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The Current Transcript for April 17, 2019

Host: Anna Maria Tremonti

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

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VOICE: Albertans have decided that we will no longer passively accept the campaign of defamation against the industry that has helped to create one of the most prosperous and generous socities on Earth.

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: A triumphant Jason Kenney signaling that the anger that has brought him to power in Alberta is about to be unleashed. In an election campaign fought on the economy, Alberta voters not only gave his United Conservative Party a clear victory, they return to the right of centre governments that had dominated the province for more than four decades. But for the first time they also have a substantive cluster of opposition politicians in the NDP MLAs who managed to hold on. We're on that story in just a moment. And then rebuilding a cathedral to restore a nation.

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VOICE: We will rebuild this cathedral, all of us together. It's probably part of France's destiny and it will be our project for years to come.

AMT: French President Emmanuel Macron has pledged to rebuild the Notre-Dame cathedral in five short years and world heritage site experts are already on the scene. But we'll hear from a medievalist, yes that's what she's called, who says as devastating that they are, such major fires can never really destroy iconic churches because they're not static monuments, but structures that live and change with the ages. That's in half an hour. And then the more Marc de Villiers learned about hell, the more he thought what the hell.

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VOICE: They're always these fiery pit sulfurs full of stench and noise and willings and gnashings of teeth. I always liked the gnashings part of it. I never quite figured out how that worked.

AMT: To different cultures and different religions, hell is very different things. From horned beasts and pits of fire to an otherworldly office where bureaucrats can ignore you into perpetuity. Torment and punishments depend on where and in which century you sin. In an hour, Marq de Villiers offers a sinners guide to hell and damnation. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current.

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Jason Kenney's big win positions him as Canada's true conservative leader, political scientist says

Guests: Graham Thomson, Duane Bratt, Shachi Kurl

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VOICE: Friends, this democratic decision is a message to all of those Albertans who are struggling, to the unemployed, to those who have given up, to the small business owners barely hanging on, to the young people who got their degrees and their diplomas, but can't find work, to those who have lost their homes and their hope after years of economic decline and stagnation. To them we send this message: help is on the way and hope is on the horizon.

AMT: That was United Conservative Party leader Jason Kenney reacting last night to the results of Alberta's provincial election. After an acrimonious campaign, Albertans made a decisive choice. The UCP is projected to win 63 of the provinces 87 seats, leaving the NDP with less than half the MLAs they had before the election. Once the outcome was clear, Rachel Notley, who made history in 2015 when she became Alberta's first NDP premier, after four decades of Conservative rule had this to say.

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VOICE: I was seven-years-old when my dad was first elected to the legislature of this province and that was the same year that the Conservatives first took power. I was 51 when we ended the era of one party rule. Today, politics in Alberta has changed forever. Governing in Alberta should never again be a divine right, but always, always an earned privilege.

AMT: As Albertans wake up to a changed political landscape, so too do political leaders next door in B.C. and in the nation's capital, where Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his Liberal government can expect a tough new opponent in Jason Kenney. Our Wednesday national affairs panel is ready to make sense of it all. So let's delve right in. Graham Thomson is a former political columnist for The Edmonton Journal. He now contributes to CBC, iPolitics and Alberta Views. Graham's in our Edmonton studio. Duane Bratt is a political science professor at Mount Royal University in Calgary. He joins us from our studio there. And Shachi Kurl is executive director of the Angus Reid Institute. She is in our Vancouver studio. Hello everyone. Welcome.

SHACHI KURL: Good morning.

GRAHAM THOMSON: Good morning.

DUANE BRATT: Good morning.

AMT: Boy you are all up and at em, ready to talk here. So let's go around once and let's hear your first impressions of this vote result. Graham Thomson?

GT: Yeah nothing really unexpected. You know we thought it was going to be a UCP majority and we thought it was going to be Edmonton basically the odd man out. So Edmonton yeah. Edmonton is sort of the island of NDP support in this sea of UCP majority government across the province.

AMT: Duane Bratt?

DB: So I was UCP headquarters last night and I was chatting with some people after Kenney's speech and they remarked that it wasn't just a return to a Conservative party, but a return to conservatism. And what they were doing was repudiating not just the four years of the NDP, but the last decade of the Progressive Conservative government. And so really a return back to the days of Ralph Klein.

AMT: What does that mean Duane?

DB: What does that mean is that was in the aftermath of the Ralph Klein is when the wild rose away from the PC party. Many of the UCP supporters, particularly Jason Kenney himself, were the wild rose wing, which was a much more conservative brand than what we think of with the PC. So it was basically, we're not just rolling it back a little, we're rolling it back a lot.

AMT: Shachi Kurl?

SK: Well I think for me watching last night it was move over Justin Trudeau, Canada has a new master of political symbolism and he's being driven to a rally stage in a pick up truck. So we now to Duane's point, see another province that is moving in to the blue category or the blue column and you know when we look at how federal-provincial politics are going to play out in the months and weeks to come we really do see another brick in the brick wall of Conservative opposition when we look at who's in charge in you know increasingly more and more of the country and certainly the population base of the country. You look at Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, now Alberta and arguably, even Quebec is a little bit right of center.

AMT: Okay well let's talk about some of the specifics of what Mr. Kenney was signaling on that stage last night. He talked about jobs and we heard him in that last clip saying that hope is on the horizon, help is on the way. There are some specifics though. He's going after those who defame Alberta's energy industry Graham? Tell us more.

GT: Yeah this is a war room. He's actually going to be raising money to fund this war room. In fact the money is being raised through a carbon levy, a carbon tax, so he does have a sort of pseudo tax on the heavy emitters raising money part of it goes to this war room and the idea is fighting back against those who denigrate our oil sands and that our products from Alberta. This actually hearkens back to Ed Stelmach over a decade ago did the same sort of thing trying to fight back in the PR front. The problem is it doesn't really work. I think you're shaking your fist at your enemies it doesn't really change anything. This goes to the whole Bele campaign you know the anger and frustration we saw from Jason Kenney throughout the campaign that is people take notice are brought out he said today we began to fight back and this is the UCP government in waiting who is going to be taking on all comers in terms of standing up for our oil industry. The problem is it doesn't really change any thing but it does play to the base. They're angry a lot of frustration right now in Alberta, the the economy is still sputtering, high unemployment in Edmonton and Calgary and no new pipeline in the ground. So anger and the economy helped drive this campaign.

SK: If I could.

DB: There's a lot more to just the war room Bill Graham. I mean he's talking about investigating the charitable status from environmental groups launching a public inquiry into foreign funding of these organizations laudably the Rockefeller Foundation, the Tides Foundation. And let us not get into who are you threatening. Be sure of the flow of oil to BC and referendums on equalization and all of that. It's a major plank of fighting back.

AMT: Go ahead Shachi.

SK: Well I would say to echo the point. This is about well more than the base. More than 50 percent of the popular vote went to the United Conservative Party last night. I think that is important to underscore and remember and Kenney did it by yes tapping in to a sense of alienation that people in Alberta have been feeling. They are the most likely to feel like they are getting a raw deal from Canada and from confederation at the moment they're most likely to feel like that lack of new pipeline capacity represents a crisis for them. This was also very much a referendum on the economy and Alberta voters under Rachel Notley although she'd arguably didn't have a lot to do with that series of terrible horrible no good very bad economic events really have gone through the wringer over the last four years. If you start with the Fort McMurray fires and end most recently with what we've seen around the push back on carbon pricing but more than that things like the one bidding of oil prices in Alberta these have not been kind. Years and I think what we also saw was very much a sense of Albertans wanting to tap into a change or a new hope and that represents a pretty tall order for Jason Kenney. He has a lot to deliver on. We heard him talking last night about more than one pipeline he's not necessarily going to get a big gold star for delivering or being seen to deliver being on watch when Trans Mountain finally comes online. He's talking about more pipelines. Let's see if he can actually deliver that.

AMT: Well to that end, if there is actually a reality about what he can and cannot deliver, this idea of a public inquiry in naming, well he names the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Tides Foundation. now the David Suzuki Foundation, is he actually setting up another target?

DB: Well not just that he also talked about HSBC. He didn't mention in the speech last night, but he has talked about Steve Williams at Suncore and Shell as well. Any organization that discusses climate change and the support of carbon tax is on the enemies list.

AMT: Can we talk about his message to Quebec last night?

SK: Well it was very cannily done. It was done in French to ensure that he would have the audience and the ears of Quebecers and you know we talked about implications for other provinces and for the rest of the country. I you know what I noted was that there was not a direct message to British Columbia. There was a direct message to Quebec. Now some of that is protein on the plate for his base. Quebec remains the province in this country where public opinion is most dead set against pipeline capacity, not only in their province, but anywhere in the country. So there is call it a bit of a callout or a shoutout. Couched or masked in an appeal for for the better nature of Quebecers. So this also opens up another front around the Alberta versus Quebec dynamic and where does the real power base in this country lie and where would Jason Kenney like to see it lie?

AMT: So he's talking about fiscal federalism. He's talking about equalization, the equalization payments. Can those be changed and iwhat's going on there Duane>.

DB: It's a gimmick. It really is a political gimmick. This is a federal program that Albertans have disliked for a very long period of time but the current formula that the Trudeau government renewed was established by the Harper government of which Jason Kenney was a senior member of. So this idea that they're going to have a referendum on a federal constitutional program that will get the federal government to start negotiating constitutional change I think is ridiculous. But there are so many myths around equalization in Alberta there are still people who believe that every year the finance minister writes a $10 billion cheque to Quebec and they don't really understand it, but it creates a lot of anger.

GT: And I was going to say the thing is Kenney tapped into that. The thing is Kenney was also enflaming that rhetoric. You know he wasn't explaining how the system works. He was very much getting into these issues like equalization. He's talking about course during the court that the court fight against the federal carbon tax. He's talking about taking constitutional fights against bills like C-69 and C-48, those arethe bills that Alberta sees standing in the way of getting more pipelines built. And you know he's talking about turning off the taps to British Columbia. Talk to constitutional experts and they say you know he can't win any of those fights, but he's willing to to go ahead and he was rattling a saber throughout the entire campaign saying he's goingo t do this and people lapped that up and thought it was great. This again harkons back to Ralph Klein, when he you know he wanted to fight against same sex marriage and the GST and equalization. He didn't, but it plays to the base. It seems though that Kenney is more determined to actually try and do these fights and it plays to people's sense of frustration in Alberta. Will he get anything done? I doubt it. The problem for Kenney.

AMT: Why not?

GT: Well because the constitutional experts. Fine, you have a referendum on equalization in Alberta and as Duane said it's a gimmick. And you go to court and try and stop the federal carbon tax after he scraps of the carbon tax in Alberta. Experts say that's not going to work either. But this is something that he is willing to put forward in a campaign. The problem is then you know reality sets in today and the question is going to be how far can he push this and what happens if it doesn't work?

AMT: I got a clip here of the BBC premier because he has promised to turn off the taps of gasoline to British Columbia. Within an hour he said of being sworn in as premier. This is how the BC Premier John Horgan responded to those threats on Monday.

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VOICE: During election campaigns, political leaders speak candidly and sometimes hyperbolic and aggressively. We'll just have to see how it goes. I will work with whoever comes out the other end. Will it be positive or negative? That is for the future to decide.

AMT: Shachi Kurl, what's going on? Is that going to evaporate or what?

SK: Well as we may recall from about this time last year, Alberta turns off the taps, BC turns off the sips. No more wine to Alberta, among other things. It all sounds quite dire and ominous but again I would just point out and take away that when Jason Kenney had a moment to speak to the country last night he actually spoke at length that was a long speech. It was more than a moment he chose to speak to Quebecers and so I would suggest that that you know let's see how much of that is rhetoric and how much of that is real. The fact is it is the central government that now is in the driver's seat on Trans Mountain. John Horgan knows that. Jason Kenney knows that. It has been down to a regulatory process that was delayed, rereviewed, apparently back online. John Horgan when he talks about speaking hyperbolically can be as bellicose as he wants to be about British Columbia opposing it, but ultimately it is not in the box of tools for British Columbia to stop the pipeline. I think Jason Kenney knows that. So again turning off the taps to BC may feel like a pretty good rallying there you go, gotcha thing to do. Let's see if he actually does it.

DB: And he's been very cagey on what he has said. He says within an hour of the very first cabinet meeting he will proclaim the bill. He doesn't say he will use it. It'll mean he'll proclaim it into law, but that will trigger a court injunction request by the BC attorney general. They had already made their request when the bill had passed the legislature and the courts said well it hasn't been proclaimed. So this is hypothetical. So Kenney hasn't said he would do it, but he would proclaim it. So there is a bit of nuance there that may have been lost on many of his supporters.

GT: Well I think that was deliberate though. It's really lost on his supporters. And ou're right Duane. He's actually saying, he's not saying he's going to turn the taps off, proclaim the law. And that means that as you said the jumps in and goes to court and could actually that law could be overturned. That was the reason Notley didn't actually enact that law. Another thing is that the big question is what exactly is BC doing right now to stop the pipeline? Well really nothing.

SK: Well there's not much BC can do. I mean you know John Horgan campaigned on doing everything he could do to stop it knowing very well this is what politicians say in campaigns, knowing very well that there wasn't a lot he could do.

GT: Exactly. So BC is really doing nothing right now. They've gone to court to basically have the courts determine the actual powers of a province to regulate the flow through a pipeline. In other words can a province regulate the flow through a pipeline to protect the environment. That's all it's doing. It's not actually saying we're going to try and stop this pipeline. But Kenney has framed it in the sense that BC still wants to stop the pipeline and they play to the base once again and to Albertan's anger and threatening to turn off the taps sounds wonderful. Turn off the taps, but ultimately it likely isn't going to go anywhere.

AMT: Let's just talk about the power of the provinces because as you guys have mentioned Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, New Brunswick all opposed to the carbon tax, but also a very solid group of Conservative leaders who seem to be on the same page. How is this going to affect Andrew Scheer as a Conservative leader?

DB: Andrew Scheer is not the Conservative leader. Andrew Scheer may be leader of the federal Conservative Party of Canada, the Conservative leaders are Jason Kenney and Doug Ford.

AMT: And which one's first?

DB: I would put Jason Kenney.

AMT: Did you check with Doug Ford on that?

DB: I think Jason Kenney is the most powerful Conservative politician even before last night and I think Ford is echoing a lot of Kenney as opposed to the other way around. Kenney's a lot more experienced, a lot cagier, a lot smarter and has a much larger mandate. So I expect Trudeau in the fall is going to do similar to what Kenney did, when Kenney talked about the Trudeau-Notley alliance, Trudeau's going to talk about the Kenney-Ford or the Ford-Kenney alliance.

SK: And that may not necessarily play badly for Andrew Scheer. Andrew Scheer may be quite content to to ride along this wave of anger. You know a return to the right. I'm reluctant to use the word populism because it's such a laden word these days, but sort of that grassroots fieryness that we hear from Jason Kenney, that we hear from Doug Ford. You know Scheer's best bet from that perspectivemay to just be to get out of the way and let these guys to an extent do his job for him.

AMT: What do you think, Graham?

GT: Yeah I think it's going to help Trudeau having Kenney and of course Ford, those who have scrapped their own carbon tax or price on carbon in their own respect the provinces and of course you've seen already Trudeau saying you've got Conservatives now who want to make pollution free. And I think you know look at even the majority of people voted for the UCP in Alberta, a majority did not vote for Doug Ford in Ontario. He got 40 percent of the vote and the majority people actually voted for parties that actually supported the carbon tax, wants to do something on climate change. So the thing is Alberta is irrelevant in many ways to Trudeau in terms of getting any sort of seats or support. He's after BC, Ontario, Quebec and he can go hard against Jason Kenney in the fall.

AMT: So we're going to have to leave it there, but you guys have just signalled that there are going to be some really interesting ripple effects upon ripple effects as this goes forward. Thank you all of you for joining in today. Bye bye.

AMT: That is Graham Thomson, former political columnist with The Edmonton Journal. Duane Bratt, political science professor at Mount Royal University in Calgary. And Shachi Kurl, executive director of the Angus Reid Institute in Vancouver. Let us know what you think. Tweet us @TheCurrentCBC. Find us on Facebook. Go to our website cbc.ca/thecurrent and click on the contact link. We will be having a national affairs panel that keeps rotating on Wednesdays. Let us know what you think about this conversation today and stay with us. We're back just after the news. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current on CBC Radio One.

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Notre-Dame fire just another chapter in the life of a historic monument, says medievalist

Guests: Mechtild Rossler, Jose Luiz Pedersoli, Sara Uckelman

AMT: Hello. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti and you're listening to The Current.

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AMT: Still to come, don't pack any snowballs. We are taking a trip to the fiery depths of Hades. Canadian writer Marq de Villiers has gone way underground for his latest investigation, Hell and Damnation: A Sinner's Guide to Eternal Torment. And after you hear what he has to say about the devil's lair, you will never picture hell the same way again. We'll get there. But first, the road ahead to restore a place of heaven on earth.

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Sounds from gathering in Paris.

AMT: That was the scene at dusk in Paris yesterday. As the light faded people gathered at the Church of Saint-Sulpice and walked in solemn procession to Notre-Dame. Some carry candles. Pray for us is the refrain. And as the city of lights and the world grieves for Our Lady of Paris, the French president Emmanuel Macron renewed his promise to rebuild to even greater glory.

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VOICE: Translation from French: I'm telling you this tonight with force. We are a people of builders. We have so much to rebuild. So yes, we will rebuild the Notre-Dame cathedral even more beautifully. And I want this to be done in 5 years. We can do it and here again we will mobilize.

AMT: French president Emmanuel Macron in translation. That mobilization is already underway. Mechtild Rossler is in Paris with a team of experts ready to help rebuild Notre-Dame. She is the director of the UNESCO World Heritage Center and she joins us now from Paris. Hello.

MECHTILD ROSSLER: Hello.

AMT: What do you make of President Macron's pledge to rebuild Notre-Dame and make it more beautiful than before within five years? Can he do that? Is that possible?

MR: I think Mr. Macron is very optimistic. It depends on all the conditions which need to be united, which means means the funding, the materials because some of the woods may not be easily available and also the craftsmanship because that's another part where we need to train young people in stone masonry and other tasks. So it's a whole lot of conditions which need to be united to get rebuilt in five years, but let's see.

AMT: You have to train people. So some of the work that needs to be done, that craftsmanship that doesn't exist anymore?

MR: It exists It is a traditional knowledge and practices of constant and reconstruction and restoration at Europe's cathedral. You have it in Germany, you have it in some cases in Switzerland and in France. And actually they provided also a dossier for recognition of the intangible heritage. That means the recognition of this traditional knowledge to be inscribed next year at UNESCO. Now it gives a hint that this is something, which still exists, but which is also under threat. We are going to lose this knowledge if we don't have more young people to be trained. And for this specific case of Notre-Dame, we need lots of people to work on it.

AMT: Now you live in Paris, do you not?

MR: Yes I lived for 30 years in Paris.

AMT: And given your work with UNESCO, I'm just wondering what it's been like for you. Have you been to the site? What are you thinking as you see the destruction?

MR: Of course I went immediately on the day it happened because it's a part of the UNESCO world heritage on the bank of the Seine, which was inscribed on the World Heritage list in 1991. So I had to go that very night. I was actually personally also in a state of shock I have to say, but I went back the next day and I was a little bit more relieved because the building is standing. The belltowers are standing. Of course the roof is gone. Two thirds or even more of the roof collapsed. But we have the building, which means the big structure is there. So it means at the same time you are capable of reconstructing and rehabilitating the site and also a lot of the movable heritage. We shouldn't forget that there is a lot of objects in there which belong to the church. They have been rescued and they have cooperation with the Louvre to put these objects into a safe place.

AMT: And we heard yesterday that the organ had survived and the rose windows?

MR: Absolutely. The organ has apparently survived. We have not been able to go into the building itself because it's a question of the safety conditions also. And but we're ready to come and the rose windows you can see from outside the rosetta. It's there, but they may be fragile because of the heat and the conditions of the fire. So this needs to be checked with the international experts as soon as possible.

AMT: Now you already have a team of experts there do you not?

MR: We have our experts at UNESCO. France has a great knowledge and great expertise, but we at UNESCO put our global network at the disposal of the French authorities including the International Council of Monuments offsite, which was created by UNESCO in 1965 and in Rome. I think you have another person person speaking very shortly. So you see we have this whole network at their disposal and we work globally on all these cases because it's not the first and certainly not the last case of a fire at a world heritage site.

AMT: Now and of course the first order of business was to try to put that fire out, but what's your assessment so far of how the rescue effort has been handled?

MR: I have only admiration for the firemen of Paris. They worked the whole night. Still ongoing on the Tuesday morning when I went there and it was a very very difficult situation because of the height of the building and also the whole scaffolding etc. and the risks including for the people working there. Only one firemen has been severely injured, but we have no casualties. So I think it was a miracle one can say.

AMT: There are some critics who say that what happened at Notre-Dame was a disaster waiting to happen because the renovation work underway was so overdue. What do you say to that?

MR: We have many World Heritage sites where renovation is overdue and this demonstrates that restoration, renovation works are very very costly and even the rich countries hardly can afford them and not even to speak about other regions of the world. So it is problematic. We are aware of that and the risk is very high of fires and other incidents during renovation works. That's speaking from experience and that is certainly an issue. What we do at UNESCO is to work a lot on risk preparedness. We have a lot of causes such as the first aid for cultural heritage course. Our colleagues are organising a training course on fire prevention. Actually in Rio, you remember the fire in the museum. Now in June 2019 and what we encourage, all site managers of all the 1092 World Heritage Sitesto be more aware of these risks and I think the case of Notre-Dame is also a wakeup call for many other monuments and heritage sites around the world.

AMT: Okay well Ms. Rossler, thank you for speaking with me today.

MR: Thank you.

AMT: That is Mechtild Rossler. She is the director of the UNESCO World Heritage Center. She's assembled a team of experts to help with the rebuilding of Notre-Dame. They are already on site and she joined us from Paris. Well when sensitive cultural sites such as Notre-Dame in crisis, my next guest is one of the people who rushes in to provide emergency first aid. Jose Luiz Pedersoli is the project manager at the International Center for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property. You heard that organization mentioned by my last guest. It's known as ICCROM and Jose Luiz Pedersoli is in Rome today. Hello.

JOSE LUIZ PEDERSOLI: Hello Anna Maria. Pleasure to be with you today.

AMT: The damage at Notre-Dame is so extensive. How do you begin to address what needs to be done?

JLP: Yeah so the first step after such a drastic event is to carry out out a comprehensive damage and risk assessment on the site. First of all to be able to enter the structures as our colleague from UNESCO said. So we have to sure it's structurally stable and then you carry out a detailed assessment of the degree of damage in the building, but also concerning the movable items that were stored inside. So it's a detailed and long work of documentation. Sometimes can even be such as an archeological excavation because we have to go through the layers of debris and then cohere and documentation and identification and should be able to trace them back. As you move on you assess the extent of loss compared to the documentation and the information you had on the site beforehand. That's why you can build a bigger picture, a complete picture of the extent of the damage.

AMT: How long does that take?

JLP: Well it depends on the case by case. So if you take for the instance of the fire at the National Museum in Rio, which was in September of last year, colleagues are still working there on the ground. Now going through the layers to rescue and also to document and assess in more detail the extent of damage. You can do an overview estimate in terms of areas of the roof and the floors collapsed and the areas affected, but you can also eventually it's also necessary to do a much more detailed inventory in terms of the decorative parts and the movable objects that were kept inside. So how big was the damage in each one of them. So we have these layers of assessment.

AMT: So it's very methodical and painstaking.

JLP: Indeed, yeah. And it takes different kinds of expertise in terms of art history architectural history and then people who do archaeology eventually because you have to excavate at some point. So it is a very complex operation and it requires a good deal of expertise and experience too.

AMT: You know as terrible as this was, if it had happened in the dead of winter, there would have been even more things to consider with the weather and the damage, would there not?

JLP: So weather absolutely a very important factor. As you, or before you start the rescue operation, for sure you have to take care of security and stabalization. So you also have to take into account the risk of looting and dissociation of items, of loose items and objects or security perimeter. Right. The structure stabalization of the building and depending on the weather conditions, it's appropriate to have some some kind of sheltering to protect from snow or rain, depends on where you are now and the season you are. So fore sure of some kind of sheltering or roofing is important to be able to carry out the operations successfully and avoid subsequent damage to the heritage that survived the fire.

AMT: I want to ask just a little bit more about the parallels you might see with what happened at Brazil's National Museum because you were part of that team. I mean in that case it was said that as much as 90 percent of Latin America's the largest collection of treasures, of fossils, of all sorts of artifacts was destroyed. Is there a difference in how you'll deal with this versus that or is the sort of the way forward very much the same?

JLP: Yeah in terms of the systematic approach. I think it's pretty much the same in terms of the first aid actions that you have implement right after the disaster. And all the damage and risk assessment, security and stabalization and the rescue operation, of course it is context based, so it would depend on the geography, the climate and the resource available. But all together I think in terms of process is pretty similar. The extent of damage in Rio was slightly, was more significant. So out of the 20 million items that the museum held in its collection, yeah more or less as you said, 90% were heavily affected. And there were more significant collapse of floors of the building. So the level of damage inside the building was also more pronounced than what we saw in Notre-Dame. But in terms of procedure, it's pretty similar and again Rio and again Notre Dame, so again another important outstanding piece of heritage is being affected by fire. And that's why as our colleagues from UNESCO said, we at ICCROM we strongly we should promote a culture of prevention. So we have continued to develop the first aid to coach heritage in a time of crisis methodology as a first response. But we also work very strongly to create a culture of prevention in the heritage sector so that this kind of disasters that we see relatively frequently, they don't happen again in the future. So we want to create this culture and sensitize the authorities of the importance of preventing fire risks. Because differently from natural phenomena, such as earthquakes and floods and tsunamis, most case fires events can be prevented through adequate security procedures and then proper maintenance.

AMT: So when it comes to risks to cultural heritage sites, where does fire rank?

JLP: Fire ranks very high. Across all types of risks and also throughout the world, we have some statistics on fires at national and also international level, which we will present in this forthcoming seminar in Rio de Janeiro as the colleague from UNESCO mentioned, 26th to 28th of June. It's specifically for fire risks and in our experience when carrying out a quantitative risk assessment, fire ranks very high and I also have data from colleagues from Canada, from the Canadian Conservation Institute who apply the same methodology and also in Canada, the fire risk on heritage ranks high. So it's an important risk anywhere in the world. And it's important that we tackle it because it can be reduced significantly by prevention.

AMT: Okay and it's I guess worth noting too that the reaction was so different. In Brazil people came into the streets and protested against the government over what happened to the museum and in France they come together with the government. It's an interesting reaction in the difference.

JLP: Yeah, but I must say there was also a lot of manifestation by the local community in Rio in favour of the museum. They organized a series of events because the museums are located in a park. So at the park area, the community right after, they got together with schools, with local residents and there's been a series of events there. There's this campaign going on that the National Museum is alive and within that there's been several initiatives.

AMT: No, I totally accept that. I was just saying that the initial reaction was about it had a different reason for starting and so that was interesting to watch. Jose we have to leave it there. Sorry.

JLP: Okay my pleasure.

AMT: Bye bye. That is Jose Luiz Pedersoli. He's a project manager at the International Center for the Study of Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property. He is in Rome. Well despite the devastation, my next guest believes there is reason for hope for Notre-Dame. Sara Uckelman is an assistant professor of logic in the Department of Philosophy at Durham University. She is also a member of the Institute for Medieval and Early Modern Studies and she joins me from Durham, England. Hello.

SARA UCKELMAN: Hello. Thank you very much for having me, Anna Maria.

AMT: You are a medievalist, am I right?

SU: Yes I am.

AMT: I like that word. I didn't know that word before.

SU: It's a good word.

AMT: It is a very good word. So you have you look very far into the past as you look to the future. So what makes you feel hopeful about the future of Notre-Dame?

SU: Well, one of the things that struck me with everybody's responses as the horror and the tragedy was unfolding was this feeling that how could we ever come back from this? That this is so much destruction, how could we ever rebuild, how could things ever be the same? And while things certainly won't be the same, this isn't the end of the line. If you look at the history of cathedrals and even the history of Notre-Dame itself. This is something that happens. Cathedrals are built and then they are burned and they are rebuilt or they are ransacked by Vikings or by Mongols and they are rebuilt or they are bombed and they are rebuilt. So destruction like this isn't the end of the line. We have plenty of historical examples of terrible things happening to churches that are still standing and still enjoyed today.

AMT: And it's interesting because in Canada as well, St. James Cathedral in Toronto, Notre-Dame in Montreal, St. Isidore Catholic Church, St. Isidore, Ontario all burned to the ground. All being rebuilt or burned to some degree and being rebuilt. So you're saying that there's a life to these that is more about community than about structure.

SU: Yes. There's always something important about the building, but the building without the community and without the structure and without this kind of collective intention behind -- it it's just a building. We save these buildings. We value them in part for their historical aspects. I mean no one can dispute the importance that Notre-Dame has to the history of Gothic architecture, but that's not the only value that it has. And if we look at the building and we invest the value in the building then that's essentially saying that how the cathedral was frozen in time in like the 1860s when the new spire was built or when the last renovation or restoration was done. If we fix on that moment, we prevent the cathedral from being alive. From having a chance to grow and to change.

AMT: So remind us how many times Notre-Dame has been damaged and restored.

SU: So it was built in the 1160s. Well started in the 1160s, it wasn't finished until a century later. It was desicrated during the French Revolution in the 1790s when a lot of the medieval and historical icons and religious imagery was destroyed. The spire that we saw collapsed on Monday night was built in the 1840. The rose windows dating from the 13th century, much of the glass in them is 19th century.. They've been restored they've been reconstructed. One in particular was damaged just from having the stones settling in the middle of the 16th century. It took two more centuries before that got reconstructed and then it was reconstructed again, restored in the 19th century. So every part of the cathedral has this multi-layered history to it.

AMT: And it's interesting because we know so many European churches also suffered damage during the Second World War, but we see houses of worship being attacked in all parts of the world when there is conflict. And they're done for a reason because they're so symbolic.

SU: They are. They're symbolic of not just the religious symbolism that they hold, but something like the Cathedral of Notre-Dame. It is the heart of Paris, which is the heart of France. And so buildings like this can have a very important national and cultural sort of significance that goes beyond their religious importance.

AMT: So when you saw the news of the fire, I'm wondering how you reacted.

SU: It's one of the first times that I've sworn in front of my child. I couldn't believe that this was happening, that I was seeing what I was seeing. And it was horrifying. There's no way to minimize the amount of destruction that was involved, but over the evening I found myself turning to this reflection on the past and how cathedrals can grow and develop. And I started looking through my historical photos to find pictures of the cathedral before it burnt because I didn't want the evening to be just about the spectacle. I wanted to see its whole and it was really gratifying actually to see across social media other people sharing this is the picture I took when I was there. This is how I remember it. This is why it's important to me.

AMT: And that really speaks to again what you're talking about the community that surrounds that structure and so many other structures in the world.

SU: Indeed.

AMT: Okay. So what do you say to people who say that Notre-Dame will never be the same?

SU: It won't be. But that is again, if you want it to be the same, if you want it to go back to how things were, this is forcing it to become this relic of history and not letting it be what it is supposed to be, which is you know a living monument that can change. Certainly, I hope that restoration plans honour the history and you don't go completely new brutalist or modernistic, but there is space for it to become the Notre-Dame of the 21st century.

AMT: Okay well we'll leave it there. Thank you for your thoughts today.

SU: Thank you so much.

AMT: That is Sarah Uckelman. She's a medievalist, assistant professor of logic in the philosophy department at Durham University and a member of the Institute for Medieval and Early Modern studies. She joined us from Durham, England. Stay with us. In our next half hour, we are going straight to hell with Nova Scotia writer Marq de Villiers. He has researched the history of a place the people around the world and across history have loved to fear. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. You are listening to The Current on CBC Radio One, Sirius XM, online on cbc.ca/thecurrent, on podcast and on your radio app.

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Hell does freeze over (and other things you never knew about damnation)

Guests: Marq de Villiers

AMT: This next story takes us to the deepest darkest depths of hell. And while it wasn't so long ago that just saying that word was potentially scandalous, these days what they used to say was h-e-double hockey sticks has become a common place thing in how we speak. Even for things that are not particularly hellacious.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: Houses from hell.

VOICE 2: The neighbours from hell.

VOICE 3: Two Edmonton families say they ended up with holidays from hell.

VOICE 4: The chicken from hell.

VOICE 5: Paleontologists have discovered a new species of dinosaur.

VOICE 6: I've been wondering what that special place in hell looks like.

VOICE 7: That's EU council chief Donald Tusk suggesting that some Brexiters will one day go to hell.

VOICE 8: I'm Bart Simpsons. Who the hell are you?

VOICE 9: Please allow me to introduce myself. I'm the devil.

VOICE 10: What the hell is going on? Seriously. What the hell is going on?

AMT: The prehistoric chicken from hell we just heard about, may well have weighed 225 kilos, but it mostly ate plants and small animals and actually it's kind of cute. Doesn't look like a demon. The European Council President Donald Tusk we also heard there likely does not literally mean that Brexiters deserve infinite damnation, even if the Brexit discussion has seemed to go on for eternity. But over millennia hell has been the topic of a lot of debate and discussion and some pretty horrific descriptions from religions around the world. Theologians and fearless explorers have sought out the place asking who was in charge and what really happens there to sinners, big and small. Journalist Marq de Villiers takes us on a tour of hell or actually hells, plural, since there are many in his new book. It is called Hell and Damnation: A Sinners Guide to Eternal Torment. And Marq de Villiers joins us from Halifax. Hello.

MARQ DE VILLIERS: Good morning, Anna Maria.

AMT: Oh what a great topic. Are you ever smart. What do you think when you hear the word hell in everyday use now that you have so many images in your own head about what the place is supposed to be like.

MDV: The problem with that is that there are so many visions of hell. You know Hindus have between 48 and 78 hells depending on which text you consult. The Buddhists have eight hot hells and eight cold hells, although some variants of Buddhism have one separate hell for every sin, which by Burmese Buddhist standards is up to 40,000 sins. So that's a pretty big expansive hellishness.

AMT: It's a lot of hellish real estate, but keep going.

MDV: Well some of the sins in thos hells are so trivial you wonder why anybody would consign to torment. For example, throwing broken crockery over your neighbor's wall has its own hell and borrowing books from people and not giving them back, suggesting that you've lost them. That has its own hell.

AMT: Well I'm all for that by the way. They should be suffering, yeah go ahead.

MDV: And not all hell is eternal. The eternality part of it came only with Zoroastrianism and then Christianity. Christianity is now really the only one where it goes on forever. You know like the Woody Allen saying says, eternity is a very long time, especially toward the end.

AMT: We'll get to some of those very specific hells in a moment, but the word hell brings to mind an image of a dark pit of fire. What did you learn about the specifics of the geography of hell?

MDV: Well you know the Dante is the most famous one. It's the nine circles of hell and the torments that were found in there. I mean the poetry was fabulous, but the geography of Hell was kind of commonplace by the time he was writing. The trigger for me, when I finally decided I needed to do this book was when I read a biography of Galileo and he had calculated how far beneath the surface hell had to be based on the presumed size of Satan and the notion of Dante's that Satan's navel marks the very center of the earth. How could you resist that? And it's presumably one of Galileo's signature achievements.

AMT: I was going to say we didn't know that about Galileo.

MDV: No, no, the great scientist had his moments however.

AMT: Went down a rabbit hole or I guess a hellhole. So how do you get there?There's often a bridge, is there not?

MDV: Many hells have gates. Dante's is the most famous one. But bridges are very common. In Zoroastrianism for example when you die, all Souls have to cross this bridge and for the wicked the bridge is as narrow as a razor's edge. And of course they fall off into the pit below, for the pious, the bridge is like a highway and you can amble across it with your cattle and your livestock and end up in Elysium or heaven. But below the bridges there are always these fiery pits, sulphurous, full of stench and noise and willings and gnashings of teeth. I always liked the gnashings part of it. I haven't quite figured out how that worked.

AMT: So we know that the sinners are the people who end up in hell and as you point out it depends on who's hell. And you touched a little bit on some of the specifics sins, but give me some more. What are the specific sins that can send you to hell?

MDV: Well many of the obvious vital sins of course, murder, assault, robbery. Adultery is a very popular motif for most faiths. There is usually a special circle of hell reserved for adulterers.

AMT: Usually female adulterers too right.

MDV: Oh yes.

AMT: Funny that.

MDV: There are some particular hells reserved for male adulterers and there's one which one of my favorites called the Hell of the Sword Leaf Trees, which was reserved for husbands who deceived their wives. Which you are quite right to. This was a tree, a kilometre tall and with thorns about a metre long, sharp as razors and the offending men would be at the base of the tree and they'd see these seductive women at the top and they would race up and being lacerated and cut and chopped up on the way up. Then they would get to the top, they'd be healed and they'd see those same women down at the bottom and they would rush down again being cut up all over again. This went on for many thousands or even millions of cycles until they had successfully purged themselves of the urge to deceive.

AMT: Do all torments involved that kind of physical torture?

MDV: No not all of them, but crushing and flaying and boiling in oil beating, mincing, this is very common. However there are many hells that have no physical punishment whatsoever. Even in Dante's hell being consigned to rolling a boulder up a hill forever. Boring task, but by hellish standards actually quite moderate. But my favorite hell I think is one of the Buddhist hells, which consists entirely of an enormous waiting room with very hard chairs, a big array of bureaucrats sitting at the desk in front, paying absolutely no attention to anybody for eternity. That to me, I think that's one of the worst hells of all.

AMT: That is my favorite as well. And in fact that just proves that hell exists on Earth. Sitting in a room waiting for bureaucrats to pay attention to you. Oh my god. Oh my devil.

MDV: Indeed.

AMT: Well you know that to realize the Chinese-Buddhist belief was that hell was bureaucracy just proves again you know there have been so many books written lately on how Chinese culture was like literally a thousand years advanced of European culture. Right there again, they understood that hell is on Earth. It's not a fire pit.

MDV: Well they did have many variants of hell where you were cut up of course and put into boiling oil. There are cauldrons of boiling oil. There are lots of those in hell, but it's also hell freezes over many times in many versions of hell too. You know Satan himself is at the center of hell and encased in ice just with his jaws loose in order to gnaw way at traitors like Judas and so on, but there he is frozen into the center of hell.

AMT: Well and Satan, Lucifer, all of these characters.

MDV: I think Satan, Lucifer has got a bum rap over the generations. He started as Lucifer Lightbearer, he was called. One of God's most beautiful and trusted angels and got into this frame of mind where he kept arguing with God as I said he was like a lad trying to take over the family business from his dad and God got furious and in a typical act of godly overreaction, hurled him out of heaven into the pit and then covered him up with sharp stones. Well that was the extent of hell at the beginning and it seemed to me at the time very bad politics on God's part because all he did was to create an impeccable enemy.

AMT: So as you look at different kinds of hells, I wanted to ask you, you know what is life like in these various hells, but I guess the question is what is existence like for those who end up in hell? Tell us a little bit about what you know about existing in hell.

MDV: The Zoroastrian one, the the torment you get relates very much to the sin that you committed above the life before you were consigned there. If you were a murderer, you were tended to be dismembered. If you were an adulterer, in one of the Hindu hells you would drown in a lake of urine and feces. But this went on for eternity. It's one of the peculiar physics of hell is that although you were burned, you were never destroyed. Although they were crows standing by to extract your entrails, you never ran out. So it was anguished and it was eternal, but it was also incredibly tedious, I would think.

AMT: So sometimes they got a break from hell though.

MDV: Well occasionally. One of the Gnostic Gospels, Mary herself was said to have visited hell and persuaded God to give everybody a break for Pentecost for example and there were a number of called harrowings of hell. Jesus himself went down there to rescue people like Adam and bring him up to heaven. So there were interventions from above and apparently the devil was incapable of preventing these incursions. And then you know there are many hells where there's no devil at all. Most of the Buddhist hells don't have. They have kind of managers in the sense of bookkeeping, writing down who was there, how long they were supposed to be like.

AMT: Like a desk, like a reception desk?

MDV: Like a check-in desk. Yes. And the very pious, got early check out too.

AMT: Well even some of them had room service. What were they eating in hell?

MDV: Well the Jewish hell for example, the only menu was dust. The only thing to do is eat and drink, but the only thing to eat was dust. So it was just incredibly boring and tedious. Some of the other hells there was one for example where particular sinner who was condemned to death for offering up his nephew on a roasting platter for his guests. He was condemned to standing water up to his knees and with a low hanging fruit just above him, but he was unable to drink or eat any of the fruit, but didn't have time to eat very much. He kept boiling in oil. A he kept being cut up and being healed again and it was a busy life, although it went on forever.

AMT: Yeah so as they say, if you're going to be tormented, you have to heal so you can be retormented.

MDV: Oh yeah that's part of the physics of hell. In Christian hell anyway there's no parole. You can't really just have a hearing and get out, whereas in many of the other faiths you can and in fact do get out in the end.

AMT: Well Christian hell has purgatory, correct?

MDV: Well purgatory was invented in the medieval period as a kind of way of explaining why people who weren't baptized had to be judged in a different kind of way. And it wasn't pleasant there either, but purgatory was a way station. You could go either way depending on how you were judged.

AMT: Now I assume you didn't actually do your research on the ground for this book.

MDV: Oh return tickets for sure.

AMT: How can we possibly know what happens in hell?

MDV: Because we have eyewitnesses. There are literally thousands of them and it seemed in the early medieval period that almost every monk or nun had at least either a vision of hell or was taken there by God or angel and shown around. So we have eminent and presumably trustworthy eyewitnesses, all of whom report back and it was kind of detailed topography and geography and weather and meteorology of hell.

AMT: And there is a place you did go. You went to Fengdu County. Am I saying it correctly? What's there?

MDV: In Chinese historical mythology, Fengdu was the entrance to the underworld and for about a thousand years the artisans of Fengdu were renowned for creating instruments of torture that they could sell to the denizens of the underworld. They also sold them to the Emperor too, which better commerce on their part. So they set up a theme park. The town of Fengdu got drowned with the rising waters of the Three Gorges Dam, so it's not there anymore. But the theme park is still.

AMT: Live by the hell, die by the hell.

MDV: And there are about a dozen attractions that you can visit and there are about a dozen very large two story brightly colored demons. But there's a bridge which you have to cross and now everybody seems to cross it without too much difficulty, but one of the tricks you have to learn when you're there to virtue yourself from going to hell, you have to stand on your one leg for three minutes without falling over. And it's astonishing. You should try it sometime. Very few people seem to manage it and most people eventually fall over and then in theory consigned to hell, but in fact they just go to the noodle stand at the gate to the park and have a nice plate of lunch.

AMT: What happened to you, Marq?

MDV: I fell over here. Yeah I can't do it. It's impossible.

AMT: And were the noodles hellish or heavenly?

MDV: The noodles were very nice. But this theme park has been added to it since the communists came to power there are several new attractions that have been added and they're very fond of propagandising the wonderful demons of Confucian past.

AMT: So interesting. So as you looked at all of this, what is hell's bigger purpose?

MDV: There are many speculations about why hell was invented. Of course I believe that it was invented not discovered, but I think the main purpose was as a punishment for malefactors and as a balancing act because so many evil doers and malefactors and sinners, even murderers and embezzlers and people who assault other people so, seemed quite unfairly to prosper in the here and now. To people who lived virtuous lives and perhaps didn't prosper and they saw these sinners doing extremely well, some how they had to be a comeuppance for those people and so if you couldn't get them during life, you had to invent a way that God would punish them when their life was over. And I think that's completely apparent unfairness of life that led to the invention of a place where the bad people would get bad things done to them.

AMT: It was also a way to control people.

MDV: Yeah soul controlling. It's in that sense because it was widely thought that if there was no injunction or no law forbidding certain things that people would be morally free to commit them. In other words, if there was no godly injunction, thou shalt not kill, people would be free to act out their vile instincts. I think this is rather depressing view of human nature, but I think that's part of it, yes.

AMT: Well because it's interesting because at some point like in the Middle Ages, Satan becomes more and more grotesque right and sexually grotesque too.

MDV: Yes. In the early days, Satan was still an emissary of God. He wasn't adversary. That God changed as we got further away from Christ into the medieval period and he got more and more grotesque and larger and larger and more malicious and more inventive in his cruelty. And by the time the witch trials of the medieval period came about, Satan was a horned creature with spiked tail and a mouth large enough to gulp 100 sinners at a time. And also according to the French witch hunters, he had a bifurcated penis the size of an alder bush with which he had sex with those women he seduced into witchcraft. So as we know those witch trials, up to 60,000, maybe 75,000 women were burned at the stake or hanged in the two and a half centuries in which those two trials were conducted. And this at the service of a truly demented scholarship, which was condoned and even approved of by the Church Fathers of the time.

AMT: Well they were executed for consorting with the devil so again that control of women and their sexuality.

MDV: Indeed in fact the very last people, the last two people to be executed for witchcraft in England for example, were a woman and her daughter who took off their stockings and thereby caused a thunderstorm. So they were burned at the stake for their temerity.

AMT: The political side of hell.

MDV: Yes indeed.

AMT: So it served different purposes for different religions.

MDV: Yes. Those faiths where there was no heaven for example, as in the Buddhists don't have a heaven, nor do Hindus, the purpose of hell was not so much punishment, but improvement. The punishments were severe, but you had to undergo these torments in order to purge your soul of sins so you could emerge a better person at the end. If you failed and you got out and you committed sins again, you were consigned to hell all over again. So it could repeat itself frequently, but the purpose was not just punishment. That was left for the Christians.

AMT: And who was it that was kicked out of hell for being relentlessly pious?

MDV: Oh yes there was one of the she was executed by her father for refusing to marry the person that she was told to and she went to hell immediately and she was introduced to the managers of hell and they were actually horrified because she was so pious she was on route to being a Buddha herself. And they said to her we've heard that when you pray all sins of people are removed. She said well let me try it here and she did and suddenly the torture stopped in hell. There was singing hosannas and there was a peace in the netherworld and they were of course completely horrified. This wasn't the purpose of hell. So they expelled her as soon as they could,tThey escorted her to the surface and reunited her with her corporal being and hell could go back gratefully to doing what it did best, which is to hurt people.

AMT: I was struck by the fact. You make the point that in the Bible, the references to hell there aren't that many.

MDV: No not that many. There are many demons. If you look at the number of references to demons in Matthew and Luke for example and many times Jesus miracles are taken up with casting demons out of people. That was one of his signature achievements. At least once as we know the gathering swine he cast them out of people and put them into pigs, which as I wrote in the book these days get him the animal rights people PETA on his case, did seem completely unfair. But hell is not really mentioned much in the Bible. It's mentioned more in the Quran because by the time the Quran was written, by the 7th, 8th and 9th centuries, Christianity hell had become fully developed too. But in the Gospels there was not much. Revelation has a wonderful description of heaven and a gaudy thing it is too. Streets paved with transparent gold and twelve gates to heaven, each single gate an enormous large pearl. So yes they were pearly gates.

AMT: You make the point though that its description of heaven is with an over the top decor worthy of America's 45th president.

MDV: Yes well full of gold and jewels and Onyx. The descriptions of heaven of the millennia have been much fewer than the descriptions of hell. People didn't seem to go there and come back. Presumably they didn't want to come back.

AMT: They didn't have to threaten people with heaven in a way I guess.

MDV: Many descriptions of the throne of God in heaven surrounded by his angels, singing holy holy holy is the Lord our God, day and night forever. Now if you're thrilled by this notion, heaven would be a nice place to be. In a way I think the exuberance of hell is a much more interesting place to take up residence.

AMT: What does hell mean to us today?

MDV: Astonishingly up to 50 percent of Americans and 30 percent of Canadians believe hell is a real place where real sinners really go to be really tortured. It's an astonishingly high proportion. Canadians are a little softer. More Canadians believe in heaven than they do in hell. The Americans is a kind of a wash. So does it mean much to us increasing secularization of our society. The phrases that you introduce at the start of thr segment were to hell and gone. Hell is a Friday afternoon on the expressway, that sort of thing. To us hell is just a mental holding place for Hitler in most people's minds. It doesn't really exist anymore. But too many great many people it exists in a very real and very terrifying way.

AMT: Do you believe in hell?

MDV: Me no, I don't. If I had, if I did before, I certainly don't now because if there was such a place you would think the descriptions of it would be a little more consistent with each other and of course they're not. Every faith has its own views. No, I think when I'm gone, I'm gone.

AMT: It's interesting once you start to pull apart looking at who believes what and who interprets it which way, you realize that it is so different. It just depends on the religious and cultural background.

MDV: Oh very much so. But you know there's a resurgence in these days of exorcisms for example. You can actually hire an exorcist online now. The belief in that sort of demon haunted world is still very much with us. It's very much part of our lives and our culture.

AMT: You can believe I guess in demons without believing in hell I guess.

MDV: Oh yes. Many religions have demons, as I say a demon haunted world everywhere. And you don't necessarily have to have a hell to house them or to give them support.

AMT: What would you like to see is an alternative to the idea of hell?

MDV: I think we have to make our own systems. The world is as we make it not as as God makes it or anybody or the devil makes it and therefore our systems need to be constantly replenished and constantly scrutinized and constantly updated and constantly examined. But they're our systems and not His and we should recognize and take responsibility for our own fate.

AMT: A fascinating journey that you took us on. Thank you.

MDV: You're very welcome.

AMT: Journalist Marq de Villiers, author of Hell and Damnation: A Sinner's Guide to Eternal Torment. He joined us from Halifax.

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Apr. 17, 2019 episode transcript

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