to recap, RCMP say four people have been shot in Fredericton. They have asked a community nearby to remain on lockdown even though they say they have one suspect in custody and stay tuned to CBC News they'll keep you up to date with the latest news in the situation.

Telling their stories on canvas: Syrian refugees take art classes to overcome trauma

Guests: Ousama Alkhatib, Haya Abu Mealek, Dr. Samer Al Dandashi, Dr. Clare Pain

LL: Changing gears now, Canada has a history of providing a safe harbor for people around the world fleeing lands of war and turmoil. Between 2016 and 2017, more than 70,000 refugees settled here and much of the conversation about those newcomers has been about meeting their material needs for food, shelter, and work. But something crucial is missing from that conversation. The World Health Organization estimates 15 to 20 percent of refugees experienced trauma related illnesses, and mental health care workers say those needs aren't being met. That's why the Union of Medical Care and Relief Organization has organized a seminar in Toronto this weekend to help medical professionals as well as the general public address the mental health needs of refugees and newcomers. Soon after arriving in Canada from Syria, Ousama Alkhatib co-founded a project that helps Syrian newcomers work through their trauma using art. He calls it Our Art, Our Stories. Joining him in our Toronto studio this morning is Haya Abu Mealek, one of the many participants in that program. Hello to you both.

OUSAMA ALKHATIB: Thank you very much for having us.

HAYA ABU MEALEK: Hey.

LL: Haya you were one of the participants at Ousama's art workshop. What was the experience like for you?

HAYA ABU MEALEK: It was so inspiring for me and it was like a phase in my life when I discovered a new thing about me. Because I've never done art before and it was by accident, I was visiting my friends they told me they are going to that workshop. And one of them she asked me to draw something. I was like really bad, she said okay you can come and just watch us.[Laughs] Then a month later I was really involved in the arts workshop with a lot of paints and yeah. I was really active.

LL: And so you said you discovered something new about yourself, which was?

HAYA ABU MEALEK: I can do some art. [Laughs] Yeah.

LL: What was your favorite piece out of the different artworks that you created?

HAYA ABU MEALEK: There's one about my mom. It's my favorite. A year before coming to Canada we were talking about Syria. So it was like a black and white portray. And then in the workshop one of the teachers taught me how to do collage. To like stick the photo on the canvas and do some art beside. So yeah that one is my favorite.

LL: And what did you surround it with? Describe it a little bit for me.

HAYA ABU MEALEK: I put some dates actually because we are Palestinian-Syrian and my mom's side fled Palestine in 1948. My father's side from 1967. Then another date it's our like when we fled from Syria is 2012. So I wrote all the dates as like three generations of being refugee because it's not only my mom; I think my grandmother, me, someone who is waiting for something. For something to happen. To go back home.

LL: To go back home. Ousama what are one or two art pieces that stood out for you?

OUSAMA ALKHATIB: Absolutely one of them is Haya's mom's. I read it as someone saying like I'm tired of being displaced. And the other one was Carmen's one talking about Shatila camp in Lebanon. Carmen came here like three years ago. She got involved in the project as a participant too. She drew three or four paintings. One of them was the Shatila camp one.

LL: Shatila being a massive refugee camp.

OUSAMA ALKHATIB: Yes it is, for Palestinians and Syrian refugees. She drew a very messy buildings. That's how Shatila is, but with very energetic people. So she drew a guy and a girl dancing between these messy buildings. So those was the best for me. And one I created myself is just a collage painting written with Huriya which is freedom in Arabic with broken letters. That's what freedom costs sometimes.

LL: When you look at the art that has been generated over the last little while by the people in the program is there a sort of consistent experience of trauma that comes through with the refugees who are creating it?

OUSAMA ALKHATIB: Well for me art is a therapeutic tool. People just express themselves and get rid of the negative energy sometimes on their canvases. So some of the participants were drawing sad stories. Some of them drew their dreams here. Their future dreams. It's different between the participants.

LL: Haya what were some of the hardest things for you about adjusting to life here as a newcomer?

HAYA ABU MEALEK: Actually a lot because when I arrived last year, my English was already good because I've been working in English with foreigners in Middle East with non-profits and stuff. So just to be good in English anyone will not help you, oh you have good English like you are not just a normal newcomer, but it's not about the language sometimes. When you have been raised as a stateless person you will have that feeling or still have that feeling like I don't belong to the place where I am. So I was born in Tunisia with my parents there and we already not Tunisian. Then we had fled to Syria and Syria is not our home. And growing in Syria and build that emotional connection with the country then had to leave it again. So within me there is like a memory of dozens of cities. Dozens of people. So coming here I was like, I'm so done. [Laughs] We keep moving between countries and cities.

LL: So you had that sort of profound sense of displacement of not knowing what your heritage was. So then when you were dealing with all of this how did the art classes help you cope?

HAYA ABU MEALEK: A lot. Because every time I like hold the colours in my hand I had no idea what I was about to do so I just let my subconscious to do all that creative thing. Each piece it's a different story. It's like expression of my stories.

LL: Ousama how do you think art can help with mental wellness for newcomers and refugees?

OUSAMA ALKHATIB: Well again give them a safe space where they can express themselves freely and tell their stories. It's a huge thing. Like when you go to therapy or something all you do is talking. So giving them a chance to create art is kind of talking but on their canvas. Like creative way of dealing with trauma.

LL: It probably reaches deeper in their soul.

OUSAMA ALKHATIB: For sure.

LL: You've also highlighted how this can be helpful for children. What examples have you seen of that?

OUSAMA ALKHATIB: Well through my experience back in Lebanon and Turkey working in refugee schools and community spaces, I saw kids who started to draw tanks. People without heads. War pictures. Things like that. And after many sessions of art they started to go back to their normal life and drawing their dreams like rainbows, houses, rivers things like that. So I saw how art helped them to get their normal life again.

LL: Given all that you've experienced dealing with refugees and trauma are there enough resources in Canada to support refugees affected by trauma?

OUSAMA ALKHATIB: I can't tell if there is enough resources or not but I can't ignore the help I got from Artheart and Fairlawn Avenue United Church sponsored me. I can't say that there is no resources but maybe it needs to be more.

LL: Would you like to see Canada do more generally than to support refugees?

OUSAMA ALKHATIB: For sure. When you help newcomers and refugees, getting rid of their trauma, you are preparing them for their new life and helping them to be like more active and help them to get their new life again.

HAYA ABU MEALEK: Regarding trauma and services I would like to say something. Sometimes I went to a few organizations when they asked me if I'd been arrested or been like under [inaudible] or something like I had any physical thing. When I say no, they would say okay then it's a light case move on. It's a waiting list like there's many newcomers coming with worst cases and I'm just talking about the free service because as a newcomer you can't like afford just a private session with any therapist. So it's either like just a normal counsellor who doesn't know anything about trauma or the trauma people they are busy with more important cases for them. Till I joined Glendon and it was my first semester in York and at the centre of well-being I was lucky because one of the counsellors was already working with refugees for like 15 years. So she was the great balance to me between trauma and also like a student counsellor. Like there is some struggles I've been through I've never knew it's a trauma. She was the whole time explaining, this is a trauma. Trauma does that.

LL: Ousama and Haya thank you very much for coming in.

OUSAMA ALKHATIB: Thanks so much for having us.

HAYA ABU MEALEK: Thank you.

LL: Ousama Alkhatib is the co-founder of the project Our Art, Our Stories. Haya Abu Mealek was a participant in that program and they were both with me in Toronto. For more about how refugees in Canada are coping with trauma, I'm joined by two people who have a deep understanding of the challenges they face. Dr. Samer Al Dandashi is an assistant clinical professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Alberta. He also provides mental health services to Syrians in a refugee camp in Turkey using telecommunication to give psychiatric support. He is in our Edmonton studio. Dr. Clare Pain is with the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Toronto and is the director of the Psychological Trauma Program at Mount Sinai Hospital. She also works at the Canadian Centre for Victims of Torture and the New Beginnings Clinic for Refugee Mental Health at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto. And she's with me here in studio. Hello to you both.

DR. CLARE PAIN: Hello.

DR. SAMER AL DANDASHI: Good morning.

LL: Dr. Al Dandashi you've worked closely with Syrian refugees. What are some of the common mental health challenges you've seen?

DR. SAMER AL DANDASHI: Yeah mostly we see depression. We see PTSD. Anxiety disorders.

LL: And where does that trauma come from?

DR. SAMER AL DANDASHI: Well trauma coming from I call it three layers of trauma, trauma during the war which we call it the migration status. Trauma post migration, the migration where they go to probably refugee camps probably adjacent countries. And probably after they reach the hosting country they may encounter some trauma as well.

LL: That trauma being what? Just the unsettling nature of being in a strange place?

DR. SAMER AL DANDASHI: Definitely.

LL: Dr. Pain what kind of mental health issues do you see facing refugees once they arrive in Canada?

DR. CLARE PAIN: I really like the way that my colleague divided the pre-migration, migration, post-migration trauma or journey I should say. We found in the literature supports the idea that actually it's the post-migration, it's the settlement in Canada which is the most taxing and requires the most help for a refugee to acclimatize themselves to the country.

LL: How do you see that? How does that manifest itself?

DR. CLARE PAIN: I think that again one of the things is useful to distinguish is the difference between distress and disorder. People can be extremely distressed if they don't understand a system or they don't know how to sort of hook into it. But that may not be the same as a disorder. A mental health disorder. So if you work with refugees to deal with their present ongoing anxieties about the TTC or what to wear for an interview or how to get to that ESL classes, you see the distress go down and the emergence of really highly resilient people who are able to adapt to their new life.

LL: But then there are some who actually do suffer some real problems. And I'm wondering when you're trying, I guess the word is triage, and we talked to Haya about that. Is the way that you treat them in the first place when you're talking to them, can that help or hinder them?

DR. CLARE PAIN: No, I think you're absolutely right. We know that one of the predispositions to PTSD is not the pre trauma variables or the trauma variables so much as what happens next, which is kind of good news because it means the more we support newcomers and refugees the less likely they are to get PTSD. So yes every conversation, every way in which we all respond to them has a very important influence on whether or not they become more or less distressed or that PTSD is more or less under control.

LL: What are your thoughts on that Dr. Al Dandashi? What are the common barriers to adjustment and integration here in Canada?

DR. SAMER AL DANDASHI: I would say in general refugee population when they come to Canada isolation will be a barrier. So integrating them into the community. Involving them in programs, that will be most helpful. I would say also language barrier also goes hand in hand with isolation too. And some of the symptoms may take years to emerge. For example the PTSD symptoms and the depression.

LL: And so you need to actually keep in touch with these people over years. Does that happen?

DR. SAMER AL DANDASHI: Well if they come to mental health, I mean usually when they come they are with their workers and the workers if they suspected some mental health issues they have the channels to go seek for professionals. And if they are seeing in our clinics, yes we continue on and we see them. Maybe at school also, when they learn English as a Second Language teachers probably they are noticing maybe some mental health issues or stress. Maybe they seek the workers and the workers seek help of professionals.

LL: Now Dr. Al Dandashi how useful are programs like Our Art, Our Stories in helping newcomers address trauma?

DR. SAMER AL DANDASHI: I mean I would say we all work in mental health on a stigma. Stigma is a barrier between any person seeking mental health. So I think awareness of mental health issues with refugees and [inaudible] refugees also is really important and that helps people.

LL: Does art therapy play a part in that? Does it actually help people come forward and tell these stories or not?

DR. SAMER AL DANDASHI: Yeah it really helps. I like the comment of Ousama and Haya on how they could express their emotions through drawing, through art, rather than talking. I've encountered Syrian refugees they are really closed and they don't like to talk about their emotions.

LL: Dr. Pain what do you make of that? What role do you think art can play in the healing process?

DR. CLARE PAIN: I think it's a wonderful way to help people integrate their past experiences whether it's trauma or complex experiences they've had into a kind of a personal narrative that makes sense that makes meaning out of their past. I think that one of the problems with identifying trauma or sort of making that the focus of our conversations around refugees is it tends to reify it and it tends to make very capable settlement workers, shelter workers, other people feel that it requires an expert or it requires special treatment. And I think that's a mistake actually. Certainly some people but quite honestly I think that's fairly rare in refugees that they need particular treatment. Most refugees need psychosocial support to deal with their psychological distress both formal if they need it in a mental health services but mostly informal.

LL: Just having a community around them.

DR. CLARE PAIN: Absolutely. So I think to be helpful, I sometimes say to refugees you have to make new memories. So making new memories means going to the public library, teaching your kids how to swim, or finding a good Canadian who can take you to the cottage or the trailer to swim, art therapy, baseball, places of worship are often useful community hubs, Metro Morning, The Current. [Laughs].

LL: Can you tell me about some of the hardest cases you've had to deal with?

DR. CLARE PAIN: Gosh I think sometimes I mean I'm very lucky to work in two community centres which work with refugees and I've learnt a huge amount from working with refugees. And one of the things I've learnt is how this distress can mislead you. People come in with a ticket, my family was exterminated or something dreadful happened and now I'm very anxious. And I remember one particular person who was extremely distressed but I couldn't really figure out how it related to the tragedy in her family and she said to me you know you don't understand, I'm now in level three English and now for the first time I'm with doctors and nurses and teachers who are all foreigners learning and I can't read and write my own language. So for that person I realised what she really needed was some extra tuition to teach her how to do homework and that settled her anxiety. So it is full of surprises.

LL: Dr. Al Dandashi is there a success story that sticks with you? I mean I know you're doing this as tele-psychiatry but have you seen it have an impact on people?

DR. SAMER AL DANDASHI: Definitely. One experience sticks in my mind and I always talk about it. It was a child in refugee camps after trauma he became mute which is not talking. I started with the psychosocial support and just me talking and he listening. I see him through Skype. The first drawing I asked him to draw he was drawing a warzone. A tank. Somebody is dying. And then made the comparison, I asked my 4 year old to draw a scene and she drew a house. A sun. A river. Something green. And maybe it took six months for that kid to come back to life I call it. And he start drawing same pictures that my daughter drew. I took a lesson from that. We really need to work on installing hope and making refugees focus on dreams rather than nightmares.

LL: Now there's something else here I think that must challenge you when you're dealing with the refugees here in Canada and that is that they come we're talking about Syrians but refugees come from all sorts of culturally different backgrounds, how do you deal with that? That's to either one of you Dr. Pain or Dr. Al Dandashi.

DR. CLARE PAIN: I think that's a very good point. And one can never become an expert in all the different cultural presentations of our clients but I think that there are models now that we use which sort of attune us culturally to be sensitive or attempting competence in working with a variety of people from different backgrounds.

LL: Dr. Al Dandashi?

DR. SAMER AL DANDASHI: Yeah. I mean the background is really important. I tend to ask the workers also before about their background, it seems that it helps and me being emigrated from Syria long ago that help too. That came to my advantage and practice too with the refugees.

LL: Alright we will leave it there. Interesting discussion thank you to both of you.

DR. CLARE PAIN: Thank you.

DR. SAMER AL DANDASHI: Thank you.

LL: Dr. Samer Al Dandashi is a professor and psychiatrist at the University of Alberta. We reached him in Edmonton. Dr. Clare Pain is an associate professor at the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Toronto and the director of the Psychological Trauma Program at Mount Sinai in Toronto and she was with me here in Toronto. Now just once again to recap on the breaking news story we were speaking about earlier, at least four people have been killed in a shooting in Fredericton. The police say one suspect is in custody. A neighborhood in Fredericton though remains on lockdown. We've had a number of witnesses talk about a number of gunshots being fired there early this morning. CBC News will continue to update this story. Coming up in our next half hour, a different kind of hair-archy when kids get you in the barber chair. I'm Laura Lynch. You're listening to the summer edition of The Current.

Back To Top »

Would you let a 10-year-old cut your hair? Artist argues we should give kids more control

LL: Hello I'm Laura Lynch and this is the summer edition of The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: I can't actually believe that members of the public is actually going to allow children cut their hair.

VOICE 2: Yeah I am actually looking forward to it, but it's a little bit scary.

VOICE 3: Freaky hairstyle.

VOICE 4: I believe that you made an appointment for the project Haircuts by Children.

VOICE 5: We're looking forward to meeting you and cutting your hair.

LL: Those are 10 year old taking part in a theatrical performance called Haircuts by Children. Make no mistake though the haircuts they give are very real. And as part of the show a group of 10 year olds is given a little bit of training in how to cut hair. And then willing adults take a seat. Let them have at it. The idea of kids with scissors, snipping right next to your eyes and ears may give you pause. Also the kind of haircut you may walk away with but that's part of the idea behind Haircuts by Children. Darren O'Donnell is the artistic director of the Toronto based performance group Mammalian Diving Reflex. For more than a decade he has been creating theatrical works such as this to explore the role of children in society. He also has a book out it's called Haircuts by Children and Other Evidence for a New Social Contract. Darren O'Donnell spoke with Anna Maria Tremonti in April from Austin.

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: Hello

DARREN O'DONNELL: Hey Anna Maria, how are you doing?

AMT: I'm well and I'm really curious. You know even the first kid we heard in that tape off the top can't believe she's going to be allowed to cut the hair of grownups.

DARREN O'DONNELL: Yeah yeah.

AMT: [Laughs]

DARREN O'DONNELL: Well when we mention it to them it's like we're offering them to dive into a stream filled with gold. It's unbelievable how surprised they are that they get to do this.

AMT: What made you think it would be a good idea?

DARREN O'DONNELL: Well because it's so crazy and it just sort of seemed like it would be a fun thing to try, kind of an anarchic thing to try. But it was really the serious way in which they took it that really took me aback and the interesting relationship that happened between a client and their stylist and the kind of relationship that they would develop and how they would reach across the intergenerational divide to make a lovely moment together and watching that led to much more work with young people and different understanding of the relationship between adults and children.

AMT: Oh and we'll get to that in a minute. But let's talk a little bit more about those haircuts. What do you do to get them ready to cut hair?

DARREN O'DONNELL: Well we train them; a couple things. We first contextualize the projects so that they understand what they're doing is performance and how it sticks in the world of performance and where it is within the history of performance. Then we discuss children's rights and play a little game called what kids can't do. We get them to make a list of all the things that they cannot do because they are young people and then we instigate a debate amongst them about which are fair and which are not fair: The right to vote, the right to smoke cigarettes, they like talk about gambling as one of the things and so we have a discussion about that. And then we spend about three days, maybe two hours each day, teaching them just the basics of haircutting just so that they're confident but so that they still retain their creativity and are able to do crazy haircuts. So it's only so that they're confident to not so that they're particularly skilled.

AMT: What have you heard from the kids about that whole experience?

DARREN O'DONNELL: Well they love it. I mean like I said they can't believe that this is an offer. We have many many projects with children and often we will mention this other haircuts and they all just want to abandon the project that we're currently working on and they'll demand that we work on haircuts. Even older teenagers still think that's the best project in the world.

AMT: How young are the kids cutting hair?

DARREN O'DONNELL: We work with 10-year-olds generally for that one.

AMT: That's great. What do adults tell you about what it was like to get their haircut by a 10-year-old?

DARREN O'DONNELL: Well yeah that was one of the most interesting things was how moving it is, how moving it is to see this relationship. And it really is to me about the relationship and the work that I make is always about the relations as the material in the practice, in the artistic practice. So watching the relationship between young people, how the kids and the adults have to reach across this very awkward moment and across this divide in this. And you know when you're sitting in the barber chair with a barber who you trust sometimes it can be a bit awkward but when it's in that situation there's really an effort made by the adults to reach across that divide and have an interesting conversation with the young people and experiencing it as the person getting the haircut it can be quite moving and then really watching it as a performance is kind of amazing.

AMT: How do the haircuts turn out?

DARREN O'DONNELL: Well you know they range [laughs] in their quality. Some of them are what we would normally consider to be terrible haircuts. They're very good at creating what I call the Odessa Steps sequence where they cut steps into people's hair because they want to cut the straight lines. That's very nice sometimes. Sometimes the bangs are cut impeccably straight to a ridiculous degree. But we've had instances where this Rebecca Campbell who's a Canadian musician, she had her haircut in one of the first performances and the next day she was at the airport and a stranger came up to her and asked her where she got her haircut because they liked her haircut so much. So their good enough to be sometimes you know salon quality but then sometimes they're just ridiculous. And we train them for both. We offer techniques in making designs in people's hair so they get that. There's lots of colored spray for those who are a little bit reluctant to get very much chopped but they still want to participate, there's that there so it can range. But sometimes like I said it's quality very good. And then sometimes it's pure lunacy.

AMT: Well in fact the colour. We've got one video. If you go to our website we posted a video from one of the performances and you can see some pretty wild hairdos. But there's a real effort to put some blue, nice beautiful dark royal blue, in several people's hair. They're real sports. And our listeners can find that video at cbc.ca/thecurrent. It's great.

DARREN O'DONNELL: It's not just cutting the hair we just let them run the whole salon. So they're at the front desk dealing with the bookings and they're sweeping up and often they have to take people outside to colour them up but they get quite enthusiastic about the whole range of activities in the salon.

AMT: In fact some of the adults are more surprised at the fact that they're doing the administration [laughs].

DARREN O'DONNELL: Right. Yeah yeah.

AMT: Darren Haircuts by Children has been performed all over the world. Why do you think it's resonated so much with audiences?

DARREN O'DONNELL: Yeah it's really a surprising one, completely out of the blue. I had no idea that it would have this kind of traction. Still now, 12 years later continuing to roll. I think it's about this relationship between adults and children and the complete flip of this hierarchy in a really really decisive and shocking way. I think it manages to do that and be super playful so it's talking about the rights of children while at the same time having a really really good time. And if you experience it in the salon itself it's kind of a mix of like a family holiday dinner where the kids, all the cousins are together and running rampant throughout the house. It mixes that with this more commercial environment and that's a very unusual feeling. And I think in our society anyway there's very few instances where there's a commercial kind of situation and young people together and adults who don't know the children getting along and having a conversation we just have sort of relegated children and protected them in such unusually, maybe oppressive ways I think is a better way to describe it. And so you get to experience a very different kind of world with the work.

AMT: Well we wanted to look at your work from the kids’ point of view as well so we went to one of your former collaborators. This is a clip of 14- year-old Emma O'Brien describing what it was like working with you creating a performance at the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: Darren came over for dinner and he had this idea for his next project. The idea was like we would lie on our back and he would kind of like put water, like drip water on us or spray us with water, then they put pedals on with your eyes closed kind of like meditation. Then after we did that we gave him some feedback and was like, “Yeah, it’s ok. You know it's pretty cool. Yeah I like it. We like it.” Then he went upstairs, “Ok I'm going to go to the washroom.” Then he came back downstairs and he brought down nail polish. And you know he was like “I am going to paint my nails.’ And then Willow was like “I want to help.” Isabelle’s like “I want to help too.” And then I went upstairs and got like my mom's makeup and so we just started going all out and we just started doing his makeup and then he decided, “Instead of this meditation thing I'm going to do this, like makeup by children.” And so then we did it at the AGO. It was pretty fun. They got face paint and like Darren's face was like blue. And my dad's face was purple and black. And the kids are just like kind of getting all crazy putting like glitter and everything. It was really neat to see everybody doing something that I can help create and then see Darren take it seriously and actually you know put it out there. It was really cool because I would never think that like my idea at the age I was could be something that multiple people in Toronto could be doing.

AMT: So that's 14-year-old Emma O'Brien. What sticks out for you about what she has to say there Darren?

DARREN O'DONNELL: Well I'm glad that you recognized that it was following her impulses and her younger sister Willow's impulses that — I mean we tried this meditation thing. In fact that meditation thing continues. It's about to happen in Rotterdam actually in a flower shop where we're going to be working with a bunch of kids to do something with meditation; flowers on their remembrance day. So that project still remains alive. But it was seeing that hit the wall with those guys, they weren't interested in that. So ok well what else can we do? The first instance of haircuts was in response to a kid who came at me with a pair of scissors. And so all the work has been like that has been paying attention to what young people are interested in and trying to find frameworks for that to be expressed artistically.

AMT: You can hear the enthusiasm in her voice when she talks about doing your makeup. What's your secret to making that connection with kids?

DARREN O'DONNELL: It's just taking them seriously you know and not talking down to them and understanding that their intelligence is as valid as anybody else's intelligence and that there's things that they know about the world that we've forgotten or that they're able to engage with the world in a way that we for whatever reason or self-consciousness we are unable to engage with the world in that way. The way they can follow playful impulse, and even there even the boredom I think is an interesting capacity, their intolerance for boredom and their inability to sit still. I mean all of those things I view as positive things that are not liabilities. They’re positive things that I think that adults could do with a lot more of. I can't imagine a young person putting up with the amount of e-mails that we have in our inboxes, you know like who could handle that? You know it’s a human rights infraction that we have to deal with all of this thing and just the way that young people will just walk away from those instances and have no interest in participating in them and have a temper tantrum and I think that adults should be permitted to have a few more temper tantrums about you know the situation that we often find ourselves in.

AMT: Do you have kids?

DARREN O'DONNELL: No I don't actually [laughs].

AMT: Maybe that's why [laughs].

DARREN O'DONNELL: Well yeah in the last 12 years I've collaborated with thousands of them and I really enjoy collaborating with them. I don't want a child because I don't want to have I think the relationship that a parent must have. Partly the way you're forced into this relationship through I mean I think the threat of the intervention of the state all of the time, the way you're forced to send them to school. There's many things that a parent I think loses a lot of their own personal autonomy when they have a child because the child is such a contested being. Their battles are waged on the bodies of children and so being a parent you're going to be sucked into that. I mean it's enough working with them and to be a parent I just think that that would be too much for me.

AMT: Well I want to ask you about that because Emma's parents are friends and big supporters of your work. Do you ever get resistance from the adults in children's lives when you set out to do the work you're doing?

DARREN O'DONNELL: You know it's interesting. I've never had any kind of resistance from parents. The resistance tends to come from what you might call the gatekeepers and most typically those gatekeepers that give us the most trouble will be the schools that we often have to work with, accessing children, especially a diversity of children, a wide range of children, going to schools as collaborators is often the easiest if not the only way to do that. And so sometimes the teachers or the head teachers, the principals, the role that they're in where they have to sort of act as the most paranoid parent because they have to anticipate any kind of you know problems. So it's a pretty low bar or actually pretty high bar that they place in front of us. We have one project called the Children's Choice Awards where we drag a jury of children to see all the shows and in a given festival like an international performing arts festival like say Luminato or PuSh in Vancouver which we did actually in Vancouver. We take the young people to see that and you know the young people are prepared for almost anything and very little content that they can't handle. I mean we shield them from you know really really overt sexuality and particularly violence I'm uncomfortable with but other than that they're good to go. But often the schools will really want to vet things carefully and a few swear words might get a show vetoed. And you know the kids are using swear words in the playground all of the time and it's a little disingenuous to protect them from that. So it's often those kinds of individuals who give us the most pushback.

AMT: You argue that children are unfairly excluded from many areas of social and political life. Where would you like to see them included more?

DARREN O'DONNELL: Well I mean I look to the UN Convention on the Rights of the child which is a document that was ratified in 1989. It's now been ratified by every country but the U.S. And it's got a lot of articles in there that I think that if respected there would be a big shift in our relationship to children. We'd have to really adapt to their presence. Particularly Article 12 where they talk about that they should have the right to express themselves in all matters affecting them. And I think all matters affecting them. There's a lot of matters that affect them, the health care system, the education system, the entertainment industry, the entire Internet, all of these things affect them and they have very little agency to affect any of that back. They have very few forums for them to talk back against that in a way where they have some traction. And so what I'm proposing in my own life and with my company and my own artistic practice as well within this book is that I'd like to see them brought in as much as possible into the world of work which might seem strange, which might seem worth talking about child labour. But I'm talking about the fact that they are already are doing a lot of work, they're certainly labouring a lot for Mark Zuckerberg and the folks on Snapchat, they're doing a lot of labour there. And so I'd like to see the labour that they're doing now I'd like to see that acknowledged and remunerated. I'd like to see them paid for that work that they're doing now. Somehow being shared some of the value that they're producing through all of their activities that they're doing. And then I would like to see them brought in work environments where it's safe and where it adds to their education. I'm proposing that the cultural sector in particular and I would include the CBC and the cultural sector for sure; I would like to see Emma O'Brien herself have her own radio program. Why doesn't a 14-year-old have a program on CBC? And I think bringing them into that environment where it adds to their education, where it fortifies them; it strengthens them I think that they would gain a lot from that and the research around children and work shows that they actually enjoy working. They like the control of the value that they produce. They like to have a little money. And they like to have the respect that people get who work. And so the world of work is where I'd like to see some kind of movement around the inclusion of children much more. I think that's a good place to start. And I think our industry is a great place to start it.

AMT: Your argument is timely in light of the activism we're seeing from young people in the U.S. around gun control and I'm curious to hear what you think of those teens like Emma Gonzales. She's in her late teens but even we saw Naomi Wadler, the 11-year-old, fifth grader, speaking in the March On Our Lives rally and the big rally that was you know all over the United States, parts of Canada, part of the Never Again movement. What do you think of those kids and taking up the causes? Why don't we see more of this?

DARREN O'DONNELL: I mean I don't know why we don't see more. Maybe this is the beginning of it. I mean I think that's a perfect example. I'm glad you brought that up. It's because they are young people that they're being taken seriously in this. I mean I think that this is a sea change in the gun control discussion here. And I'm no expert on this kind of stuff but it really looks like because they're young people they're able to galvanize a different kind of apolitical response to it. I mean I know Emma's being attacked and there's memes that are being created that are distorting what she's saying. So there's definitely that's going on. But I think that they're able to rise a little bit above a partisan discussion. And I think that's the other thing that you know with young people that we’re able to as adults in their presence drop some of our preconceived prejudices about each other and in their presence we try to behave better and I think that their presence is very important and I think that's a great example and I'm happy to see it and I think that this bodes well for the future of young people's participation. And this to me seems like it might be a start of a different kind of understanding of how the kind of intelligence that they bring and the role that they can play as young people.

AMT: You know there's sometimes a tendency to idealize children and think of them as innocent and pure. But we all know they can be mean, unselfish, badly behaved. I mean if we look at the gun thing we know that Dylann Roof's sister showed up at her school with a gun and said she hoped, like you know said all sorts of provocative things against the other students. Is there a risk we're idealizing childhood too much?

DARREN O'DONNELL: Well I mean I'm not suggesting that we should give them total control because they're human just like the rest of us and they're flawed. But what I'm talking about more is to sort of drop the binary, the binary adult child, and understand there are children with you know completely you know amazing capacities and who are very progressive in their thinking and there are adults that are that way but then they're adults and children who are not that way and are not so nice. But I think it's the binary between adult and children. There are some children who are completely competent and then there are some adults who need to be taken care of like they are a baby for their entire lives. And so this binary of adult child I think it's one that is again is socially constructed and it's something that historically what a child has always been in flux. And I think we're seeing it in flux now again. And we have a period of treating them like they're quite precious and defending them against any sort of safety and I think that that's proven to be not so great. It's not so great for their resilience. And I think now we have to accept that they are competent and we shouldn't be thinking in terms of adult and child. That's not where the differences are. That's not the binary that we should be examining. We should be trying to dissolve that.

AMT: What do you say to people who say let kids be kids there's plenty of time to work can do advocacy when they're older?

DARREN O'DONNELL: Well but many kids want to do that kind of stuff. So if the child is interested in working for a bit of cash and is able to do it and we're able to do that in a way that protects them and makes it so that it doesn't interfere with their education and things like that then I think that if they want then that's what a kid is. You know let kids be kids. And if the child is looking for a job and wants to get a job at age eight then let that kid be a kid and get to work.

AMT: Be on the paper route which was probably defunct anyway now.

DARREN O'DONNELL: Yeah yeah I'm sure. Yeah.

AMT: But how do you protect vulnerable kids in that scenario because then we're talking first world kids here. And the people that you are coming in contact with are you know progressive parents. You know they can do that. Not every kid can do that. Some kids... there's no breakfast for them in the morning. They barely have clothes to put on to go to school. What about those kids? What about the kids in war zones?

DARREN O'DONNELL: Well sure. I'm not talking about everybody everywhere. It's a very limited case that I'm talking about which is I would say probably Western slash first world that kind of situation. But I also think that it's important to recognize in other situations that families need children to work sometimes. And in the literature that I've read about this that is not always a terrible thing. It’s almost discriminatory to assume that cultures or countries or situations, societies in which children are having to work to put some food on the table for their family that those children are being exploited. I think that's not a great way to look. It's a bit of an application of a kind of Western ideal of what a family or what a child is supposed to be and applying that in other places. It might not be accurate. And the children might be actually contributing in a way that is actually healthy for them.

AMT: Well again maybe if we let the kids sit at the peace table there wouldn't be war zones [laughs].

DARREN O'DONNELL: Well yeah exactly.

AMT: Maybe we should let them be more involved in some big decisions given that the adults keep messing things up.

DARREN O'DONNELL: And in terms of their vulnerability I mean I think the question is not about children vulnerability it's about everybody. And the understanding that what we understand is as a competent person tends not to be a person who's particularly vulnerable, the ideal person in kind of the Western political philosophy is like the liberal subject is somebody who is competent, who brings their labor to the market, who exchanges that rationally. But that's actually not what people are. People are vulnerable. I think that the children and the child is actually much more of a universal subject and we're all children. When thinking about that binary between adults and children I think it's the adult side of the equation that we need to get rid of and just admit that we're all vulnerable, that we're all just a moment away from being bedridden or being handicapped or being you know hurt in a way that takes us out of the game and that's always there. And if we understand children as the universal subject and not adults as the universal subject then we make a world that's much more kind to each other. If we design the city for children then the city will be good for all of us.

AMT: So you've been doing this work with children for more than a decade now. Personally what has it given you?

DARREN O'DONNELL: Well it's really changed my work and my company. You know I have work that I do with adults for adults that's very adult-oriented kind of career. But this is children stuff is really sort of taken over and it's just led to an understanding of the world very differently so that when I'm out in the world young people look different to me than they did before. They are people that are my friends whether I know them or not. And this is particularly the case with teenagers because I do a lot of work now with teenagers because the kids in Toronto that I've been working with since 2006 now they're in their early 20s but I went with them through their teen years. And so just the threat of teenagers or the insecurity that one might feel amongst teenagers, the fear of being judged, all of that stuff, I feel like I'm a better less vulnerable person by admitting the vulnerabilities that I have with so much contact with young people.

AMT: It's really fascinating to hear you talk and to hear your ideas; lots to think about. Thanks for your work and thanks for making us think.

DARREN O'DONNELL: Great. Thanks a lot. It was great talking to you Anna Maria.

LL: Darren O'Donnell is a Canadian artist and the author of Haircuts by Children and Ether evidence for a New Social Contract. He spoke with Anna Maria Tremonti in April. Well that is our program for today. Stay tuned to Radio 1 for q. At the start of Eric Roberts' acting career he was tipped as the industry's next big thing. Some 500 credits and counting later he has another title, hardest working man in Hollywood. This morning Eric Roberts will stop by q to talk about the dangers of big expectations and finding refuge in work. That's coming up after the 10:00 news. 10:30 in Newfoundland. Now back to haircuts. It isn't just those little 10 year old stylists who know the joy of a good cut. Rocker George Thorogood has some sage advice on the importance of getting a good haircut to advance your career or to meet that special someone. So to rock us into the weekend here is George Thorogood with Get a Haircut. I'm Laura Lynch. Thanks for listening to the summer edition of The Current. [Music]

Back To Top »

Provide Transcript Feedback

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

Friday August 10, 2018 Full Episode Transcript

More Stories Like This