Note: Transcripts may contain errors. If you wish to re-use all, or part of, a transcript, please contact CBC for permission. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting in print. Copyright © CBC 2019

The Current Transcript for September 9, 2019

Host: Laura Lynch

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: So I think with a lot of these people you have to say what sort of a world do you want to live in? Describe it to us. Does it look like Gilead? If so, let us know.

LAURA LYNCH: Margaret Atwood has returned to Gilead, land Of The Handmaid's Tale, in her long anticipated sequel, The Testaments. And she has no hesitation tying Gilead to totalitarian states to some of the people and politics of today, particularly south of the border. The Testaments is out tomorrow, but today we have one of the few pre-publication interviews with Margaret Atwood on her already Booker Prize nominated new novel. That's coming up first today. After that we'll head to Nova Scotia to check in on the aftermath of Hurricane Dorian. And in an hour what does Bianca Andreescu credit for her stunning U.S. Open victory over Serena Williams?

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: I really believe that I could be at this stage and honestly I've been visualizing it almost every single day. I guess these visualizations really really work.

LL: Mindfulness, meditation, visualization. We'll have a deep think about all this in an hour. And into this veritable potpourri of a program, we'll also touch on the problem of the smells that emanate from a neighbor's kitchen. One person's fragrant cooking is another one's stench. I'm Laura Lynch and this is The Current.

Back To Top »

Why Margaret Atwood waited more than 30 years to write The Testaments

Guests: Margaret Atwood

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: I have to let you all go.

VOICE 2: Wait we're being fired?

VOICE 1: No, no, not fired. No. Let go.

VOICE 3: What does that even mean?

VOICE 1: You can't work here anymore. It's the law now.

VOICE 4: Blessed be the fruit.

VOICE 5: May the Lord open.

VOICE 6: Please God. I don't want pain. I don't want to be a doll, hung on the wall. I want to keep on living. I'll do anything.

VOICE 7: I know this must feel very strange, but ordinary is just what you're used to. This may not seem ordinary to you right now, but after a time it will. This will become ordinary.

LL: Scenes from the acclaimed TV series based on The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood. It is set in an alternate version of the United States. A theocratic regime has taken over and forced fertile women to serve as breeding stock for the leadership. Now more than three decades after the original novel was published, there's a sequel. It's called The Testaments. It is one of the most anticipated books of the year. Even before being released, it's made the long list for the Giller Prize and the shortlist for the Booker with scant details from judges because of what they called a ferocious nondisclosure agreement. But Margaret Atwood joins me in our Toronto studio to talk about it now. Hello.

MARGARET ATWOOD: Hello.

LL: Congratulations on all the praise the book is getting before people.

MARGARET ATWOOD: Before anybody's even read it?

LL: Or even we're allowed to say anything about it. When did you start thinking about writing a sequel to The Handmaid's Tale?

MARGARET ATWOOD: So I've been thinking about it off and on in a negative way ever since I published the first book because readers kept saying what happens next and tell us whether our friend gets out and. And I said well I can't tell you I don't know. So that went on for a while and by sequel of course they meant the continuation of the story of her which I didn't really feel that I could do because you can't recreate a voice like that. So at least I couldn't. So so I was I was saying no no no no no no. For a while but then no one history changed and instead of going away from Gilly and we turned around and started coming back towards Juliet. And number two I thought well why does it have to be her. I would like to know what happened to those children. And I would also like to know how Gilliard fell apart because we already knew that did we have the symposium 200 plus years later and something doesn't become a symposium in the past tense until it's gone. So what caused it to fall apart? What caused it to cease to be? And my model was probably Orwell who ends 1984 with Winston Smith's method, a very sad situation, but then there's an essay on newspeak in which standard English is used in the past tense. So newspeak was, therefore we know it's over.

LL: You talked about wanting to revisit the daughter. So tell us who because we can actually speak about this now. Who the three, we always knew there were three characters in this book. Who are they?

MARGARET ATWOOD: So the first one is the original daughter who disappears, gets snatched in the original book and the second one is the one of is pregnant when she gets into that van. So we don't know exactly what happens with that pregnancy but let us suppose that it that it works out. So therefore there's two children and then there is of course Lydia who is the third narrator. And I've always wondered about Lydia enhanced tremendously by the performance of and doubt in the series in the original novel she's she seemed completely from the outside. We know nothing about her except her speechifying and her bad behaviour. But we don't know how she got into that position why she what she actually thinks because if you go back through totalitarianism we have known and there's a lot of them. Some of the people who attach themselves or who get co-opted into these games are true believers. Some are opportunists and some are doing it out of fear. So if I don't go along with it I'll be next. Like that.

LL: And I should just mentioned that The Testaments does not follow the series that we're seeing on television right now.

MARGARET ATWOOD: The these series is is going from point zero and following along from there and The Testaments time jumps. So we're 15 or 16 years in the future and the series hasn't gotten there yet.

LL: When the testaments was first announced the author and book critic Charles Finch tweeted "writers leave your work alone and don't mess with a perfect achievement." And that was aimed at you.

MARGARET ATWOOD: Was it?

LL: And yes and and trying to actually top something that was already such a masterpiece. Did you feel that kind of pressure approaching it that way?

MARGARET ATWOOD: A bit. But there have been lots of examples to the contrary. Pilgrim's Progress Part 2. Got one of my all time favourite things about the relationship between books and readers and done. Q shot. Don Quixote Part 2 etc.. And lots of people have written. I suppose you might call it an exalted fanfiction.

LL: Is this that?

MARGARET ATWOOD: Well no because I'm not a fan. Exactly.

LL: I'm sorry. What I meant by that, did you feel more pressure to write the sequel from the fans? Did they put more pressure on you or did publishers put more pressure?

MARGARET ATWOOD: Oh publishers put no pressure on me. No I'm usually my first reaction from publishers when I tell them what I'm doing is shocked silence. Really? You're doing that really.

LL: That's what they said about this?

MARGARET ATWOOD: No they didn't say that. All they said gasp pause. Well nervously. Well you can say it would make them nervous. And of course it made them nervous. It made me nervous. So why wouldn't they be nervous. Why did it make you nervous. Well because it's a high wire act and when I fall off so like that, but then so was the first one. So of course these things are nervous making until you actually have a manuscript.

LL: But you also said in the acknowledgment this was for the fans who had written you so many.

MARGARET ATWOOD: Exactly and asked so many question. You know that the name of of June came from readers. It didn't come from me. They deduced it. But it fits.

LL: You didn't even know, did you?

MARGARET ATWOOD: No it didn't occur to me. So the clever little creatures deduced i,t but it fits. So you have to go with it.

LL: Okay. So let's compare The Testaments or can you in your own assessment to The Handmid's Tail.

MARGARET ATWOOD: Compare in what way?

LL: In any way you choose.

MARGARET ATWOOD: Compare and contrast. This like right back to high school.

LL: Exactly. It's like comparing Canadian literature.

MARGARET ATWOOD: Well let's have a go. Okay first of all The Handmaid's Tale has only one narrator and it's quite interior which gave both the first makers of the movie back in 1989 and the makers of the series some decisions they had to make. Are we going to is voiceover So Harold Pinter wrote voice over for a for the character in the movie and then the director took it out which I think was probably a mistake. The series uses it. And I think that's a good decision because it lets us see the face of I am trying very hard not to react but this is what I'm really thinking. So it does that double thing that the that the book does so only one narrator who Who can't know a lot of things. A lot of things she. She has no access to so the reader can find out some of those things in the symposium that takes place at the end of the book. But the character can't know those things. The testament we have one character who can know quite a lot and does know quite a lot and that is the key to her power. So she is a person who collect secrets like is Lady and yes like J Edgar Hoover and anybody in that kind of position is secrets collector.

LL: Interesting comparison.

MARGARET ATWOOD: Yeah, but it's true. So secrets secrets of bad stuff people have done. Ah yes. Well as long as you know it is them. So she has a secret her and we find quite a lot out a lot more about how the ants operation actually runs what they're really doing.

LL: And the origin story.

MARGARET ATWOOD: And the origin story about Lydia.

LL: Well actually why don't we just, we actually have some tape of Aunt Lydia as played. Here she is.

SOUNDCLIP

Scene of Aunt Lydia from Handmaid's Tale.

LL: You spoke about why you wanted to dig into her perspective more. What is it about Aunt Lydia that actually allows her to cooperate with the Gilead regime?

MARGARET ATWOOD: I'm not going to tell. That's in the back story. But let me put this to you, your choice is cooperate or get shot. Which would you do? Some people would like to get shot. She does not like to do that.

LL: Which is what you're trying to explore. I'm wondering if you could talk more generally about what role women play in upholding the Gilead regime?

MARGARET ATWOOD: Well go back through dictatorships we have known. There's one thing they always do, they roll back women's rights. There's another thing they always do or so it seems they set up women's committees women's guilds women's you know separate things just about women and it's always women running them. So there is a little cafe in the establishments called the Schlafly Cafe.

LL: It made me loud out loud when I read that.

MARGARET ATWOOD: There are a lot women who make careers out of telling other women they shouldn't have careers and this is go back in history, it's a motif. But any occupying force, any colonial rising force is going to raise enforcers from among the people that they are colonializing and suppressing. They always do it.

LL: And just for listeners who may not know the Schlafly reference is to Phyllis Schlafly.

MARGARET ATWOOD: Yeah she defended the Equal Rights Amendment.

LL: In the United States.

MARGARET ATWOOD: For telling women they wouldn't have to pee standing up and other things of that ilk.

LL: Like as I said that that actually made me laugh out loud and there were flashes of humour in this novel, which is particularly grim. Why did you seed it with little bits of humour?

MARGARET ATWOOD: I think there's some pretty funny parts in The Handmaid's Tale. I may be alone in thinking that. It is always true that being able to laugh is a survival technique when times are grim.

LL: When you wrote The Handmaid's Tale, take us back to then and what political realities you were responding to.

MARGARET ATWOOD: So I was writing it, I found in my notes because we went into the Fisher Library to take some footage of stuff I'd collected from newspapers and magazines and I found a note that indicated that I had started thinking about it in 1991. So women's movement gets GOING IN THE LATER 60s gathers steam in the 70s kind of runs out of fuel. Towards the end of the 70s and partly because people were fighting with each other quite a bit. And then in the 80s there's a big push back who came in and 80. I think it was around that time I think it was Ronald Reagan Reagan. Yeah. So some of the gains were pushed back against. So it was it was push push back and things do go in cycles like that. So I was seeing push back and I was collecting things from newspapers and magazines because I hate to shock you but there was no Internet then I'm old enough to read and and hear these people saying these sorts of things what they would like to do if they had the power and they set about gathering that power and we are now seeing the results. So I was already aware of this push back in the 80s. So I thought well let's take it literal one sort of world do you really want to live in and how literally should we take the Bible in which parts of it folks how about polygamy? How about using your handmade i.e. slaves? For reproductive purposes in which case you got to keep the babies because that's what that story is about in Genesis. It's twelve tribes of Israel for childbearing women to legitimate wives. So I was going along those lines and I made a rule for myself which was nothing goes in for which there is not an historical precedent and that takes us back through 4000 years of human history.

LL: And you responded to that. What has changed and what hasn't since you first wrote The Handmaid's Tale?

MARGARET ATWOOD: OK end of the 80s, the wall comes down. Cold War is over. There's no longer this barrier. And everybody says end of history. Let's just go shopping. Capitalism is one that turned out to be wrong but for about 10 years namely the 90s it was la de da. And everyone was saying oh well we now have to worry about women's rights anymore we've got them all and we have you know you can have a job you can have them you can make the list all those things. Then what happens 9/11 happens and that is the signal for things to become a lot more conservative societies always do and they're attacked. So things then start to go in a red direction in the United States although George W. Bush now looks like a moderate. Yeah. So then the steamroller gets going. We have a little a little pause during the Obama years in which some other curious things happen and and then we have the election of 2000 and 16. So where people who think that progress is a one way street and only ever goes in one direction, have not read a lot of history. You cannot count on the yellow brick road leading to the City of Oz.

LL: Does that mean that you think in terms of the current political climate, that there is a way back from where we are right now?

MARGARET ATWOOD: A way back or a way forward?

LL: OK. A way forward a way. I mean the same thing. But yes, a way back to where we were or way forward there. Yes.

MARGARET ATWOOD: Well I think it's you know that you remember that film called Gladiator? Hold the line. I think we'd be very we'd be very lucky just to be able to hold the line on actually having a functioning democracy because if you read the book by Madeleine Albright called Fascism: A Warning. She lays it all out. These are the signs. These are the procedures. These are what these kinds of regimes do. And here's a lot of examples of ones who have done that in the 20th and 21st centuries. So hold the line and then it will be if the line is held it will be a question of trying to repair the damage that has been done particularly in the environmental sector because the climate crisis is not a myth. It's real. The Arctic is burning. People need to act. And and even young Republicans are getting that. They understand that it's real. Some of the older ones are still head in the sand and lunches pretend nothing's happening. So in our country I think people do realize that according to polls it's 75 percent. So what's your plan guys? And it is guys, except for Elizabeth May.

LL: Well but also one of the more visible symbols of what you created in the Handmaid's Tale was was the red cloak and you're now seeing that show up at protests.

MARGARET ATWOOD: And change of subject. Yeah at the protests. It's not really a change of subject because the worst things get bad for the planet, the worse they always are for women. So social disruption, famine, war, all of those things. They're always worse for women.

LL: Right. And I do see them as part of a spectrum, and particularly in the United States where we're seeing more and more restrictions on abortion. I'm wondering what it is like for you to see those protesters dressed in the handmade cloaks.

MARGARET ATWOOD: It's a very smart choice because you can't be thrown out. You're not making a disturbance. You're not saying anything. You're just sitting there modestly and nobody can accuse you of being dressed immodestly, Lord knows. So there they are setting modestly, dressed up to the top of their chins. Everything covered. You can't get rid of them, but they're very visible and people know what they mean.

LL: So with the writing of The Testaments, I feel duty bound to ask you, whether you're optimistic?

MARGARET ATWOOD: I'm always optimistic. Looking back over totalitarianisms, they do ultimately fall apart. Sometimes they're succeeded by other ones. But if you look at them, you know Hitler said a thousand years, it was what? Twelve or thirteen all in. So they do fall apart and I think in the United States the challenges to is to avoid becoming a totalitarianism in the first place.

LL: Because we're not there yet.

MARGARET ATWOOD: Not quite, there a lot of people who would like us to be there and some of them, some of these voices are quite Trotskyites. So Bannon, Steve Bannon says he wants to destroy the entire establishment, like burn it all down to be replaced with what we ask? When exactly do they have in mind? So I think with a lot of these people, you have to say what sort of a world do you want to live in? Describe it to us. Does it look like Gilean? If so, let us know.

LL: I am speaking with Margaret Atwood. Her latest novel is a sequel to The Handmaid's Tale. It's called The Testaments and it's out tomorrow. We'll continue our conversation after the CBC news and we'll delve into what it means to be complicit in an oppressive regime. Also coming up, a battle that's simmering between neighbours in Australia.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: I can't enjoy my backyard. I can't go out there.

LL: The problem? The odour of barbecue meat wafting over the fence and into the yard of a vegan. I'll talk to a lawyer who tries to clear the air on these kinds of disputes. And we'll check in on Nova Scotia dealing with the damage from Dorian. I'm Laura Lynch and this is The Current.

[Music: Theme]

LL: Hello. I'm Laura Lynch and you're listening to The Current.

[Music: Theme]

LL: Still to come, for Tom Gallant preparing for a storm means stocking up on rum, making porridge and dropping anchor. We'll talk to the sailor from his wooden schooner off the coast of Nova Scotia. That was his choice of a safe spot to weather hurricane Dorian. But first, the final chapter of The Testaments.

[Music]

LL: Margaret Atwood's much anticipated new novel is out tomorrow. It's called The Testaments and it's a sequel to The Handmaid's Tale. We were speaking before the news and if you missed it or you want to share it with someone you know, you'll find the full interview on our website cbc.ca/thecurrent or you can check out our podcast. And now I'd like to pick up on our conversation. Margaret Atwood, in The Testaments, the character Agnes refuses to condemn a woman for taking another woman's child because she "didn't want to make the world the way it was." What responsibility do people have when they benefit from oppressive regimes in that way?

MARGARET ATWOOD: Well what are your choices? So everyone has a limited smorgasbord of things they can actually do. So if if this this woman who really wants an child loves her, is very nice to her etc. etc., if she didn't accept such a child such a child would go to somebody else. It wouldn't be that the child would go back to her mother. That was, that's not on the agenda.

LL: Does that make her less complicit?

MARGARET ATWOOD: What is complicit in a regime like that?

LL: Exactly. What is?

MARGARET ATWOOD: So people beat up George Soros for his standing by as a 16 year old while while people were mistreating Jews. What were his choices? Hey wait stop that. Then he'd get shot. So I think you you have to recognize that in regimes like this it's not a question of having a march, having a protest. Those people get shot. We're looking at Hong Kong right now are they going to move in and shoot people as they did with Tiananmen Square. So your choice isn't I sit silently and say nothing or I go on a protest march. Those are not your choices. Your choices are do I make myself visible as as an objector to this regime and then get shot or do I bide my time and wait for my opportunities? Do I go underground? Do I become part of the resistance? I'm just writing a fascinating book about a French woman who headed up a big part of the French Resistance in World War 2. And a lot of the people associated with her got shot. They got found out, somebody ratted them out and they got shot. So these kinds of regimes, that's why they're called totalitarian dictatorships, they don't fool around with you know fair trials or due process or any of that kind of stuff. They just basically shoot you or hang you.

LL: I'm wondering, on a personal level, how have you changed? When did you start writing this book The Testaments?

MARGARET ATWOOD: What is writing? Is it thinking about it? Is it making the notes? Is it sending a note to my publishers about what I'm going to do? So the note about what I was doing was February 2017, but I already knew. So that means thinking about it and note taking before that time and and pages because I wouldn't have told them unless I was pretty sure that this was it.

LL: The reason I ask is because I'm wondering what has changed between you as the writer of The Handmaid's Tale and you as the writer of The Testaments.

MARGARET ATWOOD: I got older.

LL: And what does that do? Do you have more wisdom?

MARGARET ATWOOD: I don't know. I mean other things have happened so different possibilities have opened up, no things to me or me getting older, but just time has has unfolded in a certain way. So when I published The Handmaid's Tale there were several different kinds of reactions to it. In England they said jolly good yarn because they couldn't see this in their future anytime soon. Think again. You won't be with the outfits or the religion in England, but they're well on their way to some kind of weird nationalism. So in Canada it was nervously could have happenened here, which is more often what Canadians say, less likely why because we don't have two political parties, we've got five or six. And it's it's quite hard to get a consensus. You may have noticed this in federal politics.

LL: I have. It's kind of hard.

MARGARET ATWOOD: And what you really need to get a regime like that going is a pretty concentrated 30 percent or so in a homogeneous population and that's not Canada. And in the United States in 1995 they said on the one hand this will never happen here, exactly the kind of thing I was objecting to because anything can happen anywhere given the circs. And on the other hand they said how long have we got? And that was in 1995. So I did a radio show like this one in which they opened it up to callers. On the West Coast and the guy was was poking people and he was saying Well Margaret you can't be serious about that you don't honestly think that something like this can ever ever happen in the United States. The switchboard lit up like a Christmas tree with people yelling at him, it's already happening.

LL: Well we'll see what predictions come from The Testaments that people see in their reality, their day to day reality and what may happen down the road. I'm told we are out of time, which is unfortunate. There's more talking to do. But thank you for coming in today and revealing some of the book which I'm pretty sure is going to be an international bestseller. Congratulations.

MARGARET ATWOOD: Thank you.

LL: Margaret Atwood's new novel The Testaments is out tomorrow and Margaret Atwood was in our Toronto studio. You're listening to The Current on CBC Radio One. I'm Laura Lynch.

Back To Top »

'I love her': This man risked waiting out Dorian aboard his 53-foot wooden schooner

Guests: Tom Gallant

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: As the winds got stronger, the waves that higher. And then the surge came up over the road down the driveway.

VOICE 2: We want people to be safe inside. So we really want people to stay away from the water, stay inside. Those waves are coming in and we're seeing video feeds of children standing by the water and it is very very dangerous and we are very concerned for the safety of these people that are out there.

VOICE 3: It's the worst I have ever seen. I've been here 65 years.

VOICE 4: For a storm or storm watcher?

VOICE 3: Both there was a lady that was hit by wave and almost washed her over.

VOICE 4: Really?

VOICE 3: I helped her back on her feet, I had to pick her up.

LL: Post Tropical Storm Dorian proved a brute of a visitor to Atlantic Canada this weekend. It uprooted trees that pulled down countless power poles ripped off roofs and smashed fishing wharves. Utility companies across the region now face the daunting task of restoring power to hundreds of thousands of customers. And while many people sought safety away from coastal areas sailor Tom Gallant stayed home and he lives on a 53 foot wooden schooner in Nova Scotia's Luna Berg Garbour. We reached him there on board today. Hello.

TOM GALLANT: How are you?

LL: I'm well, but I want to know how you are this morning.

TOM GALLANT: I'm fine, just fine. We were okay. I rode out Hurricane Juan down here in the same harbour, on the same mooring, and it was much worse for us here because of where the eye came in.

LL: Was it at all tiring though, are you exhausted, did you sleep ok?

TOM GALLANT: Oh yeah, so you know, you don't sleep while these things are going on, you're checking your chafe gear, where the lines are attaching you to the mooring and all that sort of thing. But the thing, the great advantage we had this time, was that the weather forecasting was spectacularly accurate. It was really, really impressive. We always knew where the eye was. We we always had a fairly good idea of where the wind was going to be coming from. That's why I stayed in Lunenburg, because the wind was always off the land which meant that there wasn't any fetch to build up big sea. So Lunenburg Harbour was relatively peaceful during all that.

LL: So you were anchored in the harbour?

TOM GALLANT: Yeah, on a mooring.

LL: Okay so take us back to the height of the storm on Saturday night, and describe what it was like on board.

TOM GALLANT: We were... It was noisy. The wind was, the gusts were fairly powerful, powerful enough to make the boat lean over a little bit. But everybody, you know there were maybe 15 boats in the harbour, with maybe six of them with people aboard. But we were, you know, we never moved from, you know, where we were hooked up. And the harbour itself because of the wind, because of the wind direction — it was always coming off the land, so you don't have a long stretch of water between the land and you. So that can't build up big seas. So it was fairly, I mean for a hurricane it was relatively peaceful.

LL: And you have ridden out this, you mentioned Juan, you've ridden out storms before. I'm wondering is there a part of you that considers a storm an adventure?

TOM GALLANT: No I just can't abide the idea that the boat would get in trouble and I wouldn't be here to help her. So I mean she's my home, you know. I've had her since 1979 and sailed over 100,000 thousand miles in her. And I love her, so you know. But we live and die by the weather forecasters and I have to say those guys were great this time.

LL: Yeah you have a lot of faith in those weather forecasters.

TOM GALLANT: Well you know it's getting it's getting much much better. I think people who walk around say you can't trust the weather forecasters are not paying attention because when I sail off shore now I can get a five day forecast that while it's not you know four days out it's not a not as accurate as it is two days out. But I can be pretty sure that you know if I have a six day trip to Bermuda that the I'm not going to see a storm because there's not one on their. You know and so the weather forecasting is you know much much more accurate now than it was 10 years ago.

LL: Have you spoken to friends and neighbours who are on the land?

TOM GALLANT: Yeah. And you know, look we did well. The real damage was happening from kind of Peggy's Cove up towards Halifax and the Eastern Shore. And I understand it was pretty bad down in Shelburne too. The peculiarities of where I am mean that the storm surge never did get in here. It was offshore, it was,, you know it was only five miles away, but that's enough.

LL: So you've spoken with people who are not doing nearly as well as you are at this point, I guess.

TOM GALLANT: Well I've met some folks who, you know, they don't have power yet. And there's a tree on their roof, and things like that, yeah.

LL: Now I don't mean to make light of this, but because you're experienced, I'm wondering what kind of supplies you made sure you had, as you prepared for this.

TOM GALLANT: Well you have food and you have water, and you have... Of course you're not going to be affected by a power outage or anything like that because, you know, you're off grid anyway, so you have all your systems aboard. You get extra fuel, you make sure that all of your mechanical systems are working, and you make sure that the rum keg is full.

LL: And did the rum keg get tapped?

TOM GALLANT: It certainly did! It's a stress management tool and quite a successful one.

LL: And have you yourself been ashore yet?

TOM GALLANT: Yeah I went ashore yesterday, once it got calm and and I'll be going back again today. When we went, when I went ashore, it's interesting just around Lunenburg but... There were some branches in the street and stuff like that. And there was only one restaurant that was open, because the only one that had power, and they were doing a land office business. But it was relatively benign for this little town, I think.

LL: Well I'm happy to hear that and that you made it through Hurricane Dorian or whatever it is now post tropical depression Dorian and.

TOM GALLANT: Did you notice that — sorry to interrupt — but do you notice that Dorian is an anagram for Donair?

LL: And?

TOM GALLANT: So I called it Hurricane Donair, since it's the national food of Halifax.

LL: Well glad to hear you in such good spirits, Tom. Thank you.

TOM GALLANT: Thank you and God bless everyone. I you know I know a lot of people got hurt a lot worse than me and my heart's with them.

LL: Tom Gallant is a sailor in Nova Scotia. We reached him aboard the wooden schooner where he lives in Lunenberg.

[Music]

Back To Top »

A vegan in Australia has taken legal action over the smell of her neighbours barbecuing meat

Guests: Karen Andrews

LL: I'm Laura Lynch and this is The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: This isn't your average neighbourhood dispute. It's a battle between a vegan and meat eaters. A health conscious massage therapist and the barbecue is next door.

LL: Devastating, turmoil, unrest. That's how the vegan in the story described the torment of living next door to smells. So many smells.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: They've put it so you smell fish. All I could smell is fish.

VOICE 2: Cilla Carden is vegan and she's fed up with the meaty smells coming from over the fence of her home.

VOICE 1: I can't enjoy my backyard. I can't go out there.

LL: In an attempt to clear the air, Cilla Carden took her neighbours to the Supreme Court of Western Australia last year. Her case against the carnivore neighbours has since been dismissed, but apparently some meat eaters still have a bone to pick with her because thousands are pledging to hold a mass barbecue outside her home in October. Behind the spectacle this case highlights something I'm sure others can identify with that neighbour who just can't keep their smells on their property. Karen Andrews has dealt with these kinds of cases. She's a staff lawyer with the Advocacy Centre for Tenants in Ontario. She is in Princeton, New Jersey this morning. Hello.

KAREN ANDREWS: Good morning.

LL: What's your take on that confrontation between the Australian vegan and raw meat and fish loving neighbours?

KAREN ANDREWS: Well such news stories don't surprise me at all. It's an increasing problem in my line of work. People are living in more dense circumstances. Hopefully we will only live more densely. Because of the assault on the environment and people of diverse backgrounds have to come together in very small spaces sometimes we're losing our ability to communicate and be neighbourly and there are structural problems so in Canada it's organised jurisdiction only by province. It's not an uncommon problem that people don't like smells, noise and so forth.

LL: So you mentioned regulation by province. How are these kinds of disputes handled here in Canada?

KAREN ANDREWS: Well I think Cilla Carden is a homeowner and I think she lives in a semi-detached house so her claim would be I think a nuisance and she would be complaining about her neighbour as a homeowner. But as more and more people live in apartments living condominiums live in multi residential units it's an increasing problem. So that will often fall under Landlord and Tenant Law or condominium law and they're very busy promulgating rules and regulations to deal with these problems because landlords and condominium boards don't like to deal with a resident upon resident or tenant on tenant conflict. We have the laws around interference and I think they're good and I think they're old and I think they're grounded in reasonable and rational behaviour. What I've seen in my work is because of cannabis and the smells of cannabis and the issues that people think exist with cannabis that many people think the sky's falling. And I've seen in the last year myriad rules being promulgated where smoking or vaping was allowed or grandfathered in because of cannabis. And I think because of the smell of cannabis or I don't know some moral judgment against cannabis. But the smell to be fair I've seen landlords and condominium boards and this has been the advice just bad at all and just bad all kinds of behaviours that might interfere with neighbours. And the problem of course is I think people are entitled to actually live in their units and I think people are actually entitled to engage in lawful behaviour in many ways. It's about the units that we're building and not the behaviours that we're trying to police.

LL: Right because they're not able to deal with these, with the smells I suppose you're saying. It's structural.

KAREN ANDREWS: We have to find a way of living together and this is a plea for legislators to plan these communities a lot better and we're just handing it over to private development. It's also a plea for those developers to build better units. If you've got a leaky condo, it's leaking smells, it's leaking sound. It's leaking vermin. We have noise problems and vermin problems that we never used to have before. These condos in particular in new builds, in my view, are not properly built and I think there are ways to contain noise and contain smell and yeah it's going to take a bit of money if anybody has been to apartments, old apartments in you know Rome, they're better built. I don't hear anything.

MARGARET ATWOOD: I wonder. I just want to play some tape for you because we spoke with a woman named Naomi Baker who's from Langley in British Columbia. She and her husband fought for three years to get her condo building to do something about smoke in their building and for them it wasn't about odour.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: If the odour was the issue, we probably wouldn't have gotten to the point of having this petition and getting political about it. You know the issue really is the second hand smoke and the actual harmful health effects of that smoke, right. You know we're not complaining about the fish smells from downstairs, while people might find them unpleasant. You know the true issue with smoke, secondhand smoke whether it be marijuana, tobacco, vaping, certainly are the health detriments that come with it.

LL: So I wonder what you think of Naomi Baker saying it's not the smells, it's the houses to her health.

KAREN ANDREWS: Well you know I've been doing this work a long time and 30 years ago it was noise and we had a really tolerant attitude towards cigarette smoke. So I understand the issue of smoking cigarettes. I still think it can be dealt with structurally. You know we used to build co-op communities in Ontario and the government would support the Tamil co-op. The Greek co-op is a gay co-op. The artists co-op you know why can't we have a vegan vegetarian co-op why can't we have a smoker's co-op. I don't blame the 65 year old chain smoker. I blame the builders and people have to learn how to live together and people have to learn how to cooperate. There's nothing unlawful about smoking and can't people smoke in their own homes. I really appreciate the health issue but it can be you know if you're dealing with a badly built building then it's talking to your neighbour about the balcony.

LL: Well I'm not clear. Are you advocating that there should be those kinds of co-ops that are just for vegans or just for smokers? Do you think that that's the way to handle it?

KAREN ANDREWS: Well it might be a way to harmonize things and let people live together, but how we do it now is we just build these or the government just rubber stamps, a complex. A developer goes in, builds whatever leaves and the community is left to deal with all the fallout. And I know that smoking has a bad rap. I know that people don't like it, but people have been smoking for a long time and if you can't smoke at home where can you smoke?

LL: There's another aspect to this I want to ask you about. It's strong cooking odours that come from things like curry or very heavily spiced foods. Do you hear complaints about these things in your practice?

KAREN ANDREWS: Yes. And when I grew up in Toronto it was garlic. And it's part, it's part racism. It's you know there were real pejorative used for people who cook garlic and curry. But to be fair and to put another spin on it, you know you never grew up with curry. You never grew up with garlic. You never grew up with pork. You know there are lots of households in Canada, they do not cook pork. You didn't grow up of cannabis. You didn't grow up with meat. For many years my daughter was a vegetarian and we had to accommodate her sensitivities to the smells of meat. And I understand why a vegan or a vegetarian would really object to the smell of meat. So it is I don't like the other. It is I'm not going to appreciate that you have a different cuisine, but it's also I really I'm not used to this. And we have to work that out too as neighbours with each other. I grew up with Portuguese people barbecuing octopus outside my bedroom window and I was a kid and I thought this is really weird and I'd like to apologize to those people and say you know why didn't you invite me for lunch? I've come to love barbecued octopus. So we have to be generous with each other and we have to be understanding with each other.

LL: Have you ever had a case where a client turned to you because the smell was offensive to their beliefs?

KAREN ANDREWS: Well somebody consulted me. They had a basement apartment and they grew up in a conservative Jewish home and they were completely unused to the smell of pork and bacon. They sensibly asked me, they said you know we have a basement apartment and we understand it's separate from the residents. We understand we cannot tell the tenant what to cook, what to do, how to live. But honestly you know we don't like it. It triggers things in us. And I said well when you interview tenants talk to them about it. Talk to them. Be candid. Be fair. Be transparent and you'll get answers back. And I don't know if you get a tenant that said I won't cook bacon whether you can enforce that, but it's a way to begin the discussion. So you know I don't think there's, I don't see a religious or creative objection to curry, but I do understand the vegan meat thing and the smell of meat is repellent to people who are vegan, vegetarian. Sometimes and often for political reasons. So I sympathize with this. It's unfortunate that they're litigating in Australia. There might be other ways to mediate this.

LL: Alright. We will leave it there. Karen Andrews, thank you.

KAREN ANDREWS: You're very welcome.

LL: Karen Andrews is a staff lawyer with the Advocacy Centre for Tenants Ontario. We reached her in Princeton, New Jersey. And coming up in our next half hour.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: Find a place where you can sit quietly and be undisturbed for a few minutes.

LL: Well not too quiet. Make sure the place still has a radio, so we can disturb you with interviews about meditation and mindfulness. It's not only all the rage in classrooms and yoga studios, athletes like Bianca Andreescu are swearing by its benefits. In a couple of minutes we'll test the theory that a focused mind always leads to success. I'm Laura Lynch and you're listening to The Current.

[Music: Theme]

Back To Top »

'Staying in the zone': Why Bianca Andreescu credits meditation for helping keep her mind on the game

Guests: Stephanie Myles, Amy Baltzell, Jaime Kucinskas

LL: I'm Laura Lynch and this is The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

Sounds from Women's US Open Final

LL: Bianca Andreescu was the queen of the court in Flushing Meadows in New York this weekend. The Mississauga teen won the U.S. Open single women's tennis title Saturday in straight sets. To do that she only had to go through six time U.S. Open champion Serena Williams and one other thing.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: What did you have to overcome to get across the finish line?

VOICE 2: Definitely the crowd.

VOICE 1: I know you guys wanted Serena to win, so I'm so sorry.

LL: Yeah, how Canadian of her to apologize for winning. Well she may not have had the crowd behind her in New York, Andreescu certainly had the support of an entire nation backing Canada. The 19-year-old made Canadian history being the first to win a singles grand slam title in tennis. Bianca Andreescu began this year ranked number 152 in the world. Her U.S. Open win now puts her at number five. Joining me to discuss her historic win is Stephanie Myles. She's a Canadian tennis writer and commentator and the editor in chief of tennis.life. She was at Saturday's final and she's in New York. Hello.

STEPHANIE MYLES: Good morning.

LL: What was it like to be at that match?

STEPHANIE MYLES: It was strange in the sense that I'm thinking about it now and I still sort of can't even believe it happened. But I mean obviously I've been covering tennis a long time and so I've seen a lot of finals and it was for some reason it almost seemed inevitable. And you can't know that ahead of time, but Andreescu has already shown this year that she can rise to the big occasions and what she did didn't even seem that remarkable, which I think is remarkable in itself.

LL: Alright did you expect her to win going in?

STEPHANIE MYLES: Well I thought she had a really really good shot at it, but as with so many things involving Serena Williams a lot of it depended on her. And she was playing her fourth grand slam final since returning from having her daughter and the first three time, the nerves got her big time. But this year maybe it's different. You know she's much healthier than she was to the other ones, but the nerves beat again. I mean they really did it. You know she's in her late 30s she's chasing history and it's becoming a lot. And so this combination of those two things if and rescue doesn't rise to the occasion in her first U.S. Open final then Serena wins. And so I gave it maybe like a 40 50 chance, but as it went on It was pretty clear that the Canadian was going to, not going to flinch in the face of let's say the legend, you know the greatest female tennis player ever.

LL: I'm wondering because you were there, what was that energy like between Bianca and Serena?

STEPHANIE MYLES: Really really really really good and that's not something that you could always say about Serena during her career, but in her later years she's had to develop sort of a not a maternal appreciation of all the younger players on the circuit, but it's certainly remarkably better and and the two of them had already met in the final of the Rogers Cup in Toronto last month and Serena had to retire after four games with back spasms. But Andreescu you know she hugged her and there were these great moments that went all over the place and clearly Serena really really likes her. She said she thinks she's amazing. And so the whole vibe was terrific. It wasn't a passing of the torch terrific, it was just fellow competitor, even keel respect terrific. And I thought that that was really really great because a year ago at this time there was some drama in the U.S. Open women's final involving Serena and the champion Naomi Osaka. And this time it was just, it was really very very nice and we like to see examples like that in women's sport where the competitors can also be very very friendly and respectful to each other.

LL: Was there anything specific about Andreescu's game that stood out for you.?

STEPHANIE MYLES: Well generally speaking her game is a stand out because in the recent generation of women's tennis it's basically been a fairly one way street. Hit hard. Hit harder. Hit hardest. And that you know to me there's a lot that has to do with that with the ways that women are coached as opposed to men, but in Andreescu's case that's not what she does. She can hit hard, but she can also change the pace up slow it down and move it around. And basically what she does is she kicks she kicks her opponent's rhythm away that the women tend to like to just practice hitting hard for hours and hours. And they like to get that with them back that she robs them of that. And she has a great ability to problem solve on the court to fight when somebody is not working she can try something else because she has a lot of options. And she did all of that. In this match. And the biggest thing that she did was she took the greatest serve in women's tennis ever I think and returned it so well that that Serena Williams puts so much pressure on her sir that she kept missing and that was a really impressive and very very difficult thing to do. Never mind when you have like 24,000 people who really don't want you to win.

LL: She spoke in the clip that we played earlier about having to overcome the crowd. What was the crowd like?

STEPHANIE MYLES: Well it was very very pro Serena. And that's one thing, but the fact that the Arthur Ashe Stadium is just so immense. It's like 24,000 some people and it's very very loud. Even in quiet times it's loud, there's chatter, there's screaming. There's all kinds of things going on and so she had some experience with. A few rounds previously putting an American called Taylor Townsend what people would be cheering before she does. She certainly wanted a double fault. Always kind of set so to have 99 percent of the crowd on her opponent's side. It's something that she handled with precocious grace, I have to say.

LL: What does the victory mean then for Andreescu?

STEPHANIE MYLES: Well I mean she's number five in the world. That's one thing. And you know when you start at 152 and have a year like this, even missing several months due to a shoulder injury, it basically changes your life. It doesn't only put you know $4.5 million Canadian in your bank account ,which of course is very very nice.

LL: Not bad. Yeah.

STEPHANIE MYLES: Not bad, yeah. But you know it means she and your agent are going to have to sift through presumably a fair amount of endorsement offers and sponsorship offers and all those things kind of take time away from your training you have to balance that very very carefully to pulling it off with some tournaments to get appearance money to go and play them. And again you have to balance carefully because you play too much the beginning of the year and that's one of the reasons why you she her shoulder problem cost her win the cost of Wimbledon the grasses and costs of the French Open costs are many things and the other thing she's going to have to deal with is what Serena has been dealing with for 20 years. A lavish she's gone from the Hunter to the hunted. Everywhere everywhere she goes now everybody is going to want to beat her more than they ever have. I mean she sort of snuck up on people somewhat this year and now there's this sneaking up on anybody and that makes it quite a bit more challenging.

LL: And Stephanie what do you think this victory means for Canadian tennis?

STEPHANIE MYLES: Well Canadian tennis has already been on a pretty good little run. We've always sort of forgotten that Genie Bouchard made a Wimbledon final five years ago already and Milos Raonic made one three years ago. I mean these are big top 10 players. What's happening now, not only with Andreescu, but there's two young guys her age, Felix Sosa Alisyn and Dennis S, who's also from Ontario and Alisyn is a Quebecer, these two are brilliantly talented. And they're all so young and so between the three of them. You know I think that we could have we can have kind of coverage for the next 15 years and they're all appealing. Very exciting personalities. They speak well. They're outgoing, they're young and fresh and so if if nothing else, you know can ever bring tennis up to a level of hockey or football or anything like that, let's understand that, but if you have to bring it to the prominence of Canadian sport or even to the Canadian landscape generally even, these three kids can definitely do it. And Andreescu is already there. It's pretty pretty exciting. Anyway it's definitely in my line of work, it's definitely very exciting.

LL: So where does Bianca Andreescu go from here?

STEPHANIE MYLES: Well she's going to probably do some talk shows this morning in the immediate short term. And then you know what, here's the thing, the tennis season never ends basically. And so she's going to you know within a week or so she's going to have to get back to the training course and then she's got three tournaments in Asia. The first one in Japan. I'm going to guess right now she's going to skip it and there's two big tournaments in China and now she's qualified for the year end championships which are also in China. So she's any new Bianca Andreescu fans are basically going to be up in the middle of the night to pay attention to what she's doing. And you know that could takes you right to the end of October and then you know she's got a month and a half or so and already you have to start thinking about going down to Australia for the 2020 season. So it really just never never stops and it's going to be far more hectic for her now than it was six months ago or three months ago.

LL: And as you said, she's now the hunted. Stephanie, thank you.

STEPHANIE MYLES: Oh you're very welcome.

LL: Stephanie Myles is a Canadian tennis writer and commentator and she's the editor in chief of tennis.life. She was in New York City.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: So I started meditating and visualizing ever since I was like 12 or 13 when my mom introduced it to me. And I know it wasn't such a big thing back then, but now it's getting more popular because I think if you can control your mind then you can control a lot of things. And I think that's what's been working really well for me. I just kept doing that and when I'm on the court in front of these big stages, I'm really good at just blocking everything and staying in the zone.

LL: Bianca Andreescu was certainly in the zone on Saturday and she credits mindfulness and meditation for helping her to get there. She's not the only one. Companies are offering meditation retreats. There is an explosion of books and classes. Meditation is now estimated to be more than a billion dollar a year industry. And we're going to hear some concerns about that industry in a few minutes, but my next guest is a former U.S. Olympian who now uses mindfulness training to help other professional athletes. Amy Baltzell was on the 1992 U.S. Olympic rowing team. She's written two books on mindfulness and sports. She's a sports psychologist and a certified mental performance consultant. She joins me from Brewster, Massachusetts. Hello.

AMY BALTZELL: Hi. Thanks for having me on the show..

LL: What do you think when you hear professional athletes like Bianca Andreescu praise meditation and mindfulness?

AMY BALTZELL: From my experience it can be incredibly helpful with dealing with distracting emotions and helping helping athletes focus attention.

LL: So were you surprised at all to hear her credit much of her winning ways to that?

AMY BALTZELL: I'm not. I mean of course you have to have all the skill and strength and stamina, you have to have all of that in line, but I do think that the idea of being able to, you heard her, she said you know she learned how to control her mind. And from the way I look at it, she's learned how to control her awareness like what she's bringing her awareness to. It makes sense to me, because there's so many distractions and it's so easy to get pulled off your game.

LL: I wonder if you can define meditation and mindfulness?

AMY BALTZELL: Yeah. So meditation, if you think of it as like two concentric circles, there's all different types of meditation and mindfulness is one type of meditation. But a meditation, formal meditation practice, is intensely bringing your attention and awareness to something. It could be to one object, it could be like to a flame, to a word, a mantra, or it could be opening your awareness to anything that's arising. So meditation it can be a whole range of types of practices. Mindfulness is a little bit different. Mindfulness is about being present in the current moment and accepting or tolerating whatever is arising. You can be mindful, and not be practicing meditation.

LL: But if they were on a Venn diagram would they blend together or they'd stay separate?

AMY BALTZELL: If you had a Venn diagram, there'd be a nice intersection. And my work is around helping athletes with mindfulness in general and also with mindfulness meditation practice. So the meditation practice is on purpose practicing being present to whatever is arising, thoughts, feelings, physical sensations and learning how to accept them in a way that they don't distract you.

LL: How did you discover the practice?

AMY BALTZELL: Well it's interesting I was a surfer. I had been it for about 20 years. And about ten years into it my sister was diagnosed with breast cancer. It was a time I had no interest in mindfulness or meditation, but she was a meditator, and I thought, I want to do something with her you know? And she asked me to come take a class with her, so I agreed and I couldn't believe the impact the meditation had on my own life. And then I was able to bring it into my profession. I have to give it to my sister - she she's amazing, she's a survivor, she's still here so I'm so grateful for that.

LL: I'm glad to hear that. How did you connect it with sports?

AMY BALTZELL: Well for myself when I first started using the meditation mindfulness for myself I was really struck by how I learned how to deal with the emotions differently. Like so if my kids were at the time my kids were 2, 4, and 6 and if they were really being difficult, you know I had a surge of frustration or irritation, I became aware that I, in those moments of irritation, I had a choice of how to respond. I didn't have to respond out of irritation or frustration. I could feel the feelings and still live in a line with the kind of mother I want to be. And I thought, "Oh my God," if this works for me as a mother of young kids, maybe this would work with my athletes. BecauseI had a problem with my athletes in that many athletes I worked with, many dealt with anxiety and fear and dread and embarrassment and there weren't many good tools to help them with that. Because you just can't say to someone, just don't think that, just think about something positive. If you're being flooded by negative thoughts and feelings, what do you do? And I found the mindfulness approach incredibly helpful with the athletes.

LL: So if you have an athlete come to you who is open to this, what do you teach them?

AMY BALTZELL: Well first off, I'll teach all the athletes. I mean my basic approach is learning how to be aware of thoughts and feelings to show up that are distracting. And understanding that no matter what the thought or feeling is, you have a choice of how you want to deal with it. You can either cave into it and agree to it, or you can live and align with you know your values and how you want to perform on the court. And so then that's a mindfulness approach. And then for a small segment of them, I would offer them a meditation practice.

LL: And why? What's the small segment getting from that?

AMY BALTZELL: Well what's the question?

LL: What does that small segment that you offer meditation get from it? Why do you?

AMY BALTZELL: Well the difference is yeah the great thing of meditation practice is that it's like a formal way to strengthen your ability to pay attention to what you pay is what you choose to pay attention to. It's a formal practice, versus just an idea. You know some athletes they can get the idea. "OK I can have these negative thoughts and feelings I still can focus on the game great." But for others it can strengthen you're a kind of natural ability to tolerate thought that feelings are destructive. So like say on the tennis court, someone calls out, or someone hits a good shot, and you're frustrated with that. You can notice the frustration, accept the frustration and bring your attention back much more quickly to the game. And that meditation practice can accelerate that ability to do that.

LL: Now there are critics who say that using mindfulness and meditation in this way strips it from its spiritual roots, that are meant to build connections between people. I'm wondering how you respond to that?

AMY BALTZELL: You know I think that it's like saying the practice can be used for lots of things. I mean I got my own spiritual development. I've seen it be incredibly helpful for the purpose of cultivating and strengthening attention and poise. So I think that it depends on what you want to use it for, is OK.

LL: Alright we will leave it there. Thank you very much.

AMY BALTZELL: Thank you.

LL: Amy Baltzell is a former U.S. Olympian and sports psychologist. She is in Brewster, Massachusetts. Mindfulness coaches can be found in just about every sector of society these days and that isn't a good thing, according to Ronald Purser. He is the author of McMindfulness: How Mindfulness Became the New Capitalist Spirituality and here is some of what he had to say in a video posted to YouTube.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: I'm a professor of management and I noticed around 2010 a lot of companies started bringing mindfulness programs into their companies and I've done a lot of management consulting in my day and basically how some of these programs are used to basically pacify workers to try to suppress worker dissent and put all the burden back onto employees to cope with basically what amounts to very toxic corporate culture.

LL: So how did we get here? Jaime Kucinskas has been tracing the rise of the mindfulness movement in North America. She is an assistant professor of sociology at Hamilton College in Clinton, New York and the author of The Mindful Elite. And she joins us now from Clinton. Hello.

JAIME KUCINSKAS: Hi Laura. Thanks for having me.

LL: We'll come back to Robert Purser in just a moment, but first how concerned are you that a practice that is rooted in spirituality is being used by people to excel at sports?

JAIME KUCINSKAS: Well I don't have concerns about that right off the bat. I mean I think that if you look at mindfulness, if you look at Buddhism even, it's moved across countries and cultures for its entire history. So it's always been changing. So if you talk to you know religious studies scholars, I think they might differ, but as a sociologist I'm just interested in how culture spreads and becomes compelling to people.

LL: So this is an evolution in other words?

JAIME KUCINSKAS: That's the way I look at it. Yeah.

LL: And when you look at the mindfulness movement today, what do you see?

JAIME KUCINSKAS: So today you know so it's been growing you know since, so a lot of people look at the rise of popular mindfulness and my point to John who created the stress reduction program in 1979 at the University of Massachusetts. So if you look at it from that perspective, it's about 40 years old. It's been moving across a lot of sectors as you said. So now there's people practicing not only in health care, but there's scientists studying at. There's people bring it into higher education in K through 12 education. There's athletes that are practicing it you know not only in tennis but you know we've seen it with the Chicago Bulls and basketball. We've seen it with the Seattle Seahawks who won the Super Bowl. It's even being brought into the American military. So you see this practice that comes out of Buddhism being moved into a lot of secular areas and a lot of professionals are saying that it's helpful for them.

LL: But there are some people who don't have access to these kinds of programs. I mean sometimes it's just a matter of cost or sometimes it's actually being having them in the neighbourhood. Where do questions of class and race come into today's movement?

JAIME KUCINSKAS: That's a really good question. So what I did for my book was I went across the country and I interviewed the leaders of the primary organizations promoting mindfulness and what I found was it's a primarily affluent movement. So it's people who who had the time and the money and the resources to take the time to work on themselves to sit on a cushion for hours and hours, find wonderful meditation teachers, often across the world, develop their practices, and then create organizations to try to spread it to other people. And what happened was, they reached out as most people would, to people that they knew in powerful positions across these different industries, to help them get it in the door. And what happens is it's a process of spreading culture through you know social homopholy. So it's affluent people reach out to affluent people and they want to change the practices to make them appeal to new audiences. And slowly the practices start to change as they move into new places and new industries. And so what happens is you get this wide variety and spread of practices, and some of them veer off pretty far from the practices of where they started from, with the Buddhist ethics and the more formal practices that were alluded to earlier. So so then yeah there's a lot of people who who don't have access to that kind of self development. It takes time and money to be able to go to these retreats. Some of the conferences that convene these top meditators costs you know a thousand dollars and they're in expensive cities like New York or San Francisco. So the bar is high for some people to get into this and coming from the U.S. where a lot of people are working two or three jobs to make ends meet, a lot of those people don't have the time. And the other thing, you asked about race, is it is a primarily white movement. And I think race has become much more salient to people in this particular historical momen and yeah, so when you don't have people from different ethnic backgrounds coming into cultural movements, then you're you know you're missing a lot of perspectives. And it becomes you know something that can all too often get controlled by people in positions of power, which then you know so if you're if you're talking about mindfulness in business like Ron Percer then you know what happens is, the question he's raising is really important is it that companies sometimes bring in mindfulness and the effect is that you know people are taught to improve themselves when there's problems at work, instead of dealing with the root problems, which can be things like discrimination, you know. Or not paying their workers enough, or overwork, or expecting too much, or exploiting their workers. So if every time there's a stress or there's a problem, people go and sit on a cushion and try to deal with it themselves and sometimes it makes us as a society or as an organization incapable of dealing with collective problems, like overwork or underpay.

LL: And is that then what you see as a harm that has come from separating the practice from its spiritual basis?

JAIME KUCINSKAS: You know I think that it can happen. I've seen it happen. There isn't a lot of academic research on this stuff yet, there's more psychological research on the benefits of mindfulness or the unintended consequences that can be negative of mindfulness for individuals, but we don't really know that much yet about how it affects organizations. So a lot of the claims about the impacts on organizations they think are overblown at this point.

LL: Well I guess there's more studying for you to do. Jaime, thank you for your time.

JAIME KUCINSKAS: Thank you.

LL: Jaime Kucinskas is an associate professor of sociology at Hamilton College and the author of The Mindful Elite. We reached her in Clinton, New York. And now for something completely different on the subject of upping your game of tennis, here is CBC producer Anne Penman.

SOUNDCLIP

ANNE PENMAN: Even four social players, when you see someone like Bianca play, the next day you go out on the court and there's an extra spring in your step. You sort of imagine that you're her or you imagine that you could hit a shot as good as her and I see that all around me today in Vancouver on the tennis courts. It was raining this morning and now everybody's out playing and everybody's just talking about Bianca and some of us are even pretending that we are her.

LL: I can tell you right now, Anne Penman is a pretty good tennis player. I'm not sure she can be Bianca channeling Bianca, from CBC producer Anne Penman, who by the way was Manitoba junior and senior women's tennis champ and a US college circuit player back in the day. That is our program for today. Stay tuned to Radio One now for Q. Star Trek actor George Takei was interned in a Japanese American camp during World War 2, when he was 5-years-old. He tells his story in a new graphic memoir titled, They Called Us Enemy. He's talking to Tom Power on Q, coming up next. Margaret Atwood's 2009 book, The Year of the Flood, was another dystopian novel. It told the story of a religious sect called God's Gardeners, survivors of a biological catastrophe. The gardeners had 14 hymns they sang and those songs were put to music by Orville Stover. In an onstage interview, Margaret Atwood was asked about those songs and it turns out she has all kinds of talents. I'm Laura Lynch. Thanks for listening to The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

Interview with Margaret Atwood about hymns from "The Year of the Flood."

[Music: Theme]

Back To Top »

Provide Transcript Feedback

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

Sept. 9, 2019 episode transcript

More Stories Like This