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The AIH Transcript for August 13, 2018

Hosts: Matt Galloway and Jeff Douglas

Prologue

MATT GALLOWAY: Hello, I'm Matt Galloway, sitting in for Carol Off.

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

[Music: Theme]

JD: Tonight…

MG: The bullet holes are stark evidence that it happened, but we still don't know why the shooting in Fredericton happened. And tonight a family member of the late Donnie Robichaud shares some of the questions he has about his cousin's death.

JD: Mourning has broken. After at least 17 days the grieving Orca mother known as J35 has finally stopped carrying her dead calf. And now, the focus shifts to another whale from her pod struggling with its own burden.

MG: Pesticide effects. A former school groundskeeper says his terminal cancer was caused by a widely used weed killer made by Monsanto — and he's won $289 million because a jury agreed.

JD: Not remotely shy, but retiring. Anne Cools, the first Black and longest serving member of Canada's upper chamber, ends her Senate career the way she served with some frank talk about what she believes is right.

MG: You just flip the page naturally, it's a force of obit. But recently in a local paper in Summerside, P.E.I. there were no obituaries — concerned readers were told there were no death notices simply because there had been no deaths.

JD: And…Mushroom cloud. A foraging blogger is under a shadow after her cook book is recalled by its publisher because one of its unwise recipes calls for raw wild fungi that can make you very sick. As It Happens: The Monday Edition: Radio that figures maybe she lost her morel compass.

[Music: Theme]

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Part 1: Fredericton Shooting: Cousin, Monsanto Verdict, PEI Obituaries

Fredericton Shooting: Cousin

Guest: Sean Callahan

JD: Dozens of residents are returning home to their apartment building in North Fredericton tonight, but not without trepidation. Three days ago the apartment complex was the scene of a brazen early morning shooting that left four people, including two Fredericton police officers, dead. Today, the city's police chief Leanne Fitch spoke to reporters and tried to answer some of the big outstanding questions.

SOUNDCLIP

POLICE CHIEF LEANNE FITCH: It's important for us to stand in front of the community and reassure you that our city is in good hands, and we're more moving forward the best we can after Friday's horrific events. Our police colleagues from across New Brunswick have come together to help police our community while we look after the well-being of our own officers. The homicide investigation into Friday's shooting that killed two of our citizens, Donald Robichaud and Bobbie Wright and two of our officers, Const. Robb Costello, and Const. Sara Burns is continuing. There are a few questions we've received from media and I want to answer them with you here today. We've had questions about the gun used in the shooting. The long gun we believe that was used in this event is commonly available for purchase. In other words, it wasn't restricted or prohibited. Most other questions we've received deal with rumors and speculation. And I understand that there is a desire to find out what happened — we all want to know that. The police investigation is very much active and is focused on finding facts. We cannot and we will not speculate as we could jeopardize the integrity of the investigation. There is one man in custody and he's been charged with four counts of first degree murder.

JD: That was Fredericton Police Chief Leanne Fitch speaking to reporters today. We've been learning more about the victims whose lives were lost that day. One of them was Donnie Robichaud, a father of three, musician and a Harley-Davidson enthusiast. Sean Callahan is his cousin. We reached Mr. Callahan in Fredericton.

MG: Sean, I'm sorry to hear of the loss of your cousin Donnie.

SEAN CALLAHAN: Yeah. Well, thank you very much. It is very hard.

MG: You were at the visitation today, tell me about that?

SC: It was hard, it was hard saying goodbye. They had him laid out, I walked up by the casket and held his hand, said a few words to him, give me a kiss on the forehead and I had to leave after that.

MG: These things, I mean, when they happen that it's almost as though they're happening to somebody else and people often say ‘I can't believe that this is happening or I want to wake up and that it's only a dream.’ It felt real to you after today?

SC: It did. And since Friday morning I heard about the shooting from a text message. A friend of mine texted me and said ‘Did Donnie get shot.’ I'm like ‘What are you talking about?’ And he's like ‘Well, it's all over one of his son's Facebook page that they're sorry about their dad and people are posting, kids are posting stuff saying did your dad get shot?’ And I'm like ‘I gotta call Donnie.’ So I called his cellphone, no answer, went right to voicemail. I called his work and they said he didn't make it to work. Anyway, eventually we did find out. Then we all knew, we all hugged, we all kissed, we all cried.

MG: What do you know about what he was doing in the moments before he was shot?

SC: The moments before he got shot him and his new girlfriend were packing the car. Donnie was going to go to work and right after work they were going to go zip-lining, and camping on vacation for the weekend. I think it was the wrong place, wrong time.

MG: Tell me about Donnie, who was he?

SC: He was the best man that anybody could ever meet. He always had a smile on his face, always greeted you. He was always there for you. I mean, if he was busy, if he was doing something he would drop it at the drop of a hat and he would help. That guy was just a well-liked all around person. Like when I think Donnie got shot, it’s like you know, ‘Who in the hell would shoot Donnie Robichaud?’ Because, you know, you always have — you always think there's a reason out there for somebody doing something wrong, but there would never be a reason to do anything to Donnie.

MG: You grew up together, right?

SC: Yeah, like I could throw a rock at his house from my house. Ever since this happened, just going through my head, just all stories, all things going through my head. Just like when we skateboarded —we lived in the country, so we built a 6 foot high half-pipe because we wanted one, so we built it. When we could drive Donnie built a Camaro from ground up. Because he had a Camaro I went and bought a five litre Mustang just because I wasn't going to be like him and like Chevs, so I went to the Ford side of it all. He was a great musician, amazing musician, played bass, sang, guitar — he could play everything.

MG: You bought him a guitar?

SC: I bought him a bass guitar and he was down as Tony's Music Box in Fredericton one day he fell in love with this guitar: White, Epiphone bass, Gibson-made and he didn't have enough money for it. It was 550 bucks and he told me all about it and I went in and bought it and gave it to him and he rocked out with that bass for about 20-22 years. It was his baby.

MG: What are the questions that you're asking yourself about what happened on Friday?

SC: Just why. Like, why a good person like Donnie? What was this man thinking? Because there was no, there's no connection to them whatsoever. Like people were saying it was an ex-boyfriend. People were saying it was about like gang related, and Donnie wasn't in a bike club. He was prior, he was like a year and a half ago. But this guy would have never seen Donnie wear any colours, and the only way he knew he was a biker is because he had his arms tattooed and he had a Harley.

MG: How are you going to remember Donnie?

SC: How am I going to remember Donnie? I'm going to remember Donnie’s smile, I'm going to remember Donnie looking out for me. My father just passed away last month. And I thought that death was hard, and I had Donnie there at the funeral. He gave me the biggest, hug we cried, we talked. He told me he'd always be there for me. He was checking on me every day. He was texting me, if it wasn't a text it was a phone call, a Facebook message, he'd stop by. I would go into his workplace. It was just — I'm going to remember Donnie as rocking out on stage doing what he loved to do because anytime he played I was there, I was videotaping, I was taking pictures. I have a picture of him playing his bass up on my wall and I had it prior to all of this, I always had a picture of Donnie up on my wall. That's how I'm going to remember him. I'm going to remember the good times and remember what we had together, and what we had was a bond that nobody could break.

MG: Sean, I'm sorry for what you've been through, and I appreciate you remembering your cousin and your great friend for us. Thank you.

SC: I thank you for letting me tell my story.

MG: Thanks so much. Bye, bye.

SC: Bye, bye.

JD: Sean Callahan is the cousin of Donnie Robichaud. We reached Mr. Calahan in Fredericton.

[Music: Somber Guitar Strums]

Monsanto Verdict

Guest: Brent Wisner

JD: Roundup is one of the world's most ubiquitous weed killers. Monsanto has been selling it since 1974. Now however, in a precedent setting case, a San Francisco jury has ruled that roundup gave Dewayne Lee Johnson terminal cancer. Johnson is a former school groundskeeper. He has non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. And on Friday the jury ordered Monsanto to pay Mr. Johnson $289 million in damages. Brent Wisner is Mr. Johnson's lawyer. We reached him in Los Angeles.

MG: Mr. Wisner, start off if you would by telling us how your client Dewayne Lee Johnson is doing?

BRENT WISNER: You know, his most recent scan is actually not very promising. It's shown that his cancer, which had been abated for a few months, is actually spreading pretty aggressively. So physically he's not doing well, but I think emotionally he's doing pretty darn well. He's really proud of what we've done and what his case has accomplished. I don't think he's really grappled with the reality of just how big of a deal this case is and how much change he's making, and I think he's looking forward to hopefully getting enough money so his wife doesn't have to work two jobs at 14 hours a day and can spend whatever time he has remaining with his wife and his two children.

MG: What does the verdict mean to him?

BW: I think it means a lot. It's sort of a vindication that there is an explanation for his horrific cancer. You know, not knowing what caused your cancer can be very, very upsetting and very disturbing. But he now knows and he now has vindication from a unanimous jury that in fact it was the Roundup. And although it doesn't change the fact that his cancer is going to probably win, it does give him some comfort knowing that he found the source, he did something good with it and his family will be taking care of.

MG: What was his exposure to Roundup?

BW: He used it for — prior to him getting diagnosed with cancer — it was about two years. He was using it on a school ground where during the summer months he would spray it almost every day and he'd be spraying about 150 gallons every morning. And so he was spraying a lot of it and it was — a lot of it his exposure came from drift coming just coming under his skin while he was using it. But also a lot of exposure came from a few incidents where the machine broke and it spilled and it covered his entire body and soaked to his skin for quite a long period of time.

MG: What happened that he was drenched in this pesticide a couple of times?

BW: That's right. One time he did — what he did — he didn't use a typical like backpacks sprayer. He was using basically a pressure washer that was attached to a truck and he had to lug the hose around as he was spraying it, and it was spraying at a very large volume. And once one time it actually broke off the machine and started gushing out and he actually had to go and physically stop the gushing because he was worried that this chemical would be spread around the school ground. He didn't want kids to be exposed to it. So he actually put his body in front of it to stop it and was able to turn off the machine. Then he was actually able to dig a trench to capture all the glyphosate so wouldn't get to where the children were and you know he got a lot of exposure from that.

MG: Did he have a sense at the time when he was doing this work and occasionally being drenched by a Roundup of the potential dangers of this chemical?

BW: He didn't really have a sense of the cancer risk. I mean, he did take precautions. He did wear a suit that was supposed to limit his exposure — he wore gloves. But, you know, he also said, and he was told by the distributor of the product, that the stuff was safe. In fact, what he testified to was that it was ‘safe enough to drink.’ That's what he was told and that's what he was led to believe and he thought this was a non-toxic substance. And, you know, when he got this very rare cancer and that was very aggressive and he had no other chemical exposures, you know you started asking around. He actually ended up calling Monsanto twice and said ‘Hey, could this be the cause of my cancer?’ And they took down his information and they said someone would call him back and then no one ever did. And so he actually, after he was diagnosed with cancer, he continued to spray it for about another year. And the science is showing that that actually can cause worsening of your cancer because it has a promotional effect. And what we know is during that time period where he was continuing to spray because Monsanto hadn't called him back, his cancer transformed. And it went from a relatively indolent version to a very aggressive form and essentially was the difference between a cancer he could manage and a death sentence.

MG: Now Monsanto and spokespeople for Monsanto, including the vice president, have pushed back on a lot of what you've said, saying that there have been scientific evidence taken out of context, that the verdict in the words of Scott Partridge the V.P. of Monsanto ‘does not change the four plus decades of safe use and science behind the product.’ They've quoted something like 800 different scientific studies saying that this product is safe. Why is there no daylight between the scientific studies that you've quoted in your case and what Monsanto was quoting?

BW: Well, because they're throwing up a lot of garbage just sort of blind people. So those 800 studies that he's referring to aren't about cancer. When you actually look at the cancer studies on glyphosate and Roundup — there's about 20 — and if you actually look at those studies the vast majority of them are positive. And so we showed this to the jury, I mean, the jury sat through a month of evidence just on the science. And so this is not a cherry picking of the science, this is actually what the science shows. And the only independent organization to actually look at it is the International Agency for Research on Cancer, which had 17 scientists, world-renowned scientists, come together to independently look at this issue. They had no agenda, they had no dog in the fight one way or the other and they all unanimously concluded that it is probably a human carcinogen. And so they want to have a fight with us about the science. I think it's literally their weakest defense because the science is actually overwhelmingly.

MG: The Environmental Protection Agency in the United States has never found the chemical within Roundup to be a cause of cancer. What does that tell you?

BW: It tells me there is something wrong in the EPA. I mean, the simple fact is the most recent report that came out was authored by a guy named Jess Rowland, who is currently under investigation by the Department of Justice for his inappropriate contacts with Monsanto executives. We showed the jury text messages, e-mails, a sort of relationship between Monsanto and the EPA that would disturb anybody who cares about public health. And the jury saw it. They didn't give any credibility to the EPA because this is — when it comes to Monsanto, when it comes to Roundup — for whatever reason they don't apply the same rules to them.

MG: This verdict has been described as extraordinary. The company that owns Monsanto, Bayer, the German pharmaceutical giant, saw its shares drop something like 11 per cent today. There are other lawsuits that are coming as well. If you take a look at the big picture, what's the significance of this verdict for Monsanto?

BW: I think this is a hopefully a wakeup call. You know, they need to do right, not just by Mr. Johnson, but by the thousands of people who have cancer because of this product.

MG: What does that mean?

BW: That means you need to start warning. No one here saying take it off the market. No one's saying that. I mean people still smoke cigarettes even though they cause cancer, but they make an informed decision when they do that because they know the risks. Monsanto needs to warn and tell people ‘Hey, this stuff might cause cancer, buyer beware,’ and then give people that choice. And then for the people that they didn't get that choice to, for the thousands of people who have cancer today, the thousands of people who are literally dying because of what Monsanto has done, they need to do right by them. They need to compensate them, help them pay their bills, help them pay their medical expenses and do what an ethical company would do in those circumstances. But Monsanto doesn't really care about that.

MG: Mr. Wisner, we'll leave it there. Thank you for joining us.

BW: All right, thanks so much.

JD: Brent Wisner is the lawyer representing Dewayne Lee Johnson in a case against the agrochemical company Monsanto. On Friday, a judge ordered Monsanto to pay $289 million in damages to Mr. Johnson after a jury determined that Roundup gave Mr. Johnson terminal cancer. After the verdict Monsanto issued a statement maintaining that Roundup does not cause cancer and saying it would appeal the verdict. We have more on the story on our website: www.cbc.ca/aih.

[Music: Ambient Synth Tones]

Seattle Stolen Plane

JD: On Friday night for more than an hour all air traffic around the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport was grounded. An airline employee had stolen a plane and he was taking it for one last ride. An hour and ten minutes later the plane crashed into an island in South Puget Sound. Richard Russell was alone on the 73-seat twin-engine turbo prop. He is presumed dead. Authorities have described him as quote “suicidal.” But while he was in the air he was communicative. He spoke with air traffic control and other pilots who came on the ground control frequency. He spoke of wanting to see J35, the orca that we're going to hear more about in later on in this program. The first voice you're going to hear is one of the people on that ground control frequency and then you'll hear Mr. Russell himself.

SOUNDCLIP

AIR TRAFFIC CONTROLLER: What we want to see is you not get hurt or anybody else get hurt. So, like I said, if you want to try to land that's probably the best place to go.

RICHARD RUSSELL: I want the coordinates of that orca. You know, the mama orca with the baby? I want to go see that guy.

JD: Mr. Russell was able to fly around for quite some time despite not having a flying license. Here was his explanation when he was asked how he could fly.

SOUNDCLIP

ATC: Just flying the plane around, you seem comfortable with that.

RR: Oh, hell yeah, it’s a blast, man. I’ve played video games before so I know what I’m doing a little bit.

ATC: And you can see all the terrain around you? You've got no issue with visibility or anything?

RR: Naw, everything’s peachy-keen. I just did a little circle around Rainier, it’s beautiful. I think I got some gas to go check out the Olympics and — yeah.

JD: Here is Richard Russell's dispatch from the Olympic Mountains.

SOUNDCLIP

ATC: 441.

RR: Have you been to the Olympics? These guys are gorgeous. Holy smokes.

ATC: Yeah, I have been out there, it's always a nice drive. But if he could, if he could start a left turn and turn back towards the east. I know you’re getting a good view there, but if he got too much further in that direction I won't be able to hear you anymore.

RR: Alrighty. Hey pilot guy, can this thing do a back flip, you think?

JD: The plane Richard Russell hijacked and flew for more than an hour crashed Friday evening on an island in South Puget Sound. Mr. Russell is presumed dead. No one else was injured in the incident. His family released a statement about the man they called ‘Beebo.’ It said in part, “It may seem difficult for those watching at home to believe, but Beebo was a warm compassionate man. It is impossible to encompass who he was in a press release. He was a faithful husband, a loving son and a good friend,” unquote.

[Music: Oboes]

PEI Obituaries

Guest: Colin MacLean

JD: Colin MacLean is a reporter at the P.E.I. paper The Journal Pioneer. Last week, his newsroom received a couple of calls from some readers who had concerns about Thursday's paper — specifically the obit section — or rather the lack of an obit section. Since then Mr. MacLean's tweet about that day's paper has gone viral. We reached Colin MacLean in Summerside.

MG: Mr. MacLean, what were these readers so concerned about when they called up your newspaper?

COLIN MACLEAN: Well, they were concerned that they didn't see any obituaries in that day's paper.

MG: How common is that that there are no obituaries in the daily paper?

CM: I would say it's fairly uncommon, it does happen every once in a while, maybe a couple times a year I would say. On this particular day though we got a couple of calls, I overheard the conversation from our circulation people and they actually checked. They had to kind of check around just to make sure that there was no mistake. And they told the customers that no there had been no mistake, there just weren’t any obituaries to be printed that day.

MG: And for your readers on P.E.I., how important is that section?

CM: I'd say it's fairly, pretty, important actually. I know a lot of people who, that's the first thing they look at when they get the newspaper.

MG: And so after hearing, I guess, in the Newsroom about those calls and the concerns that people were raising about the fact that there was no obituary section you sent out a tweet. And the tweet reads, these are your words, “There were no obituaries in today's paper. People are calling wondering what happened to them — just nobody died.” What was the response like to that tweet?

CM: Immediate. It took off fairly quickly. Within 24 hours it was up past's past a million. It's currently at 1.6 million impressions on Twitter.

MG: 1.6 million impressions?

CM: Yeah.

MG: Is it true your phone wouldn't charge because you were getting so many notifications?

CM: Yeah, well I was at home that night when it really took off, I had left work for the day and was sort of sitting at my computer and my phone just started constantly buzzing and lighting up at me and I realized it was getting pretty low so I plugged it in but it took almost all night to actually get a full charge just because it wouldn't stop going off.

MG: Why do you think this went so quickly so far around the world?

CM: It just sort of appealed to a cross-section of people. There was the reporters that could relate to it. And apparently it's also a theme of Torchwood episode or season I think, which is a Doctor Who spinoff. A lot of Doctor Who fans picked up on it really quickly.

MG: What was the theme that connected with the Doctor Who spinoff?

CM: Well, just the when I said that nobody died, I guess, I was talking locally but a lot of people who read it took it to mean anywhere. That was the premise of that episode where I think nobody could die for a certain period of time.

MG: Over the course of one day or something like that.

CM: Something like that I'm not I'm not a ‘Whovian’ myself so I've never seen the episode, but I did Google it after work. And there was also a lot of talk of the zombie apocalypse for some reason. People saw the tweet and thought it meant that they were undead about. I don't know why, I didn't really connect it that way, but there was a lot of talk of it. And just in general people just sort of got a kick out of it. They thought the idea of nobody dying for a day was some good news for a change maybe.

MG: Which is a bit of good news, it also led to a long string of replies. What are some of the things that people have been saying in the replies to this what seems like a fairly innocuous tweet?

CM: You can imagine there's a lot of Doctor Who memes going around, a lot of journalists sharing their own stories of similar experiences. One in particular had a tweet about forgetting to put the crossword in that day's paper and fielding many, many calls about that. And I think that's actually happened here once or twice too, somebody’s forgotten to put the answers to the previous day's crossword and that's never a good day. Crosswords, obituaries are pretty popular items still in local newspapers.

MG: We're in a time now where anyone can get information from anywhere in the world at a click of a finger. But it says something about the importance of people opening the newspaper and reading about the changing of their community. Why is it, in 2018, that obituaries still matter in the newspaper do you think?

CM: Well, especially for a small community — and, I mean, itself is only 150,000 people — if you open the newspaper and look at the obituaries, there's a pretty good chance that you might actually know somebody there. And people still like to pay respect, you go to wakes and funerals on the island, and they're pretty well attended in general and people like to know where and when they can go to do that and give their respects to you know long-lost cousins or friends from their childhood or you name it. Places where we're still pretty community driven, I would say, obituaries are still pretty popular.

MG: This was generated, this tweet and the conversation around it was generated out of state newspaper. On Friday was there an obituary section?

CM: There was, I believe there were several obituaries that day.

MG: Mr. MacLean, it’s great to to speak to you about this. People will follow if the obituary section does it appear the newspaper again. Glad to talk to you today. Thank you so much.

CM: Thank you very much. I'll be sure to tweet out again if there are no more obituaries.

MG: You have a big tweet to follow now and a Twitter reputation that you have to live up to.

MG: Apparently. We'll see what we can do about that.

JD: Colin MacLean is a reporter at The Journal Pioneer in Summerside, Prince Edward Island. And if you'd like to see a copy of the paper on the day there were no obituaries visit our website: www.cbc.ca/aih.

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Part 2: Orca Update, Anne Cools

Orca Update

Guest: Mark Malleson

JD: For 17 days and 16,000 kilometres the world has been watching and grieving along with the creature who waits somewhere in the neighborhood of 2,000 kilograms. All that time an orca known as J35, also known as Tahlequah, was carrying the body of her dead calf without regard for her own health, which was suffering. Yesterday however, scientists were able to confirm that her tour of grief, as it's been called, had ended. Mark Malleson is a skipper with Prince of Wales Whale Watching, and a research assistant for Fisheries and Oceans Canada. He originally spotted Tahlequah’s disturbing behaviour and alert at the Center for Whale Research. We reached him in Victoria, British Columbia.

MG: Mr. Malleson, how do we know that this orca mother is no longer keeping her dead calf afloat?

MARK MALLESON: Well there would have been quite a few people monitoring it when we last saw her carrying it on Friday. I saw them on Friday then they made it over to San Juan Island and I believe the following day it was an old Ken Balcomb from The Center for Whale Research saw J35 go by his she certainly didn't have it. So, you know, after 17 days people kind of knew how to spot it because she had a pretty distinctive high arch when she would — after she came up for air she would initially drop it and then dive back down to retrieve it. So yeah it just wasn't seen so.

MG: Well how is she doing now?

MM: She looks good. According to Ken Balcomb she looked really good. She was with her pod moving really quickly down the coast of San Juan Island on Saturday, actually Sunday as well I think he saw her. I saw then them today out west, I got a glimpse of her. She was cruising along with her pod heading out to open ocean looking for fish.

MG: Have you ever seen anything like this?

MM: I've never seen a killer whale carrying around a dead calf before, no. However, a few years ago there was one in L-Pod, I believe it was L72 was carrying around a dead calf for a day. And this was a lengthy time, so nothing like this ever, no.

MG: Yeah, I was going to say a day, that's one thing — 17 days is something completely different.

MM: Yeah, and whether it's a record or not, it's certainly the documented record.

MG: This is a story that went all around the world and I think the question that so many people were asking is why. Why do you think she did this for so long?

MM: Just going through a mourning period, a grieving period, that would be my take on it and a lot pf people’s take on it.

MG: Is that something we understand much about, the grieving period that an orca would be in the midst of?

MM: We certainly don't understand a lot what goes through their brains, but we do know they're highly intelligent. We've seen animals grieve in in captivity when calves have been separated from their mother, but it's sad. That's a pretty emotional for a killer whale to lose its offspring. I mean, they stay with mom in their life typically. So they're very strong bonded animals.

MG: And so the fact now that what people were calling ‘the tour of grief’ is over but also that she seems to be moving well. What does that tell you about you know the prognosis for her?

MM: Well, I feel she's going to be fine. She's just going to carry on as other whales who have lost their offspring, whether it's stillborn or whether it's one that died shortly after birth, you know, they just have to carry on. They have to survive as a species. Help her pod get food because they prey share, so she has an integral role in the group.

MG: There's another member of that pod, the J-Pod, J50 who is sick. What can you tell us about this whale?

MM: Well, she's been a bit of a runt that whale. When when I saw her two weeks ago you could a see real depression behind the blowhole and did not look great, it has been seen to lag behind the group. In fact, today when we had J-Pod her and her mom and her older brother were trailing behind them a mile and a half, and, you know, she's a fighter though. Hopefully she'll be able to maintain keep up with the pod and get out to the good feeding ground out the open ocean where they’re headed now.

MG: She's on antibiotics now, is that correct?

MM: Well, yeah, the American government did put some antibiotics via dart into her. I don't know how many doses she got. Hopefully a few and hopefully it works. It may be a bit late for that if she truly has an infection. We just don't know, I haven't heard the results of the biopsies or the breast samples, I haven't really heard that, but, you know, hopefully she is strong enough to stay with the group and they can get out and find some food because she has been seen eating.

MG: As somebody who watches these whales really closely, how concerned are you? I mean, these two stories as they say have captured the attention of people around the world. How concerned are you about the health of these whales?

MM: Well, I've always been concerned about the health of these whales when I realized that their population is dropping. When I first started watching in 1997 the population was at a peak, you know, close to 100 animals. They rebounded really well after the capture years. You know, a whole generation was sort of wiped out from the capturer years in the 60s and 70s and they did really well and they came back, but then there's been a significant drop, and the direct correlation in the decline of the chinook salmon.

MG: And so what do you do to turn that around? Not the salmon population, but what do you do to turn around the precarity of the health of these whales?

MM: You know, we need to put more wild salmon back into the water. You know, what the Americans just did, got rid of fish farms in the. That's a step, it's a huge step to get rid of fish farms, remove dams.

MG: Are you hopeful that the attention that a story like the one around J35 and J50, will get attention help in that effort to try and preserve the health of these whales?

MM: J50 is a figurehead for this, you know J35 carrying her dead calf around for that 17 days. I mean, that is amazing publicity and awareness globally. It can't hurt. You know, the government is now really trying to do something. The American government working a little closer with the Canadian Government Fisheries and Oceans Canada seem to be you know maybe getting on the same page.

MG: Mark, it's good to talk to you about this. I appreciate it. Thanks so much.

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

MG: And you. Bye, bye.

JD: Mark Malleson is senior skipper with Prince of Wales Whale Watching and a research assistant for Fisheries and Oceans Canada. We reached Mr. Malleson in Victoria.

[Music: Guitar Plucks]

Sir John A. Macdonald Statue

JD: This weekend, a bronze statue of Sir John A. Macdonald Canada's — I think it's safe to say controversial — first prime minister was taken down in British Columbia. Victoria city council voted to approve the motion last week as an act of reconciliation. Sir John A. played a role in the establishment of the residential school system, which separated more than 100,000 Indigenous children from their families. That statue now sits in storage. Today however, Ontario's Progressive Conservative government offered to take it off B.C.’s hands. From Question Period, here is PC MPP Goldie Ghamari.

SOUNDCLIP

GOLDIE GHAMARI: My question is for the Minister of Tourism, Culture and Sport. Mr. Speaker, last week I was shocked to read that the city of Victoria intended to take down a statue of Sir John A. Macdonald. These attempts to erase parts of our history do nothing to educate people and are only political correctness run amuck. Can the Minister inform the House what our government intends to do to preserve John A. Mcdonald's legacy and encourage a more fulsome teaching of Canadian history?

[APPLAUSE]

MINISTER SYLVIA JONES: Thank you to the member from Carleton for her question, it's an important one. Sir John A. Mcdonald plays a central role in our national story. He did it more to found our nation than any other father of confederation. In fact, we would not be debating here today without Sir John A. That's why our government wrote to the mayor of Victoria to say we'd be happy to give Sir John A. new home here in Ontario. Members will note when they depart this chamber, the first portrait you see is, of course, the fathers of confederation and a statue of our first Prime Minister stands proudly at southern end of the ground at Queen’s Park. History matters and we need to acknowledge the important role Sir John A. Mcdonald played in Canada and Ontario’s history.

JD: That was Sylvia Jones, Ontario's minister for Culture, Sport and Tourism. Answering a question from MPP Goldie Ghamari. Ontario's Queen’s Park incidentally already has quite a large statue of Sir John A. Macdonald, Canada's first prime minister and architect of the residential school system. The statue that was removed in Victoria was replaced with a temporary plaque — that plaque has already been vandalized.

[Music: Country Guitar]

Anne Cools

Guest: Anne Cools

JD: When Senator Anne Cools was appointed to the upper chamber, independent senator was not one of the titles available for her to choose. But it's hard to think of a senator who has displayed more independence over her nearly 35 years of service. First appointed by Pierre Trudeau in 1984, Senator Cools split with the Liberals over same-sex marriage. Then the conservative split with her over her failure to support something called ‘Stephen Harper's Budget Bill. More recently, the senator has taken Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to task for his efforts to take some of the partisanship out of her workplace. Yesterday, Anne Cools reached the mandatory retirement age of 75. We reached the now former senator in Ottawa.

MG: Senator Cools, it's been more than three decades that you have been in Ottawa, and in that time, I think it's fair to say, you never really were somebody who was willing to go along with the flow. What was behind that?

ANNE COOLS: Well, if by that expression you mean that I have a mind of my own and that I think and I reach my conclusions after a very serious deliberation, then I would say you described me most adequately and I would say most precisely and exactly.

MG: Well — and thank you. That's part of what we're trying to get at in some ways is that the Senate can be a very partisan institution, it can be divided down particularly partisan lines and you were somebody who never really stuck with either of those lines. What was behind that?

AC: Well, they tell me that I have been a member of all of the caucuses, and that is not undesirable, but what I would say to you is that I remind you that I was called to the Senate by one of the fine human beings, one of the greatest Canadians. I was brought to the Senate by Pierre Elliott Trudeau. And he had great respect for me and for my work, as I did for him. And I remember, with some vividness, the day he called me to invite me to join the Senate. And I recall, with great affection, his often statement to me, which was always something to the effect that ‘Anne, you have tremendous moral courage. You must persist in your moral courage.’ He says ‘because you have a tendency to stand for that which is right and just,’ and that has stayed in my mind for 35 years.

MG: Do you think that moral courage is in great enough supply in the Senate these days?

AC: Moral courage is always in too short supply, I would say to you, in life. The Senate is a changed place these days and I've been working hard to understand it, but I'm not sure that I fully do. Remember, the Senate, like the House of Commons, has depended on party politics to a large extent to be able to deliver results. And there has been some reconsideration by large numbers of people as to the usefulness and the effectiveness of party politics, but I see party politics as a necessary part of parliamentary institutions.

MG: You're talking about the decision by the Prime Minister to make the Liberal senators independent senators?

AC: Well, every senator is supposed to be an independent senator. Independence is not a party strike or the absence of party strike. Independence means having the faculty, the facility, the intelligence and the moral courage to be able to question and to take decisions in accordance with a body of ideas.

MG: Your independence in the Senate has led you to stand behind, I think, what a lot of people would describe as controversial positions, some controversial positions.

AC: Some would say controversial, but I thought there were as obvious as apple pie. What controversial ones were you thinking of?

MG: Well, one of them being.

AC: My support of fathers and children?

MG: One of them being your opposition to same-sex marriage.

AC: Oh, that’s a long time ago.

MG: It is, but that's in part why I wanted to ask you.

AC: That was not controversial at all. That position that I held was widely held by many.

MG: On the floor of the Senate you said “As if one can dismiss 800 years of the history of legal marriage, the current liberals don't want to separate church from the state. They want to separate Canadians from their religion.” In the time that has passed since then, do you think differently about that position that you held?

AC: No, not at all. Time has overtaken many circumstances and so it is I accept that. You know, just because I have a point of view and just because I no longer am beating that drum because there's no need for it, that means nothing at all. That was what I thought at the time. And I would ask you to probe a little bit farther than you have been probing, because at the time I based my arguments on some very legalistic sorts of issues. And the question is that by law marriage had been defined to be a union, a voluntary union of a man and a woman. And my point at the time was that an entire history of an institution was being discarded with very little debate. That was my point.

MG: In that time since.

AC: I don't see why you want to be — I am at this point in my life, I'm in my 75^th year and you want to go back to ten years ago to rehash a debate that is long past.

MG: It's just in the interest of talking about your time on the Senate and I just was wondering whether your views on that had changed, whether as you saw that definition of marriage be expanded and you saw families being created under a new definition of marriage, you had a different view.

AC: No, I don't think I've changed my view from what I viewed at that moment, no.

MG: You told reporters in the past that you were glad that no one called you the Black Canadian Senator. You were the first Black Canadian senator when appointed in 1984.

AC: I didn’t tell them that I didn't like being called the ‘Black Canadian Senator.’ I've made the point that I am rarely referred to as the Black senator. It's always Ontario senator or something like that or Toronto Senator. I’m rarely referred to as a Black senator.

MG: Is there value in being the first?

AC: Well, there's no value in being first. It's just a historical fact — it happened. It’s not a value issue, it's just an act of history.

MG: Did you see it as an act of history? Did you see it as a point of inspiration for communities or was it just.

AC: Well, if I I can answer that by letting you be informed that I am Canada's most famous senator ever. And this doesn't come out of skin colour — or anything else so related. It comes out of my work and my moral position on very profound and strong and important issues.

MG: What does that mean, the most famous Canadian senator of all time?

AC: Well this is what pollsters tell me that when they do polls trying to identify what the public knows about the Senate that my name is the name that comes up most of the time.

MG: What's the next stage for you then?

AC: The next stage for me is discovering what it means not to be a senator. I have been called Senator for 35 years and most people just call me senator. So I will now learn that I will have a life without being a senator and that's okay, too. I will have more time to spend with my husband and my dog, whom I love very much. And I hope to find some time to write about some of the wonderful things that I've learned and studied and read about this great country, it’s great constitution and its great leaders like Sir John A. Macdonald and George Brown — great, great men who were able to bring about something called Canada because they have the patience and the ability, the endurance to sit and debate and talk in meetings until they could reach agreement.

MG: Anne Cools, thank you very much.

AC: Thank you.

MG: Bye now.

AC: Bye, bye.

JD: Anne Cools retired from the Senate yesterday. We reached her in Ottawa. And we have that interview up on our website if you would like to listen again or share it. www.cbc.ca/aih.

[Music: Piano Ballad]

Toxic Mushroom Foraging

JD: On Amazon Tales from a Forager's Kitchen has a three star average rating — nice. But here's the thing, 47 per cent of customer reviews are 5 stars, 46 per cent one-star. So yes the book is divisive and now its publisher, Rodale Books, is siding with the naysayers. They're not criticizing the prose style of the writer. They are criticizing the potential toxicity of the recipes. Rodale Books is by Johnna Holmgren, founder of the blog Fox Meets Bear and Instagram star. Her motto from the blog is quote “Feet on the earth, hands in the dirt, heart wide-open, head in the clouds. It is an expansive philosophy. But fellow foragers are complaining that when it came to some of the recipes in the book her head perhaps should have been in the game rather than in the clouds. One example, dark chocolate dipped fungi, in which the author advises readers to brush and wash from morel mushrooms before covering them with chocolate — yum, yum, yum. Problem is, you're not supposed to eat raw morels, they can cause severe stomach upset, plus which mushroom experts say real morels look a lot like false morels, which can have even worse effects — including possibly coma. And then there's the smoothie recipe that calls for raw elderberries, which can cause nausea and abdominal pain. And the pumpkin soup with raw acorns, which are loaded with tannin, a bitter substance frequently used a tan leather — almost never used to make food that you would want to put in your mouth. Given the possibility it contains recipes for disaster, the publisher is recalling the book and offering refunds, which suggests that even if you are indeed a forager braving the elements outside, not the same as braving the elements in the kitchen.

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August 13, 2018 episode transcript

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