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The Current Transcript for April 23, 2019

Host: Anna Maria Tremonti

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

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VOICE: I feel like it's pretty precocious of me to make that decision and it resulted in a lot of hardships, but I at some point, it was around when I was in grade 2, I felt that Jimmy didn't really reflect who I was and I wanted to be Jagmeet.

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: He was just a boy when he gave up his anglicised name for the Sikh name his parents had also given him. For Jagmeet Singh, the decision to embrace his religious and cultural identity led to bullying and racist taunts, but also to empowerment and strength. And he would need it as he faced a series of traumatic events from his childhood through his teens and into early adulthood. He says all that he's learned he's brought to his politics as leader of the federal NDP. Hear my conversation with Jagmeet Singh in just a moment. And then with five major floods affecting 51 municipalities in Quebec, the damage is more than physical.

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VOICE: It's more than everything, emotional. Anxiety, extreme anxiety, fear of the unknown, powerlessness and all those combined they make my life very difficult as we speak.

AMT: The anxiety is especially acute for those who faced massive flooding just two years ago and as communities deal with this series of floods, the provincial government considers incentives to convince homeowners to leave for good. We're on that story in half an hour. And then they were strangers living a short drive down the highway from each othe, one group at San Diego State University, the other migrants in a U.S. federal detention center and they began to write to each other breaking through walls with words.

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VOICE: I would like the world to know that migrants are the hope of our families, the hope of our countries. We are the hope that won't stop shining. We are the light that won't go out.

AMT: The Current's Joan Webber brings us a remarkable story of friendships forged one letter at a time. That's in an hour. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current.

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'I tried to bury it down': NDP leader Jagmeet Singh says he was sexually abused as a child

Guests: Jagmeet Singh

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VOICE 1: Jagmeet Singh, number of votes, 35,266.

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VOICE 2: Thank you, thank you everybody. Thank you so much. Thank you. Oh my goodness, this is incredible. Thank you, thank you.

AMT: A highlight moment in Jagmeet Singh's life being chosen leader of the federal NDP on October 1st of 2017. Ever since that day Jagmeet Singh has been under the glare of the national media and the pundit class, but today he's telling his own story by releasing his memoir. The book helps explain the life experiences that inform his politics. He describes a childhood finding his Sikh identity and being the target of racist bullying. And he reveals other traumatizing events in his life including being sexually abused, something he has not spoken of publicly before. His book is entitled, Love and Courage: My Story of Family, Resilience and Overcoming the Unexpected. Jagmeet Singh is in Victoria. Hello.

JAGMEET SINGH: Hello there.

AMT: Describe that moment when you were declared winner.

JS: It was an incredible moment. It was a special moment because I would never. These are all moments where I would have never imagined there was an even my realm of possibility in a lot of ways. I thought folks that felt like me thought for a moment that maybe they could belong and I was honored with the opportunity that I had to try to make people's lives better.

AMT: It's a long way from everything you experienced growing up.

JS: Yeah yeah definitely.

AMT: Well I want to hear your story. When did your parents come to Canada?

JS: So they came to Canada in the 70s.

AMT: And you were born here.

JS: I was born in Scarborough in 1979.

AMT: Now they Anglicized your name and your brother and sister names as well.

JS: Right. Well actually what they did is they gave us an option. I kind of have, I four names officially. So my full name is Jagmeet Singh Jimmy Dhaliwal. So when I was a kid I went by Jimmy.

AMT: And when do you decide that you don't want to be Jimmy anymore?

JS: Yeah it was one of those things that I had to double check the story with my mom because I feel like is pretty precocious of me to make that decision and it resulted in a lot of hardship. So I was I was really curious how that actually happened. But I at some point, it was around when I was in grade 2, I felt that Jimmy didn't really reflect who I was and I wanted to be Jagmeet.

AMT: When did you start getting bullied?

JS: Pretty much right after. I made the decision to be called Jagmeet and to start wearing my hair in the traditional way with the patka tied up in a top knot. Right after that I remember vivid experiences of being bullied, picked on for looking different, folks trying to pull the patka off my head, pull my hair and trying to and making fun of my name. That was very common. It was really confusing as a kid because I thought I'm the same person that I was just you know last year in grade two and grade three are the side of necessarily getting bullied for the way it looked. So it was something that it was shocking but in a lot of ways I felt like just because I'm being bullied for something I don't want to give it up I don't want to back down so I thought let me not give into this pressure. So I really wanted to resist it but it was something that was really frustrating and sometimes it is scary. I tried to hide the fear by being tough, but it was it was a tough time.

AMT: So what would you do to protect yourself from those bullies?

JS: Well I would try to stand up and I often go into physical confrontations where someone would attack me and I try to defend myself. And so I always felt I wish I could defend myself better. I was sometimes no. And I didn't give in. But it was it was a bit crushing. I feel like every day going to school was a gamble would I get picked until they would get into a fight with someone attacking me. And so it was it was scary.

AMT: So you start taking martial arts?

JS: Yeah. So I think my mum and dad sorrily noticing that I was trying to hide it but I was afraid to go to schools there trying to find a way to give me some more confidence and so they suggested martial arts.

AMT: And that leads us to the teacher at the Taekwondoe.

JS: When I went to the class I think he could tell pretty early on I took up Taekwando with a lot of enthusiasm. I was really excited. So I think he picked up on that because I was really trying to apply myself. I was really a diligent student and so he offered me extra classes to help me progress and he knew that I wanted to become a black belt and he knew that this was important to me.

AMT: He was grooming you?

JS: Right. So what happened and this is one of those things that I had never spoken about publicly and I've only spoken about it to a handful of people and so what happened I was 10-years-old at the time and I was actually really enjoying martial arts and when he offered extra training I thought this would be a good opportunity for me to learn how to be a better martial artist and to get stronger. And so he suggested that this special program would help me gain muscles quicker. He said this would be good for you. It's going to help you get your black belt. It'll make you a better martial artist and so he, the program really was a guise to sexually assault me.

AMT: Did you ever tell anyone when it was happening?

JS: When it happened, I didn't know what to think. Even now when I think back it's almost unimaginable that someone would go to such lengths to set up a way to assault a little kid. I thought this could never have been. It doesn't make sense that someone would go through so many steps to bulb a program with a point system a word points to a doing certain things and this whole elaborate system just to abuse me didn't just to assault me effectively, I didn't really grasp it. So there's also things going on at home that I didn't want to stress out my mom, so I didn't want to talk to her about it. I felt a lot of shame and guilt, which I know is normal when you go through something like this. I also felt that it was my own fault. I should have stopped it.

AMT: You were ten, but you were blaming yourself?

JS: Yeah sure.

AMT: It really did follow you through your life though.

JS: Yeah it was something that I tried to bury it down and I didn't really want to talk about it and didn't really want to think about it my my way of trying to push ahead was to was to say to myself something have been it's I dont know how to deal with. So let's just not think about it so that that's the way I dealt with it for a long time.

AMT: When did your family learn?

JS: It was probably when I was about 25 and we were talking about things and just kind of going over some of the things that we had gone through as a family and I had mentioned because I've never talked to my mom about it ever and I'd said, she had asked me many years ago when I was maybe 12 or 13 if something had happened to me because the local police were investigating they had some concerns raised and they were trying to call and contact students that might have attended the class and it came to light that I had attended the class and saw my dad was informed and then asked my mom to talk to me about it and so she sat me down and said Hey Dad did he show you any bad pictures or do anything like that to show you any pictures. And I said No no not at all not a lot. And I didn't want to talk about it. So then you know fast forward many years later when I was 25 I said mum you know when you asked me if something had happened to me something did happen. And I didn't tell her the details of it, but I said I was assaulted.

AMT: And the man since died?

JS: Yes. Anna Maria, it if I could just say one thing, I felt like it's really important to say this. When I was, before I talked to my mom about it, one of the things that was really important to me was a dear friend told me that it wasn't my fault and that was a really special moment because I knew it wasn't, but it didn't, I hadn't heard anyone say it to me and I want to tell people the same thing. It's not their fault.

AMT: I think it's really important to hear that. I think we know now that's almost a universal feeling of guilt and shame and every victim needs to be told and reminded that it isn't their fault.

JS: Yeah that's really important to say. So I want that to be clear. I hope people listening now may be going through something similar, maybe know someone has gone through something similar, if you could tell them that it's not their fault, it means a lot.

AMT: This abuser, the man who assaulted you likely picked up on a little bit that you were vulnerable on other levels. You did have a lot going on at home.

JS: Yeah. It wasn't just the bullying I was worried about it and that wasn't the only reason why I wanted to be able to defend myself.

AMT: Your dad was a heavy drinker.

JS: Yeah it was something that it started being really clear that it was a problem almost around the same time. I would say around grade 3 and so it became more and more of a problem as years went on.

AMT: He was, you make the point, he was a successful psychiatrist and very functional for a very long time, but by the time you're in university your father's alcoholism is ravaging him and your family.

JS: Yeah he was, one of thing about my dad is that he is incredibly high functioning, incredibly intelligent, generous, generous to a fault some might say, very giving. He was able to maintain a professionalism at work, but I think that the illness finally caught up to him and in university there was a moment where he had to take treatment.

AMT: And your dad goes through rehab several times and you just there's a scene in the book where he's actually now living in a separate apartment on orders from you really to protect your mom. And like he's so thin and frail and you literally pick him up and help him get undressed and you're going to help him shower and he can't even stand.

JS: It was, so obviously as kids you always think of your dad as like a superman, someone who's really strong and he was also so skilled at what he did as a psychiatrist, as a doctor. So I you know I looked up to him, but it was always confusing because while I looked up to him I also was a little bit afraid of him because he was so unpredictable when he used to drink. It was scary for my parents, from my mom, from my brother and sister. So I had to play this dual role of I respected him and I admired him, but I also was afraid and I was worried about what could happen. And then all that. Then seeing him become so frail because of the illness because of alcoholism that he had lost so much weight and he became so light and I could lift him up so easily. And at that point he was in caring for himself he wasn't grooming himself and showering in it and I wanted to give him a to give him a bath. And I think he also kind of appreciated that and I think he would have had trouble doing it himself at that point he was walking with a walker. He must have been 110 pounds and he's a man that normally weighs around 180. And that is when I realize actually that moment is when I knew intellectually and academically I believe that our cosmos illness and I knew that growing up there is no way he could choose this. This is such a bad life. Why would he choose to do this these things that put his family at risk. That was so scary, but it was in that moment seeing him so frail and so ill and had hurt his self so much that I really believed that there is no other way to describe this than an illness no one would choose this for themselves.

AMT: Did he become physically abusive when he was drunk?

JS: He was violent and he was scary. There's a lot of things that happen that I didn't see. I just see like I hear like yelling things being things banging and things being dropped. He was aggressive towards all of us when he was drunk or he was just sometimes so inebriated that he was just not responsive. I dont think you remembered a lot of what he did because he truly was soul inebriated in those states said that he would black out.

AMT: Your parents would end up having to file for bankruptcy. You would have to end up supporting everyone in your early 20s and your father has recovered. He's back practicing psychiatry.

JS: Yeah. So he he went through a phase where he couldn't practice because of the illness and it was a pretty long period of time almost a decade. And when he finally got better it was a publicly funded rehab center in Windsor Ontario. There was actually where he where he started getting better with a modest Brentwood rehab center in Windsor that was where he actually turned things around and I am forever grateful.

AMT: You know I'm looking at who you are in the news right now. After learning more about your life and how you got there and I'm watching the political landscape in Canada right now. You talk about love and courage and a belief that comes from your Sikh religion that we are all one. How are you going to handle the politics of mean in this country right now?

JS: Well I feel the politics of mean, maybe not the politics in mean, but I faced mean and I looked mean right in the eye and I had to I had to fight it. I had to physically stand up for myself but I never felt satisfied that I was actually going to fix the problem. It wasn't something that was going to solve the meanness I can fight if I need to but I never thought that that I was actually going to fix what was going on in a part of what I learned kind of growing up was that there was ways to disarm people and ways to connect with people and find their commonality that sometimes seems it's buried deep beneath and it doesn't seem very obvious that were connected that we're all one it seems on the surface that it's far from the truth. But if you give someone enough time and if you if you connect to their humanity there is someone we share and comment. And so I dont think that fighting in the politics of meaning can be done with meanness. There'll be times we've got to take a stand in stand up and fight but really more often than not the way to tackle the politics of mean is to find the shared humanity and that we're on this together that there is so much that we share so much that we have in common as opposed to things that separate us.

AMT: How do you politically fight leaders who have supporters who are white supremacists, who are white nationalists and say that's free speech?

JS: Well this is the dilemma of my spirituality, I really strongly believe in in people's freedoms and their ability to express an opinion even if I disagree with it. It's a part of my teaching set I'm supposed to defend the right even if I disagree with somebody. But there is times we have to denounce things that are going to cause harm to others. When the when the language and the rhetoric is actually going to put people at risk in harm and cause injury or damage to them then we have to denounce it we've got to stand up to it. But what I also find is that there are folks that are frustrated and are afraid because they can find a good job or they can find a place to live or they can afford things like the medications that they need that these are real for years and there are some people that are going to use those real figures and point at people who are not to blame. They're going to point out the new Canadian or the refugee the person fleeing peril in prosecution in their own lives and they're going to point at them and say it's their fault and it's an easy thing to believe that it might be that one person's fault. And I think instead of getting angry at those people who are so afraid and maybe insecure is see I understand why you feel like that. I remember what it's like to feel worried about not knowing if I had a home to live in or not knowing how I could pay the bills. When my brother was living with me and being worried about finding groceries. I remember that I felt and the frustration that I felt and I want to build a world where people don't feel that fear and that frustration.

AMT: You know as somebody who works in the news and journalism business, we're cynics and more than one person is asking, you wrote this book, you bear a lot of your life in that book. Why do it now months away from an election?

JS: Well I started the process a year ago, a little bit over a year ago and right after I became leader I was thinking about this idea of sharing my story and I wanted to do it because I had a platform where I could I could see a lot of things that might help people out. There's a lot of things that I didnt know growing up and I had never heard anyone say an would help me out a lot if I had an opportunity to hear someone's story that resembled my own and maybe made me feel less alone. And that's that's my goal. I really hope that the book gives people not only in insight into why I care but maybe gives people the courage to love because loving is such a difficult thing to do and sometimes it's scary and sometimes it makes you feel vulnerable and I hope that in in the struggles that I've faced I can help people that face similar struggles to feel less alone to see the connections we all share. And I 'm hoping that my story can help people out.

AMT: Do you still practice martial arts?

JS: I do. I do. Though those moments kind of poisoned it a bit for me I actually fell in love with martial arts as a discipline as something that trains your body. There's a lot of honour and respect and I've continued and ended up going on to compete in tournaments and do pretty well.

AMT: You know the last election, just before the last election, the timing escapes me a little bit, but Justin Trudeau got in a boxing ring with a Conservative senator. I couldn't help, but think that he's not likely to get into a ring with you, given that background.

JS: Yeah I don't know if it would be a smart decision. Normally you should pick a battle that he can win and that's not one he'd win.

AMT: And the other fight, you ready for it?

JS: The other fight, the more important fight right now is for the future of our country and to try to of course it'll help more people out. That fight I'm definitely ready for.

AMT: Jagmeet Singh, thank you for sharing your story with me.

JS: It's my honour. Thank you.

AMT: Jagmeet Singh is the leader of the New Democratic Party of Canada. His memoir is Love and Courage: My Story of Family, Resilience and Overcoming the Unexpected. He joined us from Victoria, BC. Let us know what you think of what he had to say. You can tweet us @TheCurrentCBC. Find us on Facebook. Go to our website cbc.ca/thecurrent, click on the contact link. Stay with us, the news is next and then rising waters and rising anxieties yet again. We're going to hear from the frontlines of Quebec's flooding. Lots of frontlines in flooding in Quebec right now. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current on CBC Radio One.

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Homes in high-risk floodplains should be subject to mandatory buyouts, says expert

Guests: Jean-Francois Cousineau, Glenn McGillivray

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

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AMT: Still to come, would be migrants to the U.S. from Central America and beyond are more often talked about than heard from, but in half an hour we will hear the powerful thoughts of dozens of migrants being detained in a facility near San Diego, California, as they break through walls with words. But first, feeling helpless against the floods.

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VOICE: We've announced couple weeks ago a new compensation plan. If people ask for some money in the next three, five, ten years, there'll be a cumulative amount of $100,000, then we'll offer a maximum of $300,000 to move to another house. I think it's important we cannot have every year compensation to solve the problems, but only on a temporary basis. We really need to have incentives to move the people when it's happening every year almost.

AMT: That is Quebec Premier Francois Legault speaking with reporters after touring communities under flood threat yesterday. Thousands of people have been forced from their homes as floodwaters continue to rise in Ottawa, Gatineau and across western Quebec. Thousands more are preparing for the possibility of evacuation as local rivers swelled to peak levels with more rain in the forecast. There are five major floods affecting 51 municipalities in Quebec right now. The provinces plan to offer financial incentives to people who live in flood zones to move from those homes and settle out elsewhere is one that may just appeal to the residents of Pointe-Gatineau. It is a low income neighborhood on the shores of the Gatineau River. It is bracing for what could be a repeat of devastating floods in 2017. At that time muddy water surged through the community, it turned streets into canals, submerged cars and inflicted damage on more than 100 properties. Jean-Francois Cousineau now is the co-owner of one of those properties, a rooming house, and that's where we have reached him. Hello.

JEAN-FRANCOIS COUSINEAU: Hi, good morning.

AMT: What do you see out your window right now?

JFC: Right now I'm sitting on the front balcony and I see the building is surrounded by about three quarter of the water. I have a lot of sandbags installed. It's not surrounding the whole house, but it's surrounding where the water came up two years ago. As we speak it's about 15-20 feet from the sandbags of water. Although last year, two years ago there was no water that touched the foundation. It came from underground after rising up so high outside. So I have a pump installed in the basement and I'm just anxiously waiting to see what happens. I know I heard it's going to go up again and that's what I'm afraid of most. I have people coming this morning to move our two furnaces and two hot water heathers up on the main floor because it's been damaged two years ago and we had to install brand new ones, which cost $11,000. So I have people coming this morning to bring them up on the main floor. And all my tenants are going to Red Cross this morning because there would be no more heat and hot water and that's how it's going. As for me, I'm living some insecurities as to where I'm going to go after a year because I don't think I'll be able to stay here until the water comes down and we'll see what happens after that.

AMT: How fast has the water been rising?

JFC: It came up a little bit since last night, but not that much. In the last couple of days it's been quite stable there and that's how it's going right now.

AMT: What are your neighbors saying? Are they in the same kind of situation as you?

JFC: Yes. Everyone's in the same situation here. Some of them don't protect it, some other people just give up. They just gave up. And they couldn't bare the thought of being flooded again so they just gave up. Like my next door neighbour abandoned her house and she's living elsewhere. She comes once a while to check, but she left it behind there.

AMT: So you're hoping that the stuff you're doing will be able to save the house this time?

JFC: See that house, but I don't believe I can live here anymore. I don't believe anyone would want to live here anymore after today, after 2019. Because it happened two years ago and it's happening again. Who knows if it's going to happen again. The probabilities are now much higher because it happened twice in two years, you know. Imagine trying to expect that and see that coming every year, every spring there. My body is not made for that.

AMT: That's a lot of anxiety.

JFC: It is much, much, the harest feeling is anxiety, you know. Anxiety, fear, uncertainty, unknown, worry like crazy and you know a lot of sadness because a total loss of control here.

AMT: So the premier has said the province could help with moving costs to actually get you to relocate. You and others relocate. Would you consider that?

JFC: A hundred percent. A hundred percent, yes. As I said that I cannot believe I will be here next year at this time.

AMT: Where would you go?

JFC: Anywhere away from the water. I just want a small place for me and my dog and that's all I want because I have a job. I cannot work these days, but I have a job in Ottawa and that's all I want is a place, quite. Rooming house, I'll have to abandon the project because this is going to cost so much money. All I want is a small house or apartment with a fancy art for me and my dog, so I can live. I'm 54-years-old and I don't have that much left to go, but still a few. And that's all I want, away from the water.

AMT: And so do you have any idea like when you would be able to do that?

JFC: First I have to try to protect the building here. In case it's being protected, I don't know. As I said I'm going to be out, but in the meantime it would be nice to live here until such thing can be done because I don't think if we are lucky and the government helps us get out of here, I need a place to live in the meantime and I don't want to let the whole house get destroyed like that, but if it's going to have to happen, it's going to have to happen.

AMT: There's so much uncertainty.

JFC: Yes. Yes exactly. That is the worst.

AMT: And what about the municipality has it been able to help you? Like you say you have sandbags, so somebody came and put those in or helped you put those in?

JFC: Yeah volunteers, a lot of on voluntaries. People I know and people I don't know and they came here and helped us put the sandbags, some friends that helped me too. So I had a lot of help. You know I cannot complain about being left alone by anyone. I cannot say that.

AMT: But it's time to go?

JFC: As I said, twice in two years is too many. The first time I never lived that before. It was some kind of a shock and it was very hard, but it is much harder now because I lived with all those bad memories are coming back.

AMT: Yeah. Well I'll let you go. I know that you're watching that water now from the balcony making sure. So I'll let you go. Thank you for taking the time to speak to me.

JFC: OK thank you very much for putting me on air and letting people know what's happening here.

AMT: Okay you take care.

JFC: OK you too. Thank you.

AMT: Bye bye.

JFC: OK bye.

AMT: Jean-Francois Cousineau owns a rooming house. It was flooded in 2017. He joined us from his home in Pointe-Gatineau, Quebec. Well as the waters rise again in Quebec some communities have been working to prevent the kind of damage they saw from the flooding of 2017. Normand Marinacci is the mayor of L'lle-Bizard-Sainte-Genevieve, which is Montreal borough.

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VOICE: We decided after what happened in 2017 to pass a bylaw that there will be no construction in the zones at risk of flooding. It represents generally approximately the same zone that were flooded in 2017. The existing houses will be, will remain there. They can do whatever they want, but we don't want new houses in those zones. Mainly because our planet is changing you know and the climate changes might affect our rivers and flooding. We want to have a view for the future you know, a vision so that we cannot in 20 years regret that we had given the permission to people to build in those zones.

AMT: Well each community is finding its own lessons from the past and preparing for the future. Guy Pilon is the mayor of Vaudreuil-Dorion and that's where we've reached him. Hello.

GUY PILON: Bonjour madame.

AMT: What is the situation like where you are now in your community?

GP: Oh everything is under control. The lake off the mountain just rolls one centimetres last night, so it's not bad. But in general overall everything is under control and no one have to be removed and we took lesson from 2017 and it happens that we took a very very good decision about how to react to the flood.

AMT: So how does what you're seeing compare to the floods of 2017?

GP: We are more prepared. So we put some old cement jersey. We put it a residential area and we blocked the water before it goes to certain hours. And it changed completely the work we have to do two years ago, we're going house by house when the water was going up and we had intervention house by house. Now we block complete sector of the town and it's happened to be fantastic. We can reopen the school. Nothing has been closed. Not I think, I know we did the right thing by using other ways to prevent flooding.

AMT: So you've got some cement barriers, you also have done a lot of sandbagging have you not?

GP: Yes we have sandbags, but that's the main. Two years ago we asked volunteers to put sandbags, this year we didn't have any volunteer for the town. We have a sandbag, but special sandbag delivered directly to the town, but directly of some point to our citizens and it was very very efficient, very very productive and it prevent ask hundreds and hundreds and volunteers everyday to bring sang bag. So the result at the end of the flood would be analyzed, but it was one of the decision we took to have sandbag already made and delivered by a company.

AMT: Okay so you didn't have a bunch of people trying to fill the sand, fill them with sand and then put them up? Right. You saved a lot of time. Was it expensive to do that?

GP: So one you count the fact, when you do your own sandbag, you have to buy the bag, the tie wrap. You have to bring people, you have to buy the sand of course, but the main issue is when every sandbag have to be delivered by and one by one by one or 20 by 20, but there's a lot of money tension. The way we worked this year, all fifty sandbags are already made on a wooden pallet and they are delivered directly to the place. So a lot lot less money tension and the reaction is instantly you know. Someone call, we go check and then the sand bag can be there 15 minute after. And we have another group of our firefighter and people who are there to help people to put sandbags too. So if it's a huge difference and we leave the both way to do. And of course this year it's fantastic. The results are great and the sandbag deliver are made to pile up you know the other ones, it was difficult to put every step with those sandbags i's fantastic and everyone is happy about it.

AMT: So some specialists say that people who live close to rivers like these that keep rising in the spring need to be moved to avoid the costs associated with flooding. What do you say to that?

GP: What I say it's not everyone. OK there's a difference between having a bit of water on your land and you can keep the water out with some pump and having three or four feet of water in your house. That's the decision the towns have to take with the ciitizens, you know. Like I think Mr. Legault announced for around $200,000 for a house who want to be demolished move, but maybe the same amount of money is given to the citizen, one citizen's life to make modifications to his house. Maybe people can still live there, but always depending how much water go every year or every two years on his land. But you can, it's very hard to tell someone who live all their house there. We have some owners who are the third generation and asking them to leave the places, it's waterfront, it's beautiful, but they have to understand it cannot be done more than once in their life. After that if they decide to stay there they have to live with the consequences and of course the government and the town cannot take care of them every two years.

AMT: But let me ask you, I mean how realistic is that, that you would then if somebody took that one time deal and then they faced even higher floodwaters one year, what the community wouldn't help them or they'd be on the hook for everything. Is that realistic?

GP: Yes it is realistic. People have to take their own decision at the end of the day, if they decide to, like I said sometimes it's only a few inches. Sometime maybe a foot, sometimes three or four feet okay. We don't have that reality on our town, it's a bit different in elsewhere in the province of Quebec. You cannot do that at Nicolette or Gatineau, maybe it's a lot more water than we have, but we took some protection and I'm very, very confident if people new construction, even old construction are made to be protected from water and I have example in my town. They can live those situation and at the end of the day they will be able to live where they live for all their life, but it's always depend around how many water goes there every year, or every two years or every three years. And over a certain amount of money, over a certain level, even the construction cannot be made to protect. So everyone has to take a decision somewhere, but less people take their own decision and if you want to leave, take the money and leave and maybe it's the best thing. But if you feel you can stay there and build something to protect yourself and live with the consequences, that's the main issue. Maybe you can have the choice too.

AMT: OK Mayor Pilon, we'll leave it there. Thank you for your thoughts today.

GP: My pleasure, madame.

AMT: Bye bye.

GP: Bye bye.

AMT: That is Guy Pilon. He is the mayor of Vaudreuil-Dorion and that is where we reached him. Well the waters are high along the river St. Jean in neighboring New Brunswick as well. Parts of Fredericton are submerged in high water. Officials say those waters around Fredericton have peaked and should start to decline in the coming days, but there are communities south of Fredericton that are still being affected as well. And of course Fredericton's still facing it. My next guest wants to put an end to the vicious cycle of flooding that so many people are facing. He says that in order to do that a major tide needs to turn. Glenn McGillivray is the managing director for the Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction, which is a nonprofit research group focusing on disaster prevention research and communication and he's in our Toronto studio. Hi.

GLENN MCGILLIVRAY: Good morning.

AMT: So as you listen to my last two guests, what are you thinking?

GM: Well you know and I sat here together on May 15th, 2017, talking about the same things and we talked about some of the things that should be done and I think we're finally starting to see action in the right direction. Some movement in the right direction. We're seeing governments kind of pulling back on this whole disaster assistance question and whether that pit should be bottomless. And By we're hearing governments talking about buyouts and those are the two things we discussed two years ago and it's good to see some movement in that direction. Not sure if it's enough and I'm a little concerned that the buyout is voluntary and mandatory, but certainly I think the discussions going in the right the right way finally.

AMT: And so let's talk a little bit more about buyouts because this is not, this is where flooding is most acute. As we speak today, it happens in other parts of the country. Is it enough money? Can you leave people to say we're going to buy you out or if you stay there you're stuck with dealing with the flood on your own. How realistic is that?

GM: Well I think as we discussed a couple years ago, it's not a popular thing to do. People aren't clamoring for it. Although sometimes we do have people asking for it. We had it in Sydney, Nova Scotia, people asking to be bought out and they were. But it's not popular, but I think as far as long as people are given a fair market value for the property that's key. But this whole voluntary thing, that's really a sticking point. It happened in southern Alberta after the 2013 floods ,the by all programs were voluntary and they were largely a failure. I don't think you can leave it to people to make, always make the right decision. People moved to those places for a reason. You hear, you often here well it's beautiful and that sort of thing.

AMT: Or it's been in the family for generations.

GM: Been in the family for generations.

AMT: Let me ask you, you know what responsibility do municipalities and provinces have in zoning? Like are, we used to hear, are we still hearing? Like where are like the flood plain maps? Are they good? Are they up to date?

GM: It's a real dog's breakfast right across the country. You have places where the flood plain maps are up to date using technology, incorporating climate change into them and you have places where they're ancient. Quebec historically hasn't been great. Some of their maps are quite old. They're digitized. They're just digital copies of paper maps and I understand they're finally coming around there as well to get some better mapping. But a lot of the risk that we're seeing right now, a lot of the problems we're seeing right now is legacy risk. That's been around for a long long time. So I saw gentleman on The National last night whose grandfather bought the home in 1949 and he got it for a song because it flooded all the time. So that's the thing, a lot of these places are decades old, the buildings have been there for quite some time. But the first thing we have to do is stop creating new risks and we have to stop new construction in these places and that's job number one I think.

AMT: How much of a role is climate change playing in the floods we're seeing?

GM: I'm really careful to say whether it's playing a role or not. It's very difficult to say. What we have to understand here is that the flood plain as flooding right now and the flood plain is part of the river and it floods. That's what it does.

AMT: That's why they call it a flood plain.

GM: That's why they call it a flood plain and the boreal forest burns and the flood plain floods and that's that's the bottom line. And so we shouldn't get too excited I think about it. It happens often. It happened in 2017. It's the spring freshet melting. Now we got some heavy rainfall, that could certainly play have some climate change in there. I don't know, but we do have to understand that you know if we make this thing exceptional, if we describe it as being rare and you know then we're not going to treat it with the gravity it needs. This is going to happen. It's going to happen again. It's going to happen again and it's going to happen again and we have to get a hold on it now.

AMT: We heard the mayor talk about cement barriers. Are there are other ways to mitigate the flooding?

GM: Yeah I'm really I understand the need for temporary barriers, but they are stopgap measures. They are temporary. They're not sustainable. I mean you can look at things like raising properties and that's being done in Houston right now because of Hurricaine Harvey a couple of years ago. It's being done here in the New York area and places like that after Superstorm Sandy in 2012, I think it was. That's expensive, very expensive, very disruptive. You have to find the right contractors to do it and the buildings are still on a floodplain. It doesn't change anything. It kind of reduces the property damage, but it doesn't change things like know contaminated waters rushing through a community and stuff like that. There are ways of building structures to make them wet, so that the basement, you know the basement will flood, but it will dry out and you can move on again. These are all different things that can be looked at, but really ICR, we believe that we really have to get people off the flood plain, period. And the other measures are you know they deserve a discussion, but they're not always the best way to go, I think.

AMT: Is it possible to get homes like when you go to a builder can you, are there houses now that are more flood proof, even if you're not right on a flood plain because there are other ways that communities flood, right, in terms of the drainage?

GM: I think right off the shelf, off the rack, I don't think there are. I think you'd have to speak to your builder, come up with a custom solution. You really have to look at the height of the basement or whether you even should have a basement to begin with.

AMT: So this is the kind of thing that has to change as well then?

GM: Yeah absolutely.

AMT: Do you see that happening enough in this country?

GM: No, no. Absolutely not. As long as the government is writing the cheque and bailing people out, that introduces moral hazard and people kind of you know they just rebuild in place and go on with their life and we're seeing it right now I mean again we sat here two years ago talking about the same stuff the same people are flooding in and two years that'll happen again and will happen again and again.

AMT: So there are buyouts that have occurred elsewhere?

GM: Right yeah. We look at 1954, the Toronto area, after Hurricane Hazel is one of the model buyout programs we had in this country. So Hurricane Hazel hit Toronto. Several people died. A lot of neighborhoods were wiped out. The province came in, bought out quite a few homeowners in the Humber River Valley area and some other places in Toronto, turned that property into parkland. That park and floods, floods all the time, but there's no property damage. There's no loss of life. That was a mandatory buyout and that's key, it was mandatory. And we still look at it today, that was the way to go. It was very well done. Again I mentioned southern Alberta 2013, that was a voluntary buyout. It was a failure, abject failure. And so now we have these neighborhoods that are pockmarked with homes that were either abandoned or moved away and you have people that stayed and so that's not a good solution either. So as tough as the mandatory buyout idea is, I think it's the way to go, particularly in very high risk areas and we have to give it more heat I think say.

AMT: Ok and so do you see municipalities getting better at this in terms of who they're hiring to work on these issues? How they actually think about building a community?

GM: I'm encouraged in some ways. You know we saw a real good buyout in Sydney, Nova Scotia after some Thanksgiving Day flooding in 2016, I think it was. 18 homes were bought out in a high risk area. In many cases homeowners even asked for it, but they did that. That was a great way to go. I think re-flood mapping areas, incorporating climate change into flood maps, that's all encouraging. Having climate change adaptation staff on municipal, as municipal employees come out with plans and things of that nature is very encouraging.

AMT: So it doesn't have to be this way but we need a bureaucracy to actually look after it.

GM: We do. We do and we're getting there. We really are. And there are places that are leading it and places that are not, but we're getting there.

AMT: Okay thanks for coming in.

GM: Thank you.

AMT: Glenn McGillivray, managing director for the Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction with me in our Toronto studio. If you're worried about flooding in your community, we want to hear from you. Tweet us @TheCurrentCBC. Go to our website cbc.ca/thecurrent and click on the contact link. And stay with us, in our next half hour, Through Walls With Words, a portrait of life inside a U.S. detention facility for migrants, penned by the migrants themselves. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current.

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How letters from migrants shed light on the 'intolerable' conditions inside U.S. detention centres

AMT: Hello. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti and you're listening to The Current. The divide over migration to the United States is a wide one, both philosophically and geographically. Border apprehensions have been growing and detention centers are filling up and they're now overcrowded and now the situation appears to have grown even more difficult for many people in detention. Last week the U.S. Attorney General William Barr ruled that migrants who can demonstrate a credible fear of returning to their home countries, will no longer be eligible for bond. That's a payment allowing a migrant to be released from detention while awaiting an asylum hearing. For the people you're about to hear from this will be another blow to their hopes for release. The desperate situation of migrants has led a group in San Diego to reach out through an old fashioned means. The Current's Joan Webber spoke with some of them about their efforts and this is her documentary, Through Walls With Words.

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KATE SWANSON: Okay. My name is Kate Swanson. I'm an associate professor in the Department of Geography at San Diego State University. So if you recall in the summer of 201i this was the summer when Trump and Sessions introduced zero tolerance policies at the border and this is also when they decided to start separating children from families at the border.

VOICE 1: If you are smuggling a child then we will prosecute you and that child may be separated from you as required by law.

KATE SWANSON: As you can imagine a lot of people were very outraged about this. And we have a detention center right in our backyard. I mean we, I'm sitting on campus at San Diego State University right now and 25 miles from where I sit, there are about a thousand people who are migrants and asylum seekers who are asking for help and we've thrown them in prison.

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KATE SWANSON: So a group of faculty members at San Diego University and neighbors nearby the university, we got together and decided to try to do something.

ANNE-MARIE DEBBANE: I received an invitation to attend a gathering one Sunday afternoon. My name is Anne-Marie Debbane. I am an assistant professor of geography at San Diego State University. It was really about bringing people together, friends and neighbors to discuss ways in which we as a small community, as a group, could possibly do something. We ended that meeting with some to do items and the next day we were writing letters.

KATE SWANSON: We came across a list of names on a website that had the names and A-numbers, these are the alien registration numbers that immigrants use in the U.S. that were listed for a group of people who were a part of one of the caravans that were currently in detention at the detention center.

ANNE-MARIE DEBBANE: The first batch of letters that went out came back with more people writing to us from the detention center. They would just simply write and say yes I've heard of your group my friend or my cellmate who's in detention and I would also like to have a pen pal.

KATE SWANSON: Dear Juan, my name is Kate and I live in San Diego. I want to tell you that there are a lot of people in San Diego who are not in agreement with the detention of migrants or the detention of children and their families.

ANNE-MARIE DEBBANE: Dear Ocheri, thank you for your letter. I am sorry for having written in French, but I had never received your other letter and so I admittedly wasn't sure whether I should write in English or French. I admire you for your bravery, courage and determination in standing up for justice and freedom.

KATE SWANSON: And help as I can during this difficult time. A little about me. I'm a professor at the University here in San Diego. I was born in Canada, but I've now lived in San Diego for ten years. I have a husband, Greg, and son. That's how we started. We're now an organization called Detainee Allies. We have well over 200 volunteers as well and a body of faculty and student volunteers who are all doing this as a labour of love more or less.

MD: So my letter is pretty short, but I think it really highlights how lonely and how dehumanizing detention centers can be. My name Marc and I'm a graduate student at San Diego University with an MPH in health promotion and behavioral science and in Latin American studies. So my letter is from a man, he'll go as K and he's from the Congo. And he wrote: Hi. I'm so happy to read your letter. Your letter is not just a letter. It is hope in life and darkness. It is light and life sore. In jail, I just need your support and love. The love is a basic need of life. Without love, we are so empty and alone. I am writing you this letter at midnight. I am so lonely and helpless, but I am still positive and powerful. I wish you good luck and a beautiful life. I am thankful to you for praying for me and sending me your blessings. Thank you.

KATE SWANSON: They vary. You know we get artwork. We get people who send beautiful pictures. We had people send us baby booties that have been made out of gum wrappers. We've had people send dreamcatchers that have been made out of dental floss. Poetry, yeah we received poetry. Yes we, I can read you a poem if you'd like. This is from a boy really, a young man. He spent his 19th birthday in prison. He is a gay El Salvadorian and he was fleeing El Salvador. He came as part of the caravan because he was facing persecution due to his sexual identity and he's university educated. Incredible guy, but he wrote this poem, which I've translated into English. I would like the world to know that migrants are the hope of our families, the hope of our countries. The hope for a better society. The hope for a better world. We are the hope that won't stop shining. We are the light that won't go out.We are strong in our journey and strong in our lives and we are not what President Trump believes we are.

DONALD TRUMP: Asylum. You know I look at some of these asylum people. They're gang members. They're not afraid of anything. They have lawyers grading them. They read what the lawyer tells him to read. They're gang members and they say I fear for my life. They're the ones that are causing fear for life. It's a scam. Okay.

SO: Hola. Hi. I'm giving you a cordial hello, but wishing you success in all of your daily labors. Hi my name is Sam Orndorf. I'm a geography master student at San Diego State University and I've been with Detainee Allies since September of 2018. I'm originally from Nicaragua and he gives his birthdate and age. I have participated in a protest against the government and for this reason I have been persecuted, threatened, beaten by the police and my house has been besieged on various occasions by paramilitary groups allied with the government. For this reason I have decided to search for protection in this country.

ANNE-MARIE DEBBANE: What was key in this is that the financial support that we provide. We provide financial support for commissary. It's like the prison store.

KATE SWANSON: Every month we make modest commissary donations, which basically allow people to make phone calls to their family members and allows them to buy some goods in detention from the commissary.

ANNE-MARIE DEBBANE: Stationery, pens, paper, but also the most basic necessities, such as toilet paper, toothbrush, toothpaste, soap, shampoo, food and beverages.

KATE SWANSON: And we get letters back from people saying you know thank you, thank you, thank you for this money. I haven't spoken to my family in six months because I haven't had any money to call them. So the $20 that you've donated will help me finally speak to my family again. Thank you.

MD: I received the money and my commissary and I feel very grateful for this. Now that I have circumstances of much help to talk with you all, I'd like to be in contact with you.

ANNE-MARIE DEBBANE: The need to buy commissary if people don't have support on the outside, whether it be family or friends or groups like ours means that people have little choice, but to work. So a lot of people detained work and receive a dollar a day for their work.

KATE SWANSON: People are profiting off human suffering. For me it is really egregious that we can have a system where they do labor for a dollar a day and the profits from that are traded on the stock market and people including pension systems are profiting from that.

ANNE-MARIE DEBBANE: Currently there is a class action lawsuit that has been filed against the the detention center in San Diego.

VOICE 2: Work for free or get thrown in solitary confinement.

VOICE 3: That's the deal detainees say they were offered. Now a class action lawsuit accuses the center of violating several labor laws.

ANNE-MARIE DEBBANE: Because it is supposedly called a voluntary labour program, but we have heard it is not voluntary. This is what the lawsuit is about.

VOICE 3: Detention center. Deal says the men were forced to work under threat of punishment or solitary confinement.

KATE SWANSON: After all we start getting quite a few letters, we started working together with students and faculty to go through the letters and start coding them because we saw report after report of human rights abuses being reported by people in detention.

EP: The following letter I'm going to read is from a woman from Guatemala who talks about the conditions inside the detention center. My name is Evette Perona. I'm a first year graduate doing a Masters in Public Health and a Masters of Arts in Latin American studies. While the stay here, each day gets more intolerable. They put the temperature intensely cold. Our bones hurt. The food schedule is irregular and is quite variable. The food is not healthy and an official once said, it is dog food.

KATE SWANSON: The greatest number of complaints is for contaminated or insufficient food and so I can read you a couple of quotes here as well. Yes sometimes they give us rotten food and they treat us as if we were criminals and yet our only crime is to flee our home countries because of the crime and lack of safety there. Another person said I can't communicate with my family and at times I go to bed hungry. We have spoken. We do have someone who speaks quite regularly to representatives from the detention center and they say that they are always meeting or exceeding federal immigration standards, which is true, but it's because the federal immigration standards are quite low.

ANNE-MARIE DEBBANE: I think that having a friend on the outside who is committed to supporting his case has been extremely important and meaningful to him. I mean oviously right. I mean he has a friend who lives in Oakland.

KATE SWANSON: We decided that we would take this body of letters and we wrote a report, which is now, we presented it to the attorney general of California.

VOICE 4: California Attorney General Xavier Bacerra today unveiled the results of his offices looking to detain immigrants. In some cases the AG's staff said the stories they heard were heartbreaking.

JB: This letter is from an individual from Honduras. He goes by O. My name is Jennifer Beckner. I'm a graduate student in public health and Latin American Studies at San Diego State University and I recently joined Detainee Allies just a few months ago. He has a wife and a seven-year-old daughter that he says my beautiful intelligent daughter. Hello and good day. Thank you for taking the time to read this letter. My family and I are seeking asylum for various reasons. I am the sole breadwinner for my family. I am a construction worker from Honduras. I am not completely fluent in English, so I'm having someone type this as I dictate. So please excuse the third party involvement. I've had a loss back to back of two sons that were killed in a very violent fashion. My mother due to the slaying of both my sons resulted in a slow painful death for her. She just could not take the pain of her grandson's dying in such a violent way. I have had to bury three immediate family members back to back within two years. This has been a very exhausting ordeal. God is my only reason for my survival.

KATE SWANSON: We have a number of cases of prolonged or indefinite detention, which is for over a year. The longest I think that we know of so far is someone who has been in detention for almost two years.

ANNE-MARIE DEBBANE: Ochori arrived in April 2017. He turned 29 in December. He told me after he had had his first birthday in prison that he had told people around him I bet you I'm still going to be here next year. I had gone to visit him. It was close to his birthday and he told me how his cellmates had said that when he had mentioned that it would be his birthday they had said that they could celebrate with Pepsi, you know buy some Pepsi from the commisary and you know he looked at me like, that's really, that's terrible.

KATE SWANSON: I did look at a recent report from the detention center. They said the average length of stay was 45 days, which seemed very short compared to the people who are writing us. The people who are writing us are those who had been in detention for months and months and months. Well in some cases people don't have lawyers. So that certainly doesn't help. If you don't have a sponsor to help to pay your bond. So in the US you can get out of detention if you have a sponsor who is willing to pay your bond and bonds typically in the past reset at as low as $1500, $5000, $10,000 maybe, but now we're seeing people who have bonds set at $50,000.

ANNE-MARIE DEBBANE: It's an exorbitantly high amount. There was concern that maybe it was a mistake that it wasn't actually $50,00, that it was five and then he sent, he said no, he o affirmed that it was 50 and sent me a copy of the bond.

KATE SWANSON: Which is a tremendous amount of money and makes it very difficult for anyone to leave detention while they wait for their case to go through the system.

MD: I'm a father of an 8-year-old and a 2-year-old daughter and I feel much anguish to not see them visually. It's something very frustrating and I ask God to let me leave very soon this centre, so I can begin a normal life.

ANNE-MARIE DEBBANE: October 9th, 2018. Dear Anne Marie. Thank you for your letters. It gives me courage. First, I am glad to hear that you are in the process of finding organizations that can help me pay for my $50,000 bond. I'll be waiting to hear from you on that. I'm just so determined to get him out before he reaches that two year mark. There was a bond because of our common interests and a shared sense of humour and it was very pleasant.

EP: This is a letter from a young man from Honduras who was detained for more than six months. He has been recently deported, but before being deported he leaves this last testimony explaining why they didn't give him asylum. I wanted to inform you that I lost my case because my mom and sister are in Honduras and because in Honduras the country is very big and I can easily go to another city. Also, because according to the judge, I did not meet all the requirements for asylum. The asylum is only about race, religion, political opinion and nationality and that the ninth circuit of the state has put an appeal against the particular social group category, which was my category because in Honduras I am from a social group that is against the gangs and all the activity they do against all people. Among these activities they are known for collecting tax, selling drugs, killing, possesion of private property, etc.

KATE SWANSON: I think the crime that people are being charged with is crossing the border illegally. That is their crime for the most part.

ANNE-MARIE DEBBANE: When I met him, his case had been denied and there was an order for his removal and he was pursuing his last avenue by filing an appeal with the federal court, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. In January he received the news that he had been granted a stay of removal. His case will be heard in that federal court of appeals.

KATE SWANSON: I am sure there are people who are very opposed to this and I think the line of thinking is that people they have crossed the border illegally, they have broken the law, therefore they are criminals and they should be punished and that why should we make their conditions good while they're here because that will just encourage more people to come. But I think that is a fairly weak argument and I think it doesn't consider our shared humanity.

EP: I wanted to ask you for economic help because when I leave to Honduras I am going to return to Mexico with my whole family because I can't live in Honduras knowing that they killed part of my family. And the same can happen to me or my mom or my sister. Everything has been hard and if this happened to my mom and sister, I don't think I would be able to overcome it and I don't have the money to travel when I get to the country.

KATE SWANSON: Part of this project was trying to do a very small act of compassion and solidarity and to understand that people who are coming to the US to ask for help are mothers are fathers are brothers or sisters are children. They're just like everybody else and they're doing whatever they can to improve their life circumstances.

JB: After a long and difficult journey we finally made it to Mexico. Just hoping that we could come and explain our situation at the border and we could be granted asylum, but we were not aware that we had to get on a list. We didn't have any money, no place to stay, so we slept on the street with my seven-year-old daughter, not safe in Mexico. In the mornings we noticed that some guys kept following everything we did. Every move. I was certain that they were after my wife or my baby daughter. So I decided to jump the fence. I did it for my family. I never did it for malicious intent. I did it so that my daughter and wife would be safe. I want to put you in my position that you see that you would have done the very same thing. I don't have a bad bone in my body. I have lost enough already. I refuse to lose any more.

KATE SWANSON: It's like the detention centre is a black box, right, and it's the kind of the brilliance of this project is that through the power of U.S. Post we're able to get stories out and we're able to get people's voices heard.

MD: I'd like to thank you for your support and offer thanks for your help. Sincerely, his name.

AMT: We've been listening to the documentary, Through Wlls With Words, produced by The Current's documentary editor Joan Webber. We contacted the company CoreCivic, which operates Otay Mesa for a response to some of the allegations raised in the letters by the detainees at the facility. Amanda Gilchrist is a spokesperson for the company and sent us a statement, which reads in part and I'm quoting, "Otay Mesa provides a safe, appropriate environment for detainees. It is independently accredited by the American Correctional Association, ACA, and is monitored on a daily basis by onsite ICE officials." ICE of course stands for Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the United States. She responds to mention of the detainee work program saying quote, "All work programs that are ICE detention facilities are completely voluntary and operated in full compliance with ICE standards, including federally established minimum wage rates for detainee volunteer labor. Detainees are subject to no disciplinary action whatsoever if they choose not to participate in the work program." Ms. Gilchrist also writes about the food. Here's the quote: "CoreCivic provides three nutritious meals a day that members of staff also often eat. Meals at CoreCivic facilities meet or exceed nutritional standards, which are set by our government partners." And finally Amanda Gilchrist of CoreCivic addresses another of the complaints we heard about in the writing and here's the quote. "CoreCivic works to ensure the temperatures in our facilities are comfortable for both the people in our care and our staff. If we receive any complaints about the temperature, facility maintenance staff responds and adjusts the heat or air accordingly. There is robust grievance process available to all detainees at Otay Mesa." And that they later write includes toll free numbers.

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AMT: That is our program for today. Stay with Radio One for Q. Acclaimed Canadian Dionne Brand will be on the show as part of Q's poetry week. Now today marks one year since the tragic event in Toronto, when a van attack killed ten people who were out enjoying the day on Yonge Street in the part of north Toronto known as Willowale. Yesterday on The Current, guest host Duncan McCue spoke with two members of the D'Amico family. They lost a daughter and sister, Anne Marie D'Amico, in that attack. We will leave you today with one more voice connected to that story and one of the ways the D'Amico family has helped transform the sonic landscape of Willowdale to help with the healing process. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. Thank you for listening to The Current.

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VOICE: My name is Lilly Cheng. I am the co-founder of WeLoveWillowdale and we're here in Mel Lastman Square. We're under the gazebo and actually this piano was donated by the D'Amico family and you know they lost their daughter in the tragedy. I just really admire their courage because you know we've had these meetings and we're planning an event which is the one year commemoration, but for them it's the one year of the most terrible day that they've ever endured and I think it's so beautiful that they really want to be a part of this journey in honour of their daughter. And they had this piano and we had you know music was a significant part of our grieving journey a year ago. We had 28 days of music on the street. We had a lot of musicians just bringing in, cause music is an agent of healing and we had this dream oh maybe we could have a piano where random acts of music could happen and you know Mr. D'Amico said I have a piano that needs to go somewhere. So it was just the perfect timing and so the piano is here and possibly here to stay and not just for next week's event.

[Piano playing]

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Apr. 23, 2019 episode transcript

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