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The Current Transcript for July 23, 2019

Host: Anthony Germain

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

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VOICE: And therefore I give notice that Boris Johnson is elected as the leader of the Conservative and Unionist Party.

ANTHONY GERMAIN: Britain's Conservative Party has a new leader this morning, but for Boris Johnson, his promise of leading the United Kingdom out of the European Union could bring more turbulence during this chaotic period of British history. That's coming up in a few minutes. And then.

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VOICE: It's a love letter to my little girl. I just think that imagination trumps violence and ignorance and I wanted to inspire stories and maybe make a better world for my little girl.

AG: Matt Zurbo has turned that desire to create a better world of imagination for his little girl into a year long project of children's stories. In half an hour, meet the oyster farmer who writes pearls of wisdom for the world's children. And then.

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[Gun shot]

[Police radio chatter]

AG: Gunfire and bloodshed on a hot day in Toronto and the post-mortem on a shot that no police officer ever wants to take. Coming up, in an hour we'll continue our One Bullet series. I'm Anthony Germain and you're listening to the summer edition of The Current.

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Will Boris Johnson deliver Brexit? Critics say new U.K. PM has 'been making up fiction' for decades

Guests: Susan Ormiston, Anne Applebaum, Ian Dunt

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VOICE: And we know the mantra of the campaign that is just gone by. It is deliver Brexit, unite the country and defeat Jeremy Corbyn. And that is what we're going to do. I know some wag that's already pointed out that deliver, unite and defeat was not the perfect acronym for an election campaign, since unfortunately it spells dud, but they forgot the final "e" my friends, E for energize. And I say to all the doubters, dude we are going to energize the country. We're going to get Brexit done.

AG: That's Boris Johnson assuming the leadership of the UK's Conservative Party. Hard to picture Churchill starting a sentence with dude. Johnson will become the new prime minister of the United Kingdom when Theresa May formally steps down tomorrow. There'll be no honeymoon period though for the flamboyant new leader. Tensions with Iran are running high over the seizure of a British tanker in the Gulf and of course the long running drama over Brexit promises to climax at the end of October when Boris Johnson pledges he is going to take Britain out of the European Union, even if that means going out without a deal. In a moment we'll discuss Mr. Johnson's improbable rise and how the country may fare under his tenure. But first, I'm joined by CBC Senior Correspondent Susan Ormiston who's right in the thick of it at the leadership announcement in London. Susan, hello.

SUSAN ORMISTON: Good morning.

AG: Boris Johnson declared leader of the Conservative Party. What's the reaction in the room like right now?

SUSAN ORMISTON: Well he delivered what many believed he would. It was entertaining, wasn't it? Dude not dud. He promised to energize the UK to get rid of a spirit of self doubt. He said like giants paying off guy ropes. We're going to get rid of that self-doubt and we're going to energize this country. I think most people in this country were expecting Boris Johnson to win today over Jeremy Hunt. He got about two votes to one, 66 percent of the conservative members voting. But important to remember here, this is the conservative members voting not the country's. So he's won the party, but not the country.

AG: What's your sense of the tone. You mention that he was funny in watching it here in Toronto. He certainly did the bombastic thing that people expected, but was there anything serious in his remarks that struck you?

SUSAN ORMISTON: Well it was short and it was I must say the shadow chancellor in this country has already tweeted it was like an after dinner speech at a local golf club. Clearly not impressed. But I think many people voted for this man because he has so much energy and he has charisma and he can make people smile and sort of shuck off as one member coming out of the meeting said to me shuck off three years of sort of drudgery and this fight over Brexit. Of course he did say he's going to bring this to conclusion on October 30 first when he has promised to do Brexit whether it's a deal or not with the European Union. And of course there's very much controversy to that he's already lost four or five cabinet ministers who promised to resign when he becomes leader over the hard Brexit deal that he says he's willing to go for.

AG: You know one of the problems the Prime Minister faces is unity. What does he do to unite this party which is so clearly fractured with cabinet ministers leaving? How does he fix this?

SUSAN ORMISTON: Well that's clearly going to be one of his biggest problems because many say that there is a majority amongst conservatives in parliament to reject a Brexit, which is what he's promised. So that's going to be difficult. He's also facing a very slim majority of conservative members in parliament. It's about four now it may be down to three with a by election in August. So that's a pretty slim margin to manipulate trying to get people on his side. First he has to unite parliament and the conservative members and then he has to sell this to the country. The election is not due until 2022 but some are already saying they don't expect his leadership to last that long that he may be forced to call an election before that time on the heels of an unpopular Brexit decision.

AG: And I guess that would legitimize what the conservative voted for today, a general election.

SUSAN ORMISTON: Well yes. I mean I think that I got the sense sitting in that room that this there is a sense of OK finally, Theresa May it's her last full day as prime minister. She chaired her final cabinet meeting this morning. They bought her a handbag and some jewellery, passed the hat around. She is gone now effective tomorrow when she visits the queen turns it over to Boris Johnson. I think the Conservative membership in that room certainly is filled. OK finally now we can start fresh. We know there's trouble ahead, but we have a new leader and we have a chance to turn the dial on this.

AG: All right Susan, thank you very much.

SUSAN ORMISTON: OK.

AG: That's Susan Ormiston, a CBC senior correspondent and she was in London, England.

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VOICE: I want you to consider this kipper. This kipper which has been presented to me by just now by the editor of a national newspaper, who received it from a skipper smoker in the Isle of Man, who is utterly furious because after decades of sending kippers like this through the post, he has had his costs massively increased by Brussels bureaucrats who have insisted that each kipper must be accompanied by this. a plastic ice pillow.

AG: That's Boris Johnson last week waving a smoked fish to demonstrate what he sees as the overreach of EU officials in Brussels. He's known for using props like that to justify his view that Brexit just can't come fast enough. But EU officials say Boris Johnson was less than accurate in his claims, a bit economical with the truth. The EU apparently doesn't take a stand on how processed or smoked fish are delivered. That is actually the responsibility of the British government and that's the government that Boris Johnson will now be leading. My next two guests have seen Mr. Johnson make these kinds of claims before and they've also seen how his supporters stand squarely behind him, no matter what he says. Anne Applebaum is the global opinions columnist for The Washington Post and a senior fellow with Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and she joins us from Poland. And Ian Dunt is the editor of politics.co.uk and he is the author of Brexit: What the Hell Happens Now? Catchy title. And he joins us from his office in London. Good morning to you both.

IAN DUNT: Good morning.

ANNE APPLEBAUM: Good morning.

AG: So Anne Applebaum, let me start with you. You've known Boris Johnson for almost three decades. What is it like now to know that he's about to become prime minister of the UK?

ANNE APPLEBAUM: Well I think you actually nailed something very important when you played that quote of him. That clip of him talking about the kipper that supposedly the EU is regulating that's not really being regulated. I actually just wrote a column noting that that's really the essence of Boris Johnson. The oddity is that he's continued he's been making up stories he's been telling you know making up fiction for many, many decades. So I believe is the Conservative Party is now voting for him not despite that, but because of it. This is a party that came in fifth in the European elections recently. It's a party that stands at around 20-25 percent of the opinion polls. It's a party that faces really tough decisions about Brexit. You know decisions that don't have good answers you know you have a certain set of bad choices that have to be made and they want somebody to make them feel better. They want someone to say it's going to be OK. And that is really the only rationale for choosing someone like that to be their leader and then of course the prime minister.

AG: Ian Dunt, what about you? Did you ever think you'd see this day come?

IAN DUNT: I mean you know for a while you start to just sort of try to convince yourself that it's not going to happen. He's been trying to do this for a very very long time. You always think you know we won't really get to that stage or we won't actually get to the point where we basically put a giant clown face on top of the country. But it appears that that day has now come. Now he's managed to do this but by variety of means. I mean he's always had sort of self-interest at the home but he's been quite canny at knowing exactly when to step away from power when to fire shots at the prime minister when to utilize this idea of simplicity is rather on this who's saying this spot on analysis of just saying the more you get bogged down in this kind of crunching machine of complexity of bureaucratic complexity of trade-offs his option was just keep on saying look it's fine just believe hard enough just be optimistic enough. And in the end even though that offers no political solutions to the problem psychologically, it was very effective.

AG: Now you mentioned he's been at this for a long time and giant clown face or not, how did Boris Johnson actually get into the spotlight? Where does his fame come from?

IAN DUNT: Well he was a journalist for a long time. He used to, he was actually Brussels correspondent for The Telegraph, which is a right wing sort of broadsheet in the 90s where he wrote these sort of semi-fictional stories about mad EU regulations like straight bananas and condoms that were too small by European regulations and all this sort of nonsense. Most of it untrue. But actually he really became famous including for me on a panel show called Have I Got News For You, which is basically a sort of entertainment program about politics. And then he adopted this road. He's very very accomplished up there sort of befuddled intellectual politician journalist who's just fallen out of bed and doesn't really know what's going on. It's it's an impersonation it's not really real. But he was very very good at that and he gave sort of a reason people who wouldn't normally vote conservative actually pay a little bit of attention to him. And that is quite key to him. He comes from entertainment television more than he does from current affairs television.

AG: So the messed up hair and all that, this is an affectation? This is deliberate?

IAN DUNT: Yeah. But you know the affectation is complicated. Right. So it's not just the sort of the clown that you see on stage. Key to B to the whole representation is the idea that he secretly also is putting this on. So even his very closest allies will constantly say oh you know he's very clever he's very smart which implicit in which was this idea that he's kind of pulling the strings of this clown persona in order to pursue a political agenda. So the deception is part of the clown act. There is this whole idea of the sort of inbuilt hypocrisy of the thing as part of understanding the joke.

AG: All right. Anne Applebaum you've known him since he was a popular columnist. What's your assessment of his reputation as a journalist?

ANNE APPLEBAUM: You know it's a complicated thing because although many have pointed out as Ian just did that Boris' career began with him making up stories about the European Union essentially. I mean they would have sometimes a grain of truth but he would elaborate them and usually they focussed on some peculiar item like prawn favoured potato chips or condoms you know and supposedly the EU was regulating this thing just like you did with the kipper you know he may he may have always made it sound ridiculous and stupid rather than really rather than sinister. And so you know he he he began with that. But the point the larger point I think is that not only was that popular with readers the British press as a whole tolerated him for many many many years. You know remember he had it actually quite a big and important journalistic career. He was a columnist for important newspapers for the Telegraph. He was the editor of The Spectator. He was you know he was on you know as he is that he was on television not just comic programmes but also you know serious news programmes. He was turned too as a commentator and of course because he was amusing because he lightened up the conversation. He was a very popular studio guest and he was somebody that people liked to read. Some people would call him out and say oh well that's fake. That's not true. That's wrong. And he also infuriated a lot of politicians, but nobody really, nobody took it seriously enough to shut him out or fire him for lying or you know make him you know you know a pariah. Right. And in effect the did the decision to accept him and to accept him. And even though we all knew he was making it up I think it tells you something quite deep about maybe it's not just the press it's more the British political class and the system you know that we all said OK, he's all right. You know let's leave it in. We know it's all a bit of a joke, but you know that tolerance is why he'shere.

AG: I want to get back to Ian. I think Anne sort of referred to some of his problems. I don't understand why his gaffes haven't cost him very much. You know a lot about some of the scandals he's been involved in. Can you remind us of some of his more memorable screw ups or scandals.

i: Yeah they do touch him occasionally. I mean he was actually sort of in government before and he had to, he basically had a terrible moment where he'd said some things about the city of Liverpool, city of Liverpool not a particularly wealthy part of England, but very very proud part of England and culturally very important. And he'd sort of made up that they're all sort of constantly you know looking for handouts and constantly sort of self pitying and sort of forced to go on an apology tour over there. There was another difficult moment where she couldn't really remember now which which I think is probably quite enlightening as to what's about to happen which was during the London riots. Now I don't know how much you covered it at the time, but this was a certain period of a few weeks where London just sort of went up in extremely chaotic gang violence for days at a time. No one, it sort of came out of nowhere and it sort of fizzled out, but for that period London was a scary place to be. And certainly people said, well where's the mayor? At this point Boris Johnson was Mayor of London. He was first of all away for days at a time. When he eventually was dragged back, he came in and sort of picked up a broom and did his classic thing, he tried to make a joke out of it. Look here I've got my broom. And there was this real sense of silence around that. Well that joke isn't funny right now because we're looking at something serious going on here. It was almost like a category error. You've got the talk show host to come be the Mayor of London and that's fine until something serious happens in London. And I think that that might be the kind of situation that we're about to see with him in Downing Street.

AG: Now listen I'd like you both to listen to something. This is the British Conservative MP James Cleverly on Good Morning Britain.

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VOICE: If your choosing who's actually going to run the country, the more important thing to look at is their record of running stuff. And one of the reasons why I'm supporting him is because I saw Boris running City Hall in London, city of eight and a half million people. Huge police force, huge transport network, huge economy and he did it demonstrably more successfully than either his predecessor or his successor.

AG: So Anne Applebaum clearly Johnson has support. How has he earned that kind of backing amongst the party's rank and file?

ANNE APPLEBAUM: First of all, I would disagree a little bit with that quotation. Actually being Mayor of London is more symbolic than that may sound. You know he doesn't actually run the police force. He doesn't actually run most of the mechanisms that make London work. He was it's true a very good symbol of London, but there isn't any evidence either from him being mayor or from him being Foreign Secretary or in fact from him running the Spectator, that he is good at managing things.

AG: So where does he get his support?

ANNE APPLEBAUM: Well the support comes from people who, as I began, people who want fiction. They want a story they want to feel better that the party is facing possible humiliation. The country has these terrible choices in front of it. Boris can unite them. It's almost as if he's offering them you know look if you just wish hard enough if you if you want it to happen hard enough we can make it better we can. We can all get together. It's a kind of story it's a kind of fiction about what Britain maybe what it was. You know there's lots of evication of Churchill and the spirit of the Blitz and of what it will be. Lots of great stuff about global Britain in the future, but there's never any actual explanation of what he's going to do and how he's going to do it and one of the things, one of the few pieces of gossip that I have picked up is that he doesn't have a clear path towards a Brexit that's any different from the one that Theresa May has. So this is all about giving people wishfullness, a hope, something that they want and there are quite a lot of people who at this desperate moment, particularly in the membership of the Tory Party and the grassroots, who want exactly that.

AG: Now you raise Brexit and I think as we get to the end of this interview that's where we should probably finish. Boris Johnson is inheriting the mess that we've all been watching around the world. How much faith do either of you have that he can actually get the country through this crisis? That we're not going to see a repeat of what has happened to two prime ministers before him. Ian?

IAN DUNT: None whatsoever. I think we'll be in exactly the same situation that we've been in so far and the policy really isn't that different to Theresa May's. It's basically looking to try and get a better deal. He's been very clear on what that entails if he comes out with a deal that has the backstop of the IRA sort of insurance policy. Parliament won't accept it. If the backstop is not in the EU won't give it two thirds will turn into two that is to go. Well fine I'll just force through no do. But Parliament's made very clear it won't allow him to do that either. It's about options. So suddenly he has to sit there and think well the only way to fix this is to have a general election and trying to get more Tory MPs, so I can have the votes in parliament to force things through, but he's ruled that out as well. And if he's done that then the only thing to do would be to say well fine maybe a referendum on whichever one I want, but he's ruled that out as well. So right now it's like a floater. I mean every option has been blocked off and not just by reality and not just by Brussels and not just by MPs, they've been blocked off by his own rhetoric. So on that basis, it's very hard and I think you'd have to be very optimistic to think he could come out with a better outcome than the previous prime minister.

AG: Anne?

ANNE APPLEBAUM: I mean I think that really the only hope he has is the only way forward he has it's any different from what's happened now is what's called a so-called hard Brexit, which means Britain crashes out. There's no deal. There's no trade arrangement with the European Union and commerce halts at the borders or slows down anyway. That's of course you know the House of Commons has said repeatedly that it won't accept that. The only way then to make it happen is through some piece of trickery through. I don't know not calling back the EU or letting the clock tick out or finding some some technical way around it. And that when, if he does that, it's going to get very, very ugly and I don't know that you know Boris Johnson who loves to be liked and who likes to make rows of people laugh is going to cope very well with that ugliness.

AG: All right listen I appreciate your analysis. To both of you, thank you very much.

IAN DUNT: Thank you.

ANNE APPLEBAUM: Thanks a lot.

AG: Ian Dunt is the editor of politics.co.uk and is also the author of Brexit: What the Hell Happens Now? He was in London. And Anne Applebaum is the global opinions columnist for The Washington Post and a senior fellow with Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. And she was in Poland.

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This author is writing 365 children's stories — 1 each day — to 'make a better world' for his daughter

Guests: Matt Zurbo

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VOICE: Day 1: The dragon Who Breathed Letters by Goog the Dragon. Day 2: Clock in the Night. Day 3: Shy. Day 4: Sun, Moon, Wombat!

AG: And so on. Each day Matt Zurbo is writing a new children's story.

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VOICE: Day 5: Fart City. Day 6: The Sweetness of Weather. Day 7: The World's Smallest Sound.

[Music]

VOICE: Some boys like blue, some girls pink. Some girls like black, some boys like orange. It's yellow . She liked to listen noise. The think about clock in the night is like the sound of an old friend. Julia imagined the barking dogs were really wolves prowling through the snow. When the playgroup lady asked the kids choose their own treasure, Oscar decided collect the best carts. I'm gonna see if I can find the world's smallest sound.

AG: Well that's Matt Zurbo reading just the very beginning of his story and the title of that story is The World's Smallest Sound. And he wrote that on day seven of a project that he's undertaken and get this, he's trying to write a new children's story every day for 365 days. And he's calling it Cielo, named after his daughter. Matt Zurbo is a novelist and he's now a prolific children's book author. And he also works in the bush and he harvests oysters. He's in Eaglehawk Neck in Tasmania, where we've reached him. Hello.

MATT ZURBO: Hi Anthony. Thanks for having me.

AG: Good to talk to you. So tell me about your motivation here. What on earth made you want to write 365 children's stories in 365 days?

MATT ZURBO: It's a love letter to my little girl. I've been writing my whole life, writing's been good to me. I have two occupations as you said and I just think that imagination trumps violence and ignorance and I wanted to inspire stories and maybe make a better world for my little girl.

AG: Now when you say it trumps violence and ignorance, what specifically are you referring to?

MATT ZURBO: Just in general I think imagination leads to knowledge leads to open minds leads to open hearts and I think stories are the key to that, especially the young. The more wonder kids have in their lives the more positive their view on the world will be, both as kids and as they grow up. I was hoping to inspire with this a love stories.

AG: Well obviously if you're going to write that many your love is unquestionable. What day are we at today? Obviously there was the day one at some point. Where are we now?

MATT ZURBO: It's all a bit of a blur at the moment. We're up to 340 something. I think we're right at the talon.

AG: Wow you're at the, you only got about 20 more to go.

MATT ZURBO: Yes. And then there will be a very weird world after the 21st da. I think.

AG: You mean going back to the world?

MATT ZURBO: I meant getting some sleep.

AG: So how do you come up with the inspiration for this? I mean most of us who try writing it you know finding inspiration is tricky for one piece of writing, let alone 365. What what inspires you?

MATT ZURBO: Iinspiration is I tell kids it's easy. It's just practice. It's the applicatio that's hard. It's like comedy. If you do enough, like I did two a long time ago. If you do enough jokes in the end creating jokes become easy because you're in the habit of it. Same with stories. They're everywhere. You see or think or brush across 40 a day. You just sort of learn to observe them, but the application to write them down is another thing entirely.

AG: And what about your daughter in this? You mentioned or I mentioned the intro that Cielo you know that she's dedicated to. She's the dedication. She's the force for all this. How does she inspire you in these stories?

MATT ZURBO: Cielo is is a beautiful 21 months. She's, I try and draw her something she'll eat the paper. But as she grows up these stories will be there for as a legacy for her to dip into as she chooses or not and each story I've done, every one of them comes with art. They're actually in case she wanted to or their favourite story or their favourite character or parents want to draw their story with kids. It's a good family bonding thing, a good summer thing. Or art teachers want to teach their students about sequential art. And I'm hoping that somewhere down the line, yeah she'll be reading more and more and she'll wanted to do a story too or she'll want to draw one for me which would be the present return. There's no ways for her.

AG: Would you mind just reading a little bit of another story for us? I'd like you to hop ahead to day 265. It's one of the stories that I read. The Girl With A Thousand teeth. Would you mind reading us just chapter one from that?

MATT ZURBO: Sure a lazy hopper from 200 stories.

AG: Go for it.

MATT ZURBO: Sure.

AG: All right. Here we go.

MATT ZURBO: Sammy was in love with a girl with 1000 teeth. They didn't really show unless she smiled. It was frustrating. She was pretty. Her smoke was beautiful. Sammy really enjoyed telling her jokes, making her giggle, but when she laughed, well it scared him a little. Sammy was good at telling Lulu, the girl worth 1000 teeth jokes because he had his family tree on his head. It was a lot to deal with. First branches grew in a trunk then waves sprouted. Before he knew it, his mum and dad were up there, then their mums and dads and so on and so on, all the way back to Harry Boost, who looked more than a little white caveman. If nothing else, it was a lot of weight to carry around. School was frustrating. Sammy's tree was taller than the building, so he had to sit outside the class window and playing sport was awkward.

AG: I remember reading these kinds of similar stories that had his mind bending imagery for kids to get their brains around. How do you come up with something like that? A gigantic trunk on somebody's head and a girl with all those teeth. Because I can see kids certainly of the age of five would just yum this up.

MATT ZURBO: Yeah I've got no idea. I'm glad you chose that because as one of my two or three favourites for its absurdity. But the thing that I guess inspired it was some was underneath all the absurdities. There's a kid who is dealing with his family history they all scream and shout and point in a thousand directions and he wants their wisdom but at the same time he has to be a kid. And the weight of too much of that. But without it he said there's a definitely silence. So as absurd as it is, it's also got something underneath as well.

AG: And there's also the relationship between Sammy who's got all this family history baggage in the shape and imagery of a tree growing out of his head and Lulu with all of these teeth. The relationship between them is interesting in the story because it's almost like I like you, but my family doesn't, some people my family don't want me to like you.

MATT ZURBO: That's right. And there's also the other way round where I like you, but I'm a little scared.

AG: As we are. Is there a certain message in this particular story girl with a thousand teeth that you hope young kids will, that will resonate with young kids?

MATT ZURBO: There's several messages. Yes. Again you don't want to bash people over the head ,but you want the message to be there. They're embarrassed if they haven't picked it up along the way. Certainly Sammy's attraction to Lulu is is there's nothing wrong with being intimidated and someone else having a floor or being awkward. He focuses on the things about her that are amazing and doesn't mind the things that make her different. And as for families as I say it's a big topic that he explores in his own. We have been two way of dealing finding his place between who he is as an individual and how much he means his family history acknowledging that makes him what he is.

AG: And then there's boy like girl, girl likes boy and the nervousness that comes wrapped in all that. What are some of the other themes in your stories?

MATT ZURBO: There well you've got 340 to choose from. Fully bully, I've always been a fan of The Outsider I guess. There's dealing with that. There's friendships, there's dealing, there's finding ways to make things silly. There's a need for lustfullness. There's a yearning for obsession. There's lots.There's one book called the Safe Placewhich is an ode to children's books. I think the avatar of the story is a penguin ironically and it's just an important story about books and how they can be a safe place for a kid. You don't want to live in them.

You want the real world because that's where the stories come from. But the books are always there. You need to read a minute or.

And I guess the safe place goes directly to your mission about inspiring a love of reading and books with kids. Let's talk about writing how it fits into your life. What would the other work that you do. Give me a sense of Matt Zavos typical day.

Certainly beyond time with my wife and child. That's OK. Look it's a busy lot of work in the bush for most of my life and that that worked this all around the country which was fun and hard and exciting and and building walking tracks in the rainforest in the far north Queensland and and working down south in the snow in Tasmania.

Driving through the desert. But we've taken up oyster farming in Tasmania and southern Tasmania to have a bit more consistency as a truck gets older and and my wife is huge to that.

So look we get up here and I get up around 5:00 AM I work on the oyster which is a hard job is hard. We work very fast. I spend time. Yeah. My wife two nights a week I train.

I still play Australian Rules football about now anyway all right. I you know like a show I've never done an interview with Australian footy getting in there somehow. So I knew I was only a matter of time.

If this is what we are talking about Tell me about oyster farming.

It's us farming is basically is. It's all about space. You have to work fast. There are tubes and there packs deep water packs and cheats on racks in the ocean and in a big beautiful bay. And we go out on dawn while it's still dark and we hold them in and then put them out as fast as we can. And then we're on shore we grade them and all the racks have been thrown back on the you go out again.

And when I let go and when we're done the day is done and then it's Cielo time and once a deal is done I start work on the books about between 8:00 and 9:00 work until about 1:00 AM depending on the story and then get up and go again.

So you you survive on four hours sleep.

Yes. Doesn't that affect your creativity.

I sometimes wonder is it does a lack of sleep make the stories not as good had the stories be if I got more but at the same time. Family is what it's about.

When I was working by myself I used up in the mountains and in the valleys it was easy to just take it. They often not care but when you've got it you have a commitment. So I made a second commitment to do these books so time is something you make everyone as I say has ideas.

The trick is to make time so as you see the finish line with only 20 more stories to go. You get home you clear the oyster mud off your hands get all cleaned up and you're right. Are you. Are you looking forward to this coming to an end.

My wife is. You must be driving her crazy. She's fantastic. There's no way. Not many partners understand. And and she does and support. It's phenomenal. She's a woman I'm madly in love with. So I'm pretty happy about that. And we have a very very happy baby. So I'm grateful. This is always something more to write. This the things I haven't been doing in the year I've been doing this. Let's finish these 20 days.

Let's get through tomorrow right and see what comes. I just wanna ask you a question about you know given what you do when you're not writing so it sounds like here you're a fairly rugged man you you've worked in the bush I gather using a vacuum to suck up oysters is labour intensive hard work you're outside a lot. How does the physical experience of your job affect your writing if at all because you're obviously outdoors a lot.

Is it. Is it beautiful morality of boys towards jobs. That it so hard that you don't get taught. I think I like being physical. There's no place that inspires still by Aussie rules football. I like being physical. I love that place. And then when it's time to see stories come it's time to stand and write this. I should have given up on one or the other two years ago but I'm stubborn and and I haven't. I've tried and tried.

AG: Are you still playing Aussie Rules football?

MATT ZURBO: I'm still playing. I just clocked that game 650 two weeks ago.

AG: You count everything you do in life, right?

MATT ZURBO: That's a lot of concussions and broken bones, but it's every dent tells a story and is full of stories as it's like in the books.

AG: Has anyone asked you know how does a tough guy who breaks bones get concussions playing Aussie Rules write such sensitive kids stories? Maybe I'm just being stereotypical, but it's not necessarily what one would expect.

MATT ZURBO: Yeah not many. I tend to keep the world separate. I don't really talk about my writing when I'm in the hoops and down in the gullies fully. I don't you know people find out, but I don't. Most of my friends don't book, so it's not an issue. In the I admire anyone of craft and writers and artists that are just magnificent in their craft. I'm admiration and envy. I struggle reading other kids books because I'm eithee disdainful or just totally envious. There's no in-between. And the good ones just make me kill me up with why couldn't I do that. It's just so good. But I do live a life away from that too and I like the balance.

AG: It sounds like there's some of that competitive Aussie's rule in you when it comes to writing, but I want to shift topics briefly although it's connected. How much of a turning point was it when Cielo came into your life?

MATT ZURBO: It was huge. There's no two ways about it. I wanted a kid for a long time and even up and finally someone I was just whole heartedly genuinely in love with an. And I had been living a hard life up in the mountains and and everyone said this will change everything. And I say trust. I was pretty happy about that. And it did. It's it's all about now.

AG: If it's not too personal Matt it sounds to me that you didn't actually like the direction your life was going?

MATT ZURBO: Oh I guess you're probably right. I was stale. Yeah and everything was it it was it was a repetition. And even the open road was a bit of a repetition, but here we are now happy. Happy with a beautiful girl.

AG: How old is she now? How old is Cielo?

MATT ZURBO: 21 months.

AG: 21 months. OK so she's under the age of two. When you read these to her, how does she react? Although she's not at the age where she's taking in all the content, but she has daddy reading to her. How does she react?

MATT ZURBO: She's too young. It's more of a legacy thing at this stage. It's some of the stories to her. Some are for her but I just want to put them in front of her and say Enjoy. She was inspired to love stories or to have a vivid imagination then that would be magnificent. But my plan is that once the challenge is done I'll draw one two of these books for and then she'll had some hand drawn books by papa and read them to her lots.

AG: I was going to ask you about that too because you're making this this Project Cielo. It's available online. It's free. What do you hope the rest of us will take from this?

MATT ZURBO: It was important that it was free. Some people were terrific. When the New York Times article came out offered to crowdfund. But that wasn't the reason it was done. It's done to say there are no obstacles and you can't then put money tag on a message of no obstacle. It was time to give something back and that's what these stories are. Take them as you read them, get out of them what you will and hopefully enjoy. Hopefully as I say the world will be at least a little better place.

AG: And now you're counting down the days with the 20 or so to go along with your wife who no doubt is counting these days down as well. What are you planning to do once this is over?

MATT ZURBO: A good night's sleep. Beyond that I don't know. It's something I enjoy doing. I love a good challenge and and when it's done we'll figure out what the next project move I do is. First things first.

AG: Listen it's been a pleasure speaking with you. I want to let you go just yet though because I'd like to get you to read another one of these gems for us. Would you mind trying Day 133. This is about the person that was the inspiration for this. Your daughter and it's called For Cielo.

MATT ZURBO: It would be a pleasure. These are the things I want for Christmas. Give you something. For you to be happy. To see you smile. To see you do fun things. Take you to amazing places, moments, occasions. To give you ideas. To be inspired by your ideas. To share a laughter to make you proud. To have you make me proud. To listen to you tell stories under a beautiful sky. No one else around. To watch you tell stories to other people is to see the way you tell. To stare at the moon with you mentioned things or to explore the world discover everything rather. To tell dad jokes to. Caught you fall into the joy of music be lost in it. If you hug, they're 1000 times better words. To enjoy Boxing Day with you once Christmas has let off steam. And we have nothing but time to listen to your smallest sigh. Anyone or all of the above would be fine.

AG: That's For Cielo by Matt Zurbo, the author, also reading that story for us. So Matt what goes through your mind as you read that? It's quite lovely.

MATT ZURBO: I just picture my daughter. It's as simple as that. I just picture her growing up and think of the joy, the good moments ahead. I'm sure they won't all be rosy. She'll be crashing our car at some stage and then there will be boys, but I'm just thinking of the good moments. Moments with my little girl and my wife.

AG: Well Matt Zurbo, it's been a pleasur.e thank you very much.

MATT ZURBO: It's been an absolute pleasure. I'm very grateful and hello to Canada.

AG: Matt Zurbo is an oyster farmer, a dad, novelist, as well as a children's book author and we reached him in Eaglehawk Neck, Australia. He's writing a new children's story everyday for 365 days and it's all part of the project as you heard called Cielo, named after his daughter. And that whole project is online, it's free and we're going to link that to our site at cbc.ca/thecurrent.

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One Bullet: The Solution

AG: Well the story that we're about to tell you today is about a very rare kind of shooting and it's one which is believed to be the first of its kind in Canada. It's a shocking incident that many people have never even heard about. It's about the kind of shot that police train for everyday, but it's a bullet that no one wants to fire. Now this week we're rebroadcasting our special series, One Bullet, a CBC investigation into the impact of gun violence in our country, one bullet, one person at a time. And this first aired back in January. And just a warning our documentary today will be disturbing for some listeners. Here now is The Current's Joan Weber with her documentary, The Solution.

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JOAN WEBBER: There are days in every person's life which can be recalled in vivid, sometimes excruciating detail, minutiae made acute by circumstance; what you were wearing, the sound of a single bird, the humidity on your skin. August 25th, 2004 is that day for the people you're about to hear from.

NEWSCASTER: The temperature outside is 19 degrees. We see that going up to 28 today, becoming Cloudy with a 40 percent chance of showers this afternoon and a risk of thunders.

JOAN WEBBER: It's already a steamy Monday morning in Canada's biggest city. And it's not even eight a.m. Thousands of people jostling one another as they head in or out of Union Station, the commuter hub of downtown Toronto.

[Dispatcher]

JOAN WEBBER: Unbeknown to any of them, nearby an attack is taking place in a food court. A man who has just fired several shots at his estranged wife, narrowly missing. In a black and white security video, the woman runs into frame. She's being pursued by a large man with long untucked shirt as she sprints down a hallway. She looks over her shoulder as the man is closing the gap. She trips and falls sliding along the polished floor. The man then begins beating her with the end of his gun. He is Sugston Anthony Brookes. In his mid-forties. He has a long history of domestic violence.

DISPATCHER: [Unintelligible] Is there any description?

OFFICER: There is no description. Just multiple...

JOAN WEBBER: He lingers over her motionless body before fleeing back toward the security camera and out of frame.

OFFICER: The only description so far is a male, black, 30 to 40 years, heavy built, wearing a green shirt...

JOAN WEBBER: That officers seeking a description is about to come face to face with Brookes. At about this time Toronto police's Emergency Task Force is getting word that shots have been fired downtown. And they're being called in.

TOM SHARKY: Well the information we received initially was that a woman had been shot by a...

JOAN WEBBER: Former Vietnam vet Tom Sharkey's the sergeant in charge. He's been with the Toronto Police Force for 30 years, and as his team readies to leave...

TOM SHARKY: We started to receive more information that a police cancelable had confronted the man and chased the man down towards Front Street.

ANGELA NAUS: I remember that day. It's funny the things that I remember and the things I don't remember. Like I remember where I sat on the assignment desk. I remember that I had an extra large Starbucks coffee. I remember what I was wearing.

JOAN WEBBER: Angela Naus is a producer with CBC television'.

ANGELA NAUS: The newsroom in August, as you know, can be quite quiet.

JOAN WEBBER: 14 years ago she was working for Newsworld, the name then of the corporation's 24 hour news channel. One of her bosses has a request.

ANGELA NAUS: He said there's something going down downtown. Can you go over and check it out for us?

JOAN WEBBER: What no one could have predicted was that a confluence of events was about to turn this regular workday into a dramatic life and death police standoff. Among the Toronto commuters is a young woman on her way to work. It's the last day of a summer internship at a bank downtown. She's put on a pink top for the occasion; jeans white, sneakers in March gold hoop earrings. Just 20 years old she has no reason to suspect she's in imminent danger. But the armed man, Sugston Anthony Brookes, who's running away from a police officer, is heading her way. It's when he arrives outside Union Station that he suddenly stops, and in an instant randomly grabs a passer-by. That person is the young intern, Nicole Regis. It's roughly 8:10 a.m.

ANGELA NAUS: As you leave the CBC building, you come out right on Front Street which is the same street that Unions Station's on. And I proceeded towards Union Station as people were coming, walking quickly, some were running away from Union Station, at which point I went, "Oh. Something is really going on". The one thing in the moment that I recall, thinking this is like it's out of a movie. I hate to say that's a cliché, but it literally, even when I was making my way down Front Street toward Union Station, seeing men with guns drawn on the corners of buildings. It could have been out of like an episode of, CSI or anyone of those sorts of cop shows.

[Dispatcher]

TOM SHARKY: There were literally thousands of people on the street. All the streets east and west of the station seemed to be just jammed with a huge number of people with officers trying to keep them back.

JOAN WEBBER: Heidi Laverick is in a rush to get to work. She's got a meaning to make but when she leaves Union Station she knows instantly something isn't right.

HEIDI LAVERICK: When I walked out I could see a number of police cars and policemen under the cars. And I saw a man holding a lady at gunpoint with a gun pointed to her head. It took a bit to register. So I felt very shocked. There is a door at the Royal York that's on the west side of the building, and I went in that door, knowing that if I could get up on a higher floor at the Royal York I could get a nice advantage point looking down into the square public area that's in front of Union Station.

TOM SHARKY: As I ran up to where my team leader was, they found a position maybe 40 feet from where the man was hauling a hostage. And then I proceeded to try and communicate with the person.

JOAN WEBBER: Police video from that day shows Brookes holding Nicole Regis tight to his body.

TOM SHARKY: Look like a middle aged, heavyset man, with his arm around the 20 year old lady, had her arm around her neck .And he had a sawed off rifle held to her head.

[Dispatcher]

JOAN WEBBER: Despite the grainy footage I can see his hairline is receding just a bit. He's kind of hunched over her using her as a shield. Nicole Regis has a long black hair pulled back tightly in a low ponytail. Her chin is down, as are her eyes. She looks fragile. From her vantage point, in an empty conference room, in the Royal York Hotel Angela Naus can see Regis and Brookes clearly. And like the multitude of media drawn to this event, she's about to broadcast this hostage taking life.

ANCHOR: Will bring us up to date, if you can. What is happening there?

REPORTER: Hi. Here is what I can tell you...

ANGELA NAUS: I ended up being put on air. I was a young producer, I never been on air before. And just before they had latched me in, the producer in the control room said just tell us what you see.

ANGELA NAUS: [Reporting] A man who has a woman as a hostage is there and the gun in his right hand and he has his arm around her neck.

HEIDI LAVERICK: I remember the woman not making much sound, aside from crying. She just seemed very calm. It looked surreal because I thought to myself if I were being held hostage I think I would be in a different frame of panicking or something. I don't know just how calm I`d be. The man that was holding her didn't look so calm you know. He seemed to be looking around. He seemed like off kilter I guess just, I don't know. Not controlled really.

ANGELA NAUS: We cracked the wind a bit and I could hear the negotiator.

ANGELA NAUS: [Reporting] The negotiator is not that far from him, maybe 30 feet from him, has been talking to him telling him to put down the gun. There is no talking going on right now.

JOAN WEBBER: The hostage negotiator is Sergeant Tom Sharkey. He's done hundreds of calls but this one will prove to be a remarkable challenge. In footage from that day Sergeant Sharkey standing just to the left of a concrete pillar, a Via Rail sign just outside the station. Its cover if you need it. He's in a police flak jacket and you can see he's leaning forward to talk to Brookes.

TOM SHARKY: You want to establish rapport with the person. You want establish communication with the person. I didn't wear a helmet. I wore a soft cap. It creates less of an imposing threat to a person. I tried to talk to him. Basically I showed him I had no weapons in my hand. All I had in my hand was a radio. Basically said we want to help him. Advised him we want to resolve this thing peacefully. Would you please speak to me and I followed that particular route for a long time.

HEIDI LAVERICK: I was probably one of the last people to get out those doors and to be walking in into what I was walking into because when I turned around. There didn't seem to be any barrier around me much so I wondered where everybody else was. It was actually pretty scary. I felt kind of sick when I realised it was real because then I thought 'oh my God like I can't go further walking closer I need to ran back and they had locked the doors at Union Station. So they had to reopen them. They had security there to open them to let me back in. So it was a really panicky feeling.

TOM SHARKY: Early in the call I began to get a really bad feeling because one of my trained snipers was on holidays at that time and Gordon Lusby was at the station. It was his turn to do what we call station duty. Gordon Lusby was a phenomenal shot. He was a very experienced tackle officer and very cool, very steady guy. We had talked so much respect for and confidence in his abilities.

[Dispatcher]

TOM SHARKY: Basically I ask my team leader to get on the air and get Gordon down there, because I need another option if he started shooting or if I felt he was going to try and kill the lady this type of thing, and I was unable to resolve it by talking.

ANGELA NAUS: I remember looking out and trying to see where other police were situated with guns. I'd spent time in the US. And you know you expect that they're getting into position somehow resolve this incident, right, so.

[Dispatcher]

JOAN WEBBER: Some time after about three snipers Gordon Lusby is trying to get into place. Members of the team are directing him.

TOM SHARKY: He only said one thing I kept trying to get him to talk, trying to get him to talk. And all he said to me was - also in passionate type of voice - if you want to speak to me come here.

[Dispatcher]

TOM SHARKY: A solution it would mean, if it was absolutely necessary, if we had to use lethal force to resolve the situation, we had that option.

[Dispatcher]

JOAN WEBBER: The sniper also known as the Sierra unit finds a location where he has what's known as a 100 per cent solution.

TOM SHARKY: The way that our snipers are trained, basically headshot, the incapacitation rate would be almost instantaneous. But there is always that remote possibility of a reflex action. So say that gun was point at the young lady's head, is always a potential threat to a gun could discharge and kill the hostage. Making that call I was darn sure I didn't want that gun point at the young lady if I had to make that call.

ANGELA NAUS: Their hostage taker was becoming more and more agitated as the negotiators were trying to talk him down into putting his gun down or at least to release the woman.

[Dispatcher]

TOM SHARKY: He kept basically putting the gun on the girl's shoulder and he was aiming at me or aiming at my co-workers who were diving down behind cover. And I felt that at any point he was going open up on us. I know some of the [unintelligible] later [unintelligible] and some of the other fellows on scene commented how silent the actual thing was while I was talking. You could hear birds flapping their wings. It was somewhat bizarre. Downtown, tens of thousands of people, and yet there was almost total silence. The suspense was going on. When I finally reached a decision when one point, where he was pointing a gun at me, I knew the gun wasn't pointed at the young lady. I knew I had a [unintelligible] unit in place. Basically I gave the order for the [unintelligible] unit Gordon to neutralize the threat. Because I felt that was the only solution that was going to prevent somebody from being killed.

[Gun shot]

JOAN WEBBER: You can see on the police video the moment of impact. Sugston Anthony Brookes dropped straight down. Nicole Regis balls sideways. Then she crouches and her left hand goes instinctively to her ear. She runs. Sergeant Sharkey rushes to her side to get her as far from the dead man as possible. But it already seems obvious. She'll never be able to get far enough away.

TOM SHARKY: My only real contact was I grabbed her right after the shot was fired. I ran her over to a divisional officer who, they later they took her right to an ambulance to look around after.

ANGELA NAUS: That was on air and they had gone back to the anchor. And they had started to pull my microphone down. And when they shot him I was likely, "Holly shit they shot him. They shot him". At which point someone in the control room heard me and they opened my mike and they put me back on air.

ANGELA NAUS: [Reporting] Gary, are you still there.

ANCHOR: Yes I am.

ANGELA NAUS: [Reporting] They have taken him down. He's been shot in the head. The hostage is away from you.

ANGELA NAUS: You know you get a little bit stunned. Like what? They really did. They really shot him. You know what I remember? I remember what it looks like when your brains are blown out of your head. I never would have imagined.

TOM SHARKY: You realise through your training and through your experience you are going to have to make calls that could be potentially lethal calls. You have to accept their responsibility. Is it easier to make their call? No, because you have to insured's both legal and it's ethical, if you make that call, it's moral.

HEIDI LAVERICK: It makes you realise how fast things can unfold. And I think we need to appreciate every day that we have here.

TOM SHARKY: I had so much respect for that young lady, how cool she was, how calm she was. And at the end of the situation how much trauma she must have gone through, having a guy holding a gun to her head for an hour. And then having his head blown off right beside her. That must be phenomenal trauma for any human being.

JOAN WEBBER: I did talk briefly with Nicole Regis. She didn't say very much except that she would consider speaking with me on tape. But perhaps understandably I haven't heard from her again.

HEIDI LAVERICK: After it happened I thought about the police officer in a sense that must have been an awful position to be in, to be ordered to do that and to pull the trigger.

TOM SHARKY: I do believe it did affect Gordon for a while and you know he had a hard time sleeping in it did affect him.

JOAN WEBBER: I spoke with Constable Gordon Lusby about that day. He's still with the Toronto Police Force and these days he trains other officers. He didn't want to do a recorded interview, but he told me I could share what we talked about. He says that in the aftermath it bothered him that it bothered him. As a sniper, he'd trained every day for just such an emergency. But he's come to believe we're not wired to kill people. For days afterwards he was sleepless. Then he had nightmares. He kept looking down the scope of his gun at the head not proxies, but at someone else's. And though he's fine now, Constable Lusby told me that that day will always be with him. As it will in a different way for former Sergeant Tom Sharkey.

TOM SHARKY: I think what did affect me later was questioning myself. I've done all these calls. I was able to resolve by talking people down. We did one, not maybe one where we dealt with the guy who shot at his wife trying to go to a police station. And I had to talk this guy down with a gun to his head. This was the only situation of all the calls I'd done. I was not able to resolve it either by talking to a person or using less lethal options. I hope the young lady involved in this thing, who I had a phenomenal amount of respect from that day is recovered from this and is enjoying enjoying a good life. Basically I think Gordy has turned out pretty good. I think he's certainly recovered and he's gone I believe back to the good old Gordy. And I guess, after so many years in police work and early years in the military, I think the impact of a single bullet can have phenomenal effect. I think many police officers who have committed suicide or gone to alcoholism and stuff like that because of the PTSD that's involved there a shooting situation. So whether you're the one actually shooting, you are the victim of the bullet, the families of both of those type of parties, it has a phenomenal effect on them. Unfortunately in many cases it's a very tragic effect.

AG: We've been listening to the documentary, The Solution. It was produced by The Current's Documentary Editor Joan Weber. And a note to this story, following the incident, Ontario's special investigation unit was called in to investigate. Now that's something that's routinely done in cases of police shootings and that unit concluded that police sniper Gordon Lusby had "qo alternative but to shoot Sugston Anthony Brooks" and after the kill police discovered that the weapon Brooks held couldn't have harmed anybody during that standoff because it had jammed earlier that morning after he fired it at his estranged wife who survived the ordeal. All week we're rebroadcasting One Bullet, A CBC investigation into the impact of gun violence in our country. One bullet, one person at a time. It was co-produced by The Current's Jessica Linzey and Joan Weber. The beautiful majestic southern resident killer whale is in trouble. Its population in decline and showing signs of starvation. But what exactly has so endangered this particular family of mammals when others seem to be thriving? Well Killers: J Pod On The Brink is a new CBC British Columbia podcast in search of answers. And we're going to hear more about it on Wednesday show. Here's an excerpt from episode 1. Host Gloria Macarenko travels south of the border and there she discovers how one First Nation has been especially affected by recent deaths in J Pod and how it hopes to save the surviving whales.

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[Clip from Killers: J pod on the brink]

AG: An excerpt from Killers: J Pod on the brink, a new podcast from CBC British Columbia and the first two episodes by the way they're now available for download wherever you get your podcast. Listen, it's very clever. You should give it a try. And I'll talk to the host of the podcast Gloria Macarenko on tomorrow's program. Well that's our program for today. Stay tuned to Radio One for Q. Well yesterday we looked at the racist tweets directed at four Congresswomen of colour by U.S. President Donald Trump. Ilhan Omar, one of the women who was targeted responded to the attacks by tweeting part of Maya Angelou's poem, "Still I Rise." And according to the Academy of American Poet,s that was the most read poem online last week. So here is Maya Angelou herself reading, "Still I Rise." I'm Anthony Germain. Thanks for listening to the summer edition of The Current.

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[Maya Angelou performing "Still I Rise"].

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July 23, 2019 episode transcript

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