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 2020

The AIH Transcript for January 3, 2020

Hosts: Helen Mann and Chris Howden

Prologue

HELEN MANN: Hello. I'm Helen Mann, sitting in for Carol off.

CHRIS HOWDEN: Good evening. I'm Chris Howden. This is As It Happens.

[Music: Theme]

CH: Tonight...

HM: US President Donald Trump said, "we did not take action to start a war." But Iran's promise of severe revenge suggests he did just that, by killing the country's most powerful military commander.

CH: Pretext or pretense. US officials say the attack that killed Qasem Soleimani was pre-emptive -- but our guest believes it had more to do with domestic politics than a foreign threat.

HM: Creatures of habitat. Nearly half a billion animals have died in the Australian bushfires -- and one wildlife rescuer says it's grim even for those saved from the flames.

CH: Install tactics. Western governments have long behaved as though you can put democracy in place without first putting democratic values in place -- but a new study suggests that's exactly backwards.

HM: They can't believe their private eyes. After they were robbed, a Newfoundland couple's detective work led them right to the thieves, but their amateur sleuthing was undone by the professionals.

CH: And supporting the troops. A US Army veteran in Texas makes walking sticks for his fellow vets out of Christmas trees -- and thanks to his neighbours, he's embarking on debarking hundreds of them. As It Happens. The Friday Edition. Radio that's relieved people were so generous because he was waiting on pines and needles.

[Music: Theme]

Part 1: Iranian broadcaster warns 'escalation is not the way forward' amid calls for Soleimani retaliation

Iran: Soleimani killed

Guest: Ghanbar Naderi

CH: Iran's Supreme Leader says the killing of his country's top military leader will be met with "severe revenge." Qasem Soleimani died in a U.S. missile strike this morning in Baghdad. General Soleimani's death has prompted demonstrations in Tehran and denunciations in Iraq. But the Trump administration says it ordered the extrajudicial killing to stop what it says was the Revolutionary Guards leaders plan to kill US personnel in the region. Outrage about the killing didn't seem to concern US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo when he spoke to CNN earlier today.

SOUNDCLIP

MIKE POMPEO: The world's a much safer place today. And I can assure you that Americans in the region are much safer today after the demise of Qasem Soleimani. And you know as for the protest that you described, there's no doubt -- the last vestiges of theocracy, the kleptocracy in Iran, will continue to try and put down these uprisings from the people. They've jailed thousands. They've killed hundreds. It won't surprise me if they try to continue to do that. But know this, the Iranian people understand that America is a force for good in the region. And I'm convinced that the support that we have provided to the people in Iran and the support we will continue to fight for the people in Iraq will work to protect American interests and make lives better for those people as well.

CH: US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Ghanbar Naderi is a correspondent for the Iranian broadcaster PressTV. We reached him in Tehran.

HM: Mr. Naderi you just heard Secretary Pompeo say the killing of Qasem Soleimani has made the world a safer place. Are you feeling safer?

GHANBAR NADERI: Well, this is fake news. It was Soleimani -- the major general of Iran's IRGC Quds Force. And his forces that dislodged the medieval butchers of ISIS from Iraq and Syria when the United States was kicking the can down the road and Europe was looking the other way. So I think it's all fake news. And they are trying to justify the assassination of a great man that sacrificed a lot to save the region from ISIS and, of course, al-Qaeda.

HM: It isn't just the Trump administration, though, that is describing Soleimani as a bad guy. The Iranian journalist Masih Alinejad tweeted today that General Soleimani money was -- and I'm quoting -- "a war monger responsible for the crackdown against Iranian students in the 90s, and for a large number of deaths in Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East." So, I mean, what do you say to her?

GN: There are a handful of people in the West that are trying to score some points for themselves, personal points. I don't want to dispute their causes because they want to say what they want to say. That is not the case. The case today that I was spending the whole day today with millions of Iranians on the streets that were angry and frustrated and they were condemning in strong terms the assassination of this great man. He sacrificed a lot to save the region from terrorist groups. And he didn't deserve this kind of death. I'm telling you one thing with 100 percent confidence, this man was not a politician. He didn't support this or that political group. He was only a man that was only on the field defending not just the security of this country, but the security of the other countries in the region and beyond. But the Trump administration, as I told you, is only doing this for political reasons. Let's not forget the fact that yesterday, the Iranian leader made it absolutely clear that Iran didn't play any role in the attacks on the American embassy compound in Baghdad. The problem is that he didn't condemned the attacks. But after that, he said that America is not going to be able to do a damn thing about us. But immediately when people laughed about it, I think Trump was watching it and he took it very personally. This was a personal attack on the Iranian leadership. That's precisely what he went for. Otherwise, he wanted to take American troops out of Iraq and the region. It just didn't make any sense for him to give this kind of order at this critical point in time. But I'm telling you one thing for sure, Iran is going to retaliate. Definitely -- something is going to happen. There will be flare ups, not just in Syria, not just in Iraq, but even in Afghanistan and Yemen. Iran is going to use its proxy forces to put pressure on the American troops in these volatile countries. If they don't retaliate, this is going to be a last night, the last night in their coffins, in the upcoming parliamentary and presidential elections. If they want to win these two elections, they have no choice but to attack American interests in the region. And that's precisely they are going to do.

HM: You know, you're seeing world governments call for cooler heads, for a de-escalation on both sides of this. Do you think that there is concern within Iran, particularly within the government, that the escalation may be a bad idea?

GN: It is a terrible mistake. It's this is a strategic blunder on the part of the Iranians and, of course, American officials to escalate the current situation. Because no other country is supporting these two governments. They need to realize and come to their senses that they are not the only ones that have interests in the Middle East. There are many countries in the region and beyond that, they want peace, that they want de-escalation. They will not have any partnership with these two countries because there are no cooler heads in these two capitals. American and Iranian officials and governments need to realize that they will be left to their own devices if they escalate the current situation and start another war in the region that we know. We know pretty much that the region cannot afford another war.

HM: You said earlier you were out among those mourners today and that the people on the streets are very angry. But did you hear support for retaliation or did you hear fear and concern from many of the people you were speaking with?

GN: That's a good question. This is a divided country. We have the people who support the establishment and those who don't support the establishment. The kind of people that the more than a month ago took to the streets and they were criticizing everything and everyone in this country with regard to the economic downturn, the price hikes, the sanctions, regime restriction, and such like. So there are also people that do not support escalation and revenge. But millions of people took to the streets today. And these people are conservatives. They support the IRGC, the leadership, and the establishment. They might not support the government, but they want a harsher response to the US government for what it did to the Iranian nation. That is precisely what is going on here. But if you are asking me, I think that we need some kind of understanding and dialog. This is not worth it. We have to realize that many more lives are going to be lost if these two countries don't come to their senses and realize that escalation is not the way forward. We have paid a heavy price for 40 years. Nobody wants to see another war in Iran. Nobody wants to see another war in Iraq or the region. Even the regional countries are calling for containment strategy. They are calling for dialog. They want to make sure that these two countries are going to behave like two normal countries within the framework of the UN charter and, of course, international law. Let's cross our fingers and hope that that will be the case. But if that is not the case, as I told you, the hardliners have no choice but to retaliate. They have made it absolutely clear. If they don't, then this is going to be the last nail in the coffin.

HM: Canada has troops currently stationed in Iraq. What do you think this might mean for them and their safety?

GN: That's a very good question. We don't know what's going to happen. This is unchartered territory. The terrorist groups might attack Canadian forces there and blame it on Iran, just as the way some of them attacked oil tankers in the Persian Gulf and blamed it on Iran. Things could easily get out of hand. So the stakes are high for everybody, including Canada, including the European Union, even Japan, China, and Russia. Everybody is going to pay through the nose, if the big-headed politicians in Iran and the United States do not calm down and understand that they are on their own if they go to war with each other.

HM: Mr. Naderi, I appreciate your time today. Thank you very much for speaking with us.

GN: Thank you for having me.

CH: Ghanbar Naderi is a correspondent for the Iranian broadcaster PressTV. We reached him in Tehran.

Iran: U.S.

Guest: Kenneth Pollack

CH: Today, President Trump said Qasem Soleimani, quote, "made the death of innocent people his sick passion." The president said the Iranian military leader was planning an imminent attack on Americans before he was killed. Kenneth Pollack is a former CIA intelligence analyst. We reached him in Washington, D.C.

HM: Mr. Pollack, President Trump says he took action to kill Qasem Soleimani last night, not to start a war, but to stop one. What do you think of that?

KENNETH POLLACK: Well, I think it's something that the Iranians are going to find very tough to believe. He's just killed one of Iran's most important leaders. That is huge to the Iranians. I do not believe for a second that they're going to believe that this is Trump trying to avoid a war. I think they're going to look at this as Trump trying to win a battle in a war and then trying very hard to try to convince Iran not to respond.

HM: President Trump said today that Soleimani was plotting imminent and sinister attacks and that the US, quote, "caught him in the act and terminated him." Do you believe that? If there is evidence of that, would we see it?

KP: Whether we'd see it or not is tough to know. Obviously, we all remember Colin Powell at the United Nations before the invasion of Iraq, releasing at least some of the evidence that the US had. Whether the Trump administration will do so is impossible to know. Do I find it difficult to believe that Qasem Soleimani was involved in planning future attacks on Americans? No, that's easy to believe. Qasem Soleimani is the head of Iran's foreign policy across the Middle East. He has been involved in terrorist campaigns, murderous terrorist campaigns, against the United States for years. He ultimately has the blood of hundreds of Americans on his hands. And given where Iran seemed to be going in Iraq in terms of wanting to put additional pressure on the US there, perhaps drive the US out of Iraq, I think it's perfectly reasonable to believe that he was doing just that.

HM: Does that justify an assassination?

KP: It certainly justifies it in the sense that this was someone who, again, killed many Americans. But, you know, there are huge issues involved in these kinds of assassinations, especially with someone as high ranking as Qasem Soleimani. And the question is less whether was this right or wrong. The question is really whether this was smarter or stupid. You know, the real risks that a lot of people are pointing to -- and they are real risks -- are that the Iranians will retaliate in ways that are very painful to the United States. We have taken a very big step on the escalatory ladder toward a wider war between the United States and Iran. And, of course, that's opening Pandora's box. You simply don't know how such a war would end. What President Trump did was extremely risky. No one knows where this is going to turn out.

HM: Do you believe that the administration has a strategy for how to deal with the fallout from all of this?

KP: This is one of the things about the operation that has me most disconcerted. Obviously, there's a lot we don't know about it. But the little bits and pieces that we know so far seem to suggest that this was simply a target of opportunity. The decision was driven largely by the intelligence. President Trump suddenly got actionable intelligence that indicated that Soleimani would be at a place and time where he could be struck by the United States, where the US would have a high likelihood of killing him, and a very low likelihood of causing any collateral damage. And President Trump seems to have taken it, right? That suggests that the administration didn't really kind of go through the planning and think through what the second and third order consequences of this could be. Nor do they seem to have really put in place a wider strategy to both take advantage of this. And we should recognize that this really has decapitated Iran in the Middle East. It creates an opportunity that the United States and its allies could take advantage of. But I see no evidence that we're doing so, nor do I see, you know, a real sense that the US is prepared for the likely Iranian reaction.

HM: Our previous guest, a journalist in Tehran, believes that Trump's motives are political. This is, of course, an election year. Is it politically worth the risk to Donald Trump of a possible war if he's trying to strategize politically to save himself?

KP: It's hard to imagine, given what we know about Donald Trump that how this would play on the campaign trail wasn't at least a part of his calculus. That said, his advisors must have told him that there were real risks, that Iran might very well could very well retaliate, that Iran has some capabilities to do real harm to the United States and its allies. And that creates a degree of risk that could ultimately hurt him in the election. I think it's part of why we saw the president go out and try to assure the Iranians that he isn't looking for a war. Remember, he promised the American people that he was going to get them out of endless wars in the Middle East, not start new ones.

HM: You've outlined your fears of a worst case scenario here. But if Iran were to be more measured in its response and still, I guess be retaliatory, what should we be looking for in the coming days and weeks?

KP: The Iranians are not stupid. While, I think that they are angry and hurt and probably frightened. They have tremendous respect for America's military capabilities. I do not think that they are looking for a wider war with the United States. So I think what we should be looking for from them is for them to play in those areas that are best suited to their advantages and least suited to ours. And they more or less said this right. Their statement said that we will retaliate at a time and place of our choosing. That seems to suggest that they would be looking for opportunities to mount new terrorist operations -- possibly, you know, something very symmetrical. They might say, you know, you killed one of our most important leaders, we're going to try to kill one of your most important leaders. They might go after US military targets, of which there are dozens all across the Middle East. They have a growing cyber capability. They might choose to launch cyber-attacks either against US facilities overseas or even in the US homeland. These are the areas where Iran has enjoyed success in the past. They're not just going to respond quickly out of anger and just spasm a bunch of missiles at an American facility, but they're really going to think it through.

HM: Mr. Pollack, thank you for sharing your thoughts with us.

KP: My pleasure Helen. Thanks so much for having me on.

CH: Kenneth Pollack is a former CIA intelligence analyst. We reached him in Washington, D.C. And you can find more on this story on our website: cbc.ca/aih.

[Music: Theme]

Australia fires: wildlife

Guest: Tracy Burgess

CH: The bushfires in Australia have been disastrous for humans. But for animals, they've been catastrophic. Ecologists at the University of Sydney estimate that close to half a billion animals have died in the bushfires in New South Wales since September. A rescue effort is ongoing, but many of the creatures that have been saved are so severely burned that the only solution is to euthanize them. Tracy Burgess is a volunteer with WIRES, an Australian wildlife rescue organization. She's been trying to rescue wild animals caught in the fires. We reached Ms. Burgess in Katoomba, New South Wales.

HM: Ms. Burgess, this estimate of half a billion animals dead is just...it's heartbreaking. You are close to the fires. Does the number reflect the kind of thing you are seeing there?

TRACY BURGESS: Yeah, absolutely. So we're not getting in very many animals that are injured. It's because they're mostly dead. I'm hearing stories from the Rural Fire Service, about hundreds of wallabies just in piles dead in the bush areas that have been burnt.

HM: Oh, my goodness. And, you know, this is a country that's so famous for its wildlife, which is often very unique. You mentioned wallabies. What other species are you talking about?

TB: We're talking possum. Wombats. Lots of birds. Kookaburras. Cockatoos. I know that when I was talking to someone yesterday in the Rural Fire Service, they estimate that 90 to 95 percent of the habitat for rock wallabies, which are a small type kangaroo, is gone.

HM: It has to be risky for you to get into these fire zones to look for the animals. Tell us what it's like for you as you head into these affected areas.

TB: I certainly went in to an active fire zone for a wombat. Luckily, she wasn't burnt, but a branch has fallen onto her and fractured her nose and jaw. But I had to follow the Rural Fire Service through locked areas to get into the fire zone and then escort me back out once I rescued her. So there was smoke everywhere. There was RSF trucks everywhere. I just wanted to get in and get out.

HM: What are you doing with the animals that you're rescuing?

TB: So I generally get the possums, flying foxes, echidnas. I took the wombat, the little girl wombat, down to another carer not far away. But then about two weeks later, her place came under threat from fire. So she had to be moved again. So yeah, we're kind of playing catch-up when we can because the fire moves.

HM: You have some of these animals actually in your home, is that right?

TB: I do. So they come into care, we look after them, and then we put them back into the wild. The most important thing is that they're native animals, so we want to get them back into their native environment as soon as possible. None of these animals are meant to be pets. So that's our biggest concern at the moment, is we're reluctant to put any back into any areas while there's active fires going on. And the longer they stay in care, the harder it is to put them back to be wild animals. Yeah, at the moment, I have 14 orphaned possums -- juveniles. I have an adult female brushtail possum that was burnt, severely burnt.

HM: How are you treating their injuries? What are we talking about in the way of the kind of harm they've suffered?

TB: The female brushtail -- it takes me an hour in the morning and an hour at night. I have various medications. It's basically a wound solution because all four paws are burnt and her nose is burnt and half her ears have been burnt off. And then a wound soothing gel across all of that. And then what's called Flamazine -- like a burn cream. And then I have to bandage all the areas out because otherwise you lick it off. Leave the bandages on for an hour and then and then take them off so that fresh air can get into them as well. So that's every morning and every night.

HM: I just think, you know, these are wild animals and you're treating them very much hands-on. How are they responding to that?

TB: She was up a burnt tree for three days. And then they thought she was dead. So nobody went up to get her. And then she came down on the fourth day and went and sat on the doorstep of a house that was still standing in Clarence. So in my experience, a lot of animals know when they're in trouble and will seek out humans for some reason -- they just seem to know that that's where they can get help. I think she's understanding that I'm helping. She doesn't particularly like the treatment. And so she does struggle a little bit. But she's not tried to bite me. She's not tried to scratch me. She doesn't scream at me like sometimes a possum will when it's injured.

HM: Normally, we tell people to not interact with animals in the wild for both the good of the humans and the animals themselves. But you are asking people who live near the fire zones to help them. What is that about? What you want them to do?

TB: We want them to feed them. We have had -- and other wildlife groups across Australia -- have always had very strict rules that you do not feed native animals because we don't want them to get used to humans feeding them and we want them to live the lives that they were meant to live. However, there's no food left. Over 85 percent of the Blue Mountains National Park is burnt and gone. And people across Sydney, people are driving up from all over to put these things out. I think a lot of people are feeling very disempowered by the fires. And so this is giving people an opportunity to feel like they're making a difference.

HM: In broad terms of what is at stake for the animals and the habitats in Australia, if these fires continue?

TB: Yes, the bush can grow back. But my concern is -- it takes a while, it could take years for the bush to start to grow back -- but my concern is that an ecosystem is very fine balance. It's not just the trees. It's the animals as well. They work together. And I think we've lost so many animals that I don't know how this ecosystem is going to balance itself.

HM: It's so difficult to see animals suffer. I just wonder if you can tell me a little bit about the emotional toll this kind of work takes on you and on other people who are helping.

TB: Look, it is very hard. When they come into care, the vets are great and vets will give me pain medications for them. Without pain medications, I would ask for most native animals in pain to be euthanized straight away. I'd rather see them dead than see them in pain. But it's when you're out and about putting down food stations and you see Wallabies hopping off in the distance and we can't catch it. And it's clearly got burnt feet. It's...it's heartbreaking. It must be terrifying for them.

HM: Well, thank you very much for speaking with us today. You're obviously doing very good work. I wish you the very best.

TB: Thank you. You have a good day.

HM: You too.

CH: Tracy Burgess is a volunteer with the wildlife rescue organization WIRES. We reached her in Katoomba, New South Wales. And you can find more on that story on our website: cbc.ca/aih.

[Music]

Drew Brown

CH: The holidays are supposed to be a time for giving. But when a St. John's couple returned home on New Year's Eve, they discovered they'd been robbed and most of their electronics had been taken. After some online sleuthing, Sarah Brown was able to track down the stolen goods. Furthermore, she paid a visit to the thieves and secretly recorded evidence that she later handed over to the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary. Seemed like an open and shut case. But then more bad news. Yesterday, the couple learned that because of a mistake, the RNC was unable to get a warrant to search the house. Drew Brown spoke with CBC reporter Zach Goudie about the case and his wife's efforts.

SOUNDCLIP

DREW BROWN: They discovered that my wife was like a super-intense-vigilante detective because she spent all day tracing everything on social media. Eventually she found our stuff on Kijiji. She found, you know, like a guy was selling a new PlayStation for 200 bucks and he happened to live in a postal code that was right next to our house. So one thing led to another and she went over to the guy's house, took like a surreptitious video of him booting it up and our names coming up on the screen. And my sister went with her, got an audio recording, the conversation of him listening on all the stuff that he had, which also was all the stuff that was stolen from us. So like they didn't confront him until they left. So then, naturally, we called the police again and said, listen we have all this information. So they sent a constable over almost right away. And he told us, you know, like there's a pretty good shot -- because we had done all this work, there's a pretty good chance that he would be able get a warrant, maybe even go and bust the guy, maybe even get our stuff back. So we were pretty stoked.

ZACH GOUDIE: So you leave the situation feeling like you've really done a lot of proactive things to try to move the investigation forward.

DREW BROWN: My wife basically cracked the case I think, honestly. Like she solved the case of the missing stuff. Like we know where our stuff is. We know who took it. We know his address. It's like four minutes as the crow flies from our house.

ZACH GOUDIE: So Drew you hand all this information over to the RNC.

DREW BROWN: We got a phone call back from the RNC saying that unfortunately, our case has been mishandled so they will not actually be able to get a warrant and proceed because with all the information they had, there were supposed to have an officer watching the house to make sure that the goods didn't move so that they still knew that they were there. Unfortunately, for whatever reason, this did not occur. So we basically got a phone call telling us that, you know, we can't get a warrant. The case probably not going to proceed. It's extremely frustrating. I mean, the robbery sucks. But you can deal with it like a fact of nature. But when an institution that is deliberately set up to solve the most basic possible crime that has been handed to them on a silver platter and they still can't do it. Yeah, it's a little disappointing, to put it mildly.

CH: That's Drew Brown speaking with CBC reporter Zach Goudie after his home in St. John's was robbed. The Royal Newfoundland Constabulary is conducting an internal review of the investigation.

[Music]

Part 2: Texas army veteran turns donated Christmas trees into canes for other veterans

Farm to Nature plan

Guest: Ian Boyd

CH: A top UK scientist says that to fight climate change, his country needs to give half of its farmland back to nature. And since Professor Sir Ian Boyd went public with his ambitious idea, he has faced backlash from farmers and agricultural workers who weren't keen on giving up their cattle. For seven years until August 2019, Professor Boyd was the top environmental advisor to the UK government. He's a professor of biology at the University of St. Andrew's. We reached him in St. Andrew's, Scotland.

HM: Professor Boyd, what makes you think the UK should convert half of its farmland to woodland?

IAN BOYD: Well, the UK has said that it wants to get to net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 -- and a number of things that are really very ambitious. And this is one of those things that it can do. There is a good rationale behind it in that a lot of our land is not very high quality and we still try to farm it and we farm it very inefficiently, and usually without profit. And actually, it takes taxpayer subsidy to make it farmable. And what I am suggesting is that we repurpose that land for other functions, including things like carbon storage. And we also need to recover our biodiversity, which has been hit very badly over the last 40 or 50 years or so.

HM: It's obviously a very ambitious idea. But given that UK farmers have been working this land for centuries, do you think it's realistic that they'd be willing to give up their livelihoods and in some cases their legacies?

IB: Well, I don't think this is about giving up livelihood. This is about actually incentivizing them to manage their land differently from the way they've managed in the past. Basically, most of the landscapes that I'm talking about, which is relatively unproductive, is used for growing livestock. Growing meat essentially. What I'm suggesting is that we refocus on growing different things, growing carbon storage for example, and water storage and those sorts of things. And at the moment, we use a significant amount of taxpayer subsidy to keep these farmers on the land growing meat that is actually very damaging in its own right to climate because it produces methane, which is a greenhouse gas, and it uses a lot of carbon to produce that meat. So there is a win-win in this. And in addition, if these farmers are storing carbon on their land, they are going to be able to probably sell that carbon as offsets. And many countries around the world are set on trying to reach net zero emissions by 2050. And that is going to mean that there is going to be a big demand for these offsets. So I think these farmers are actually can make a lot of money out of this.

HM: If you're talking about a drastic reduction in the production of meat, it sounds like it's not just farmers who would have to accept major change. I mean, what would the impact be on the food supply in the UK?

IB: Well, the impact on the food supply would be that if we took about 50 percent of our low grade agricultural land out of productivity, we would lose about 20 percent of our productivity. Not all of that would be meat, but most of it would be. There is a way that we can replace that. There are new methodologies coming into place for manufacturing food rather than growing food through agriculture. Those include vertical farming. They include things like bio-reactors and also alternative protein sources. There's a lot of work being done on that. There's a lot of innovation going on in that area. But one of the most important things is what we must not do is export our carbon footprint elsewhere. And there's a job to be done here by explaining to people why they need to eat less meat. And in fact, in the UK, we eat much much more meat than we need for a healthy diet.

HM: Well, as a matter of fact, that export of meat production is one of the issues that's raised by the National Farmers Union in opposing this plan. Guy Smith, NFU Deputy President, told The Guardian, we will not halt climate change by curbing sustainable British production and exporting it to countries which may not have the same climate ambition as we do here. And he also points out that British farming is two and a half times more efficient than in other parts of the world on average. Has he got a fair point?

IB: Well, for a start, British beef production is not sustainable at all. And it's not a lot better than the average around the world. In fact, in some cases, it's actually worse. There are some very good farmers in this country who produce meat extremely efficiently. But nevertheless, whatever way you look at it, beef production and lamb production, for that matter, are very inefficient from the point of view of climate impacts -- wherever it happens in the world, whether it's in the UK or elsewhere. So that argument really doesn't hold.

HM: We're looking for a response to this idea -- and see on Twitter some pushback, I guess not unexpectedly from people who are involved in the agriculture industry. And there's a quote from a mutton shop in the UK says, Please don't give these ridiculous views any more publicity than they all have already had. Is that a typical response? I mean, what are you hearing from the public when it comes to your idea?

IB: Well, there are lots of people who feel threatened by this sort of thing. And I totally understand that. And people who are particularly within the supply chain, the meat supply chain, will feel threatened by these sorts of things. I've talked to the farmers. I think farmers shouldn't really feel threatened. But I can understand why, you know, a mutton producer might feel that way. And I think there are ways of cushioning that blow. And I think government needs to consider how that can happen. But we are going to have to make significant changes if we are going to address our greenhouse gas production problem. We need to make farming in the UK about 5 to 10 times more efficient by about 2050 than it is at the moment. And we will not do that if we continue to produce livestock and meat in the way that we do. And that's the bottom line. Unless those people who are objecting to this can come up with a feasible alternative, then really we don't really have an alternative.

HM: Professor Boyd it is fascinating to hear your ideas. Thank you very much for talking with us.

IB: Thank you very much.

CH: Sir Ian Boyd is a professor of biology at the University of St. Andrew's. We reached him in St. Andrew's, Scotland.

[Music]

Democracy study

Guest: Damian Ruck

CH: If you build it, they will come. And that's how it worked in the movie "Field of Dreams." But new research out of the US suggests it does not work with democracies. Damian Ruck is a computational social scientist at the University of Tennessee. He wanted to test the wisdom of Western governments' efforts to install democracy in other countries. So he and his fellow scientists set out to discover which comes first: the democracy itself or the so-called democratic values that underpin it. We reached Damian Ruck outside Bristol in the UK.

HM: Mr. Ruck, what comes first? Democratic institutions or democratic values?

DAMIAN RUCK: Our new research shows that, generally speaking, democratic culture precedes democratic institutions.

HM: How did you go about answering that question?

DR: So to measure the changes in culture, we used freely available survey data from the World and European Values Survey in 109 countries. And to extrapolate that data back beyond the last few decades, which is the time period which the survey data is from. We used people's dates of birth and that was possible because culture to a surprising degree, formed and hardened during the first few decades of life. And so knowing where somebody was born tells you about the past culture. We said, do changes in democracy precede changes in culture? The answer was no. Then we tested to changes in culture precede changes and democracy. And the answer was yes.

HM: So before we talk about how that change occurs. What do you consider to be democratic values? Because I guess that's something for some people is open to interpretation.

DR: Oh, yeah, of course. So there's lots of ideas out there about what constitutes a democratic culture. But one of the prominent ideas is openness to diversity is important for democracy. Openness and tolerance to minority groups in society. And so that's the democratic cultural value that we put to the test.

HM: So when you're talking to individuals, what kind of survey questions would people have had to be asked to elicit this kind of data?

DR: Sure. So the battery of survey questions that we use from the world value survey to measure openness to diversity is you ask the participant whether they feel comfortable having certain minority groups living as their neighbours. And these minority groups include immigrants, racial minorities, or homosexuals. They are the three main groups.

HM: And if you see that people are more open to living near those groups, that shows that they are more open to democratic change?

DR: Yes. So in countries that are open to having these different minority groups as neighbours, they are the countries that democratize subsequently. And so increases in openness predicts future changes in democracy.

HM: So what are the implications here when it comes to foreign policy -- given, you know, there's conventional wisdom out there about the idea that democracy can be imposed?

DR: I think for me, that's the biggest foreign policy implication of this study, is that there is this assumption out there that democracy will just work everywhere -- and all you need to do is get those institutions installed and it will just work. And this research really suggests that that's not the case. So the obvious example is the Iraq war. So at an explicit assumption during the intervention in Iraq in 2003 was that installing democratic institutions would lead to like future democratic culture, if you like. And that has not turn out to be the case.

HM: Are there examples where government change has been imposed from outside and has worked?

DR: Yes. I mean there are examples of this, right. And the cases that springs to my mind right now are Germany and Japan after World War Two. But it is hard to know what the underlying democratic culture was.

HM: So does that openness have to be driven from within or can it be cultivated -- those values?

DR: That's a really interesting question. So it seems to me that the thing that really creates a culture of openness is just exposure to different groups. that you haven't been exposed to. This exposure breeds tolerance idea. And the 20th century, which is the period that we measured, was almost defined by an increase in globalization. So countries became connected to other countries. People were just more and more exposed to new cultures. And that to me is the most likely cause of this global increase in open that we saw in the 20th century.

HM: At the same time, though, we have seen what appears to be a decline in some parts of the Western world when it comes to a rise in anti-immigrant sentiment. And increasing suspicion about the motives and behaviors of traditionally democratic governments. Why is that happening?

DR: Yeah, that's true. I mean this is kind of a global phenomenon at the moment in terms of an increase in nationalism, if you like. Which is almost the antithesis of openness to diversity. But it's hard [inaudible] the long term consequences of this is going to be because this is a very recent phenomenon. And in the paper, we're talking about very long term trends, scales of a century. So it is hard to say at this point what the effect of this recent uptick in nationalism will have.

HM: Are there lessons here for, you know, governments that want to export the idea of democracy?

DR: It seems to me from our data that if you wish to promote democracy, then you just want to increase connectivity and openness between the nations of the world. That seems to me to be the best way to promote an openness to diversity, which is the thing that protects increases in democracy. The cultural variable that predicts increases in democracy.

HM: Are you optimistic about it? Again, this whole notion of democracy, as we said, is open to a definition for many people. But given your understanding of democratic values -- when you look at this data and you think about the future, is it more likely that we're going to see that openness?

DR: Yes. So if you just look at the trends during the 20th century, certain countries have increased in openness more than others, and they're increasing at different rates. But the global trend has been towards greater openness. And if that continues, then that is good news for democracy.

HM: Mr. Ruck, thank you very much for joining us.

DR: Thanks for having me.

CH: Damian Ruck is a computational social scientist at the University of Tennessee. We reached him near Bristol, England.

[Music]

Christmas tree canes

Guest: Jamie Willis

CH: For a few days or weeks in December, it's a glowing, glistening, beacon of holiday joy, carefully chosen and lovingly decorated. Then abruptly, we dismiss our Christmas tree, stripped of its finery, and chuck its denuded form out with the garbage. But some people in Texas are doing something different. They're donating their trees to Jamie Willis. Mr. Willis is a US Army veteran. We reached him in Copper's Cove, Texas.

HM: Mr. Willis, what are you doing with these donated Christmas trees?

JAMIE WILLIS: I am turning them into canes for veterans.

HM: And can you describe what these canes look like? I mean, I'm imagining it's quite a process taking it from Christmas tree to cane.

JW: Well once the canes are completed, I decorate the cane with any kind of memorabilia that the veteran requests to have put on them, whether it be any kind of unit insignia, their branch of service, stuff like that that they request to have put on them.

HM: How did you start making canes for veterans? I mean, where did the idea come from?

JW: In 2016, I needed the use of a cane myself because I'm a veteran too. And I turned to an organization in Florida called "Free Canes for Veterans." It's run by Oscar Morris. At the time, he was making 500 canes. And his list was full. And he told me, well make one. At the time, I knew nothing about making canes. But he walked me through step by step on how to make one. And at first I was like, there's no way I can do this. And he's like, yes you can -- just believe in yourself and you can do it. And next thing I know, I'd made one. And he's like, okay, now make another one and give it away. So I made one and I gave it away to a veteran. And he's like, okay, now keep building it.

HM: I'm wondering, you know, you would think as a veteran you have access to some medical devices. There's supports from the V -- would you not? I mean, why don't you have a cane provided by a doctor?

JW: Well, I did have it came from the Veterans Administration, but it broke. They gave me two or three different canes and every one of them broke. So the trust in those canes just wasn't there anymore. And to me, those canes are ugly. They have no style. And my canes -- the homemade canes -- it's made out of wood, it's something solid, it's not going to break.

HM: You say that you were sort of prompted and inspired to build this by Oscar Morris. But did you have to acquire a lot of special equipment or did you just kind of start carving away at it?

JW: It was just the tools I had in my garage. My first one was done with...I stripped the bark off with a pocket knife and then I used a sander to sanded down. And next thing I knew, I had a cane. I was just overjoyed. I couldn't believe that I'd made a cane.

HM: Can you remember the feeling when you provided your first cane to somebody else?

JW: The gentleman that I gave it to -- he was a friend of mine. Me and him both went into tears. It was just an overwhelming feeling of joy and happiness. He hated his VA cane. And it was something special to him.

HM: How many have you made so far?

JW: I've made 222 canes.

HM: And how do you get them to veterans? I mean, how many of them have you met in person? How far are you shipping them?

JW: A lot of veterans are local that have received the canes. So they come right to my house because I make them out of my garage. Shipping them -- I have them all over the US. I have shipped them as far away as Germany. And one has gone to England.

HM: Does anyone donate anything more than the trees?

JW: Until now, no. Last Christmas was the first time I'd asked for trees, and it was just around my neighbourhood. And I did the same thing this year and it totally blew up on me. As of right now -- well, last year I had less than 100 trees given to me, this year I'm approaching, I think 1,400.

HM: Oh my goodness! What's the furthest someone has come to deliver a tree to you?

JW: About 200 miles. They drove a single tree from Dallas to my house and to tell me thank you for what I was doing.

HM: What kind of response do you get from the veterans who receive these canes?

JW: It's hard to put into words on how appreciative they are. They get overjoyed sometimes. They just are so happy to have something that's personal to them and represents them.

HM: Tell me why this project is so important to you and kind of the emotions that are attached to it for you.

JW: I just want to let all the veterans and even non-veterans that I give these canes to, let them know that they're not forgotten. That somebody still cares about them. They've given so much for this country that I want to give something back to them. Something that shows, you know, you're not forgotten about. People out here still care about you. And this is just a small way to say thank you.

HM: Mr. Willis it is a great pleasure to speak with you. Thank you so much.

JW: Thank you for having me.

CH: Jamie Willis is a US Army veteran who runs "Canes for Veterans Central Texas." He spoke to us from Copper's Cove, Texas.

[Music]

Part 3: Encore: Michael Christie's book Greenwood tackles climate change, forestry and family dysfunction

Encore feature: Greenwood author Michael Christie

CH: A few pages into Michael Christie's novel, "Greenwood" there's a picture of a cross section of a tree with years marking some of the rings: 2038, 2008, 1974, 1934, and 1908. And if you turn the book sideways so the spine is facing away from you, you can see the stacked pages have been inked to look like the rings of a tree. So "Greenwood" looks like a tree. And like all books, it's made of trees. But it's also full of trees. They're integral to the story of the Greenwood family. Jake Greenwood is a forest tour guide. Her father, Liam, is a carpenter. His mother was an environmental activist. And his grandfather was a timber magnate. It's a thoughtful, multigenerational epic that deals with climate change, opium addiction, the Dust Bowl, early 20th century capitalism, and the challenges of woodworking. But it's also a page turner about family secrets, a cross-country chase and forbidden love. In October, Michael Christie spoke with Carol from a CBC studio in Victoria, BC, about Greenwood. Here's an encore presentation of that conversation.

SOUNDCLIP

CO: Michael Christie welcome to the As It Happens show and the studio in Victoria.

MICHAEL CHRISTIE: Thank you Carol. It's a pleasure to be here.

CO: You seem to have taken tree hugging to the level of art in this book "Greenwood."

MC: You could say that. I mean I didn't begin the book as a tree hugger but you know after I wrote the final page I am now a card carrying tree hugger. [Laughter]

CO: Well it's really wonderful. It's a remarkable achievement I have to say. But every part of it -- including just the object of the book itself and the structure. And we don't normally start an interview talking about the structure of a book except that it's so intriguing. Everything is woven into that including the book itself. So how did you come up with this structure? Describe what it is and maybe say how you invented it.

MC: For sure yeah. I mean the structure of the narrative mirrors the rings of a tree. So the cross section of a tree. So it begins in the near future, passes back in time to 2008, back and back to sort of the centre of the narrative tree in the beginning of this particular family that I'm writing about. And then the story comes back out through those same rings again to the near future. I mean I came up with the structure when I was cutting down a tree -- I'm sorry to report, but it was a small tree on our property where we live on Galiano Island in British Columbia. And cut the tree down, it had to go because we were putting in a driveway so it was a difficult decision. And then examined the rings of the tree and saw that you know a stump is a kind of record and is almost a kind of narrative in itself. And I had this -- I'm not a big believer of anyone when they say they had an epiphany but I did and I saw the structure of a story there.

CO: You start with the outer ring and moved to the inner ring which is in 1908. And then go back out to the 2038. And so I want to ask you about 2038 -- that's the outer ring of the tree. And Jake Greenwood who is the character of this family of that generation in this family saga. And her job at Greenwood Arboreal Cathedral. Tell us about her and her job.

MC: Jake is a highly qualified scientist. She's studied you know the inter-communicative mechanisms of trees for most of her life but she's been reduced to being a forest guide in this last remaining old growth forest that remains after something called the great withering has decimated forests and trees all across the world. So her job is to guide wealthy tourists essentially through the trees, describe their wonder and majesty to them, and be paid very poorly to do so.

CO: And these are these extraordinary Douglas firs that anyone who's been out there have seen on the islands at Cathedral Grove which are in some cases well 1,200-1,500 years old, right?

MC: Absolutely and they're towering creatures. They're you know hundreds of feet high. I called the Greenwood Arboreal Cathedral a cathedral for a reason and that is because they do feel like holy places. They have this sense of spirituality to them and awe that visits you when you are there.

CO: 2038 which isn't so far away and all the trees or very few trees are left on Earth after what you just mentioned "the great withering." Can you tell us what that is and to what degree is it an invention on your part?

MC: I mean I dearly wish that I could say it involved a lot more imagination than it did because where I live on Galiano Island the Western Red Cedars which are the provincial tree of British Columbia many of them are Browning and dying due to what people believe is drought stress. So you know a series of droughts has rendered these trees unable to survive. And so it's you know -- it's incredibly tragic. My wife who grew up on Galiano island her name is Cedar. So you know it's something that hits so close to home for me. And so I mean "the great weathering" is not a work of imagination.

CO: So what's left of Earth are great swatches of desert. Most of it's a desert. Most of it is like a dust bowl. And these places -- these last remaining stands of trees -- are where only wealthy people can enjoy them. So not only is this destruction of the Earth part of the story but it's also that there is the class society, there's very very riven, isn't it? It's really just those who have nothing and those who have everything.

MC: Absolutely. I mean it's a dark idea but it's one I think we ought to confront in terms of you know as these wondrous natural places shrink and as the world becomes less habitable you know the resources like water, like forests, like you know livable land are going to become more scarce. And who is going to try to control them but the wealthy and the powerful. And that's happening in my book.

CO: So we don't stay in 2038 as we've mentioned. This is a family saga that goes back through the rings of the story to 1908 and traces the history of Jake's family -- the Greenwood family. Each of these generations has a different relationship with trees. Can you sketch some of those?

MC: Absolutely. I mean it's that's sort of the unifying theme of the book is that each generation -- you know their lives are intimately entwined with trees in some fashion. So Jake is a scientist. Her father Liam Greenwood who's living in 2008 is a carpenter who does reclaimed wood for you know coffee shops and bars -- mostly in the New York area. His mother Willow Greenwood is living in 1974 and she's a sort of a fervent eco-warrior/protestor who pours sugar into the gas tanks of logging equipment to halt old growth logging in mostly in the Pacific Northwest. She also lives in a van for most of her life. Before that, we have the two brothers Everett and Harris Greenwood. They are living during the Dust Bowl in 1934. One of them -- Harris -- is a timber tycoon who is clear cutting massive amounts of forest land across Canada and amassing a huge fortune in the process. And his brother Everett Greenwood who is a survivor of World War One who is sort of a damaged drifter who plays pretty figuratively in this story of the Greenwood's.

CO: And it takes us back to 1908 and their origins. And for anyone who thinks this is just -- okay [chuckles] -- one generation begets the next generation. You completely tear that apart. I mean it has all the qualities of epic but these people, their relationships are so interesting and so unexpected. And as you point out at some point that the way trees are all connected through their roots but they're all individuals and separate. And that's really what you're multigenerational saga does, doesn't it?

MC: It does. I mean in a way I mean there's the overarching metaphor of the family tree. But I try to subvert that in the sense you know that I'm kind of saying that we're all interconnected in a way and whether we are related by blood or not, it is the relationships we build and the ties that we make that is truly what relates us.

CO: So the Greenwood family tree is really a forest.

MC: Oh it's a mess and a forest. It's a messy forest. [Laughter]

CO: You are listening to As It Happens and I am speaking with Michael Christie who is in our Victoria studio and about his new novel -- his fascinating novel -- called "Greenwood." And Michael I want to ask you a bit about yourself. You mentioned that you live on Galiano Island in British Columbia. And you obviously are surrounded by trees. What is your relationship with trees?

MC: It's very close. I mean I grew up in Thunder Bay, Ontario, smelling the mill -- the pulp mill smoke wafting past my house. And I've always been quite connected to trees and to forests and to natural spaces. And when we moved to Galiano we got a little piece of land and decided we were going to build a house. And I in my infinite wisdom decided that I was too cheap to pay someone to do that and that I was going to attempt to do this -- so I did that. We brought some trees down on the property and we had them milled right there and so we built a timber frame little cabin and that's where we live now. And it's lovely.

CO: And these kinds of experiences of yours all work their way into -- they're built into this story. And even this character Liam you mentioned -- this is the 2008 part of this story. Liam reflects that -- because he's a carpenter and he builds these beautiful counters in bars with recycled wood -- he says we think we live in boxes until we look closer and find that we are in fact living in irregular shapes in big misshapen accidents. So does that describe your house?

MC: [Laughter] Yes. Liam would look quite scornfully on anything that I've ever built. I am a hack. I am not a fine carpenter but I can get the job done. And I mean our house does appear square and for all intents and purposes it is. [Laughs] But you know that's one of the beautiful -- I think that's what people like about wooden structures is that they...you know they are not artificial. They are living structures. Wood is you know one of the materials that is closest to our hearts I think as human beings.

CO: The relationship people have with trees in this book and clearly yours as well, it's more than just this sort of pragmatic thing of we need them to recycle the air, we need them to build stuff with, we need them to shield us from the sun. There's a connection -- I am going to say spiritual, I almost said that -- but it's more than. It's vital. It's the vitality of people walking in the woods and feeling this connection with trees that revitalizes them in an essential way. Is that your relationship?

MC: Absolutely. I mean there's all this research now you know that demonstrates that time spent in the trees you know increases our sense of well-being, it actually lowers our blood pressure physically and this is measurable. It doubles our creativity you know. And I think we have structured our society so that we are so still removed from these natural spaces. And only now are we beginning to realize how fundamentally important it is to the human being to be in forests and to be in natural environments. And you know I get to live in one which is wonderful for me.

CO: But you must also see this as an important thing that you must do as a writer because there was a Global Mail article by Marsha Lederman describing the role that art plays during the climate crisis that so many people -- different types of artists are now looking at this environmental issue and incorporating it into their work. Did you feel like some kind of artistic responsibility to incorporate what you're seeing with the trees into fiction?

MC: I didn't at first. I mean this idea for this novel began you know sort of in the way that all of my ideas begin and that's I want to write about a dysfunctional family. [Laughs] You know most of my work centres around that basic kind of idea -- functional and dysfunctional. But as I was writing it and as I was doing research and as I myself was becoming more and more entwined with trees and more interested in forests and carpentry and you know the history of logging in Canada, I became more and more aware that I was writing what could be called an environmental novel in the sense that there is a kind of evolution that takes place -- a sort of a societal transformation that takes place throughout the course of the narrative with respect to you know how we look at trees. And also should be said that in my research you know I was reading John Steinbeck -- you know sort of classic novels of this kind. And in my reading of Grapes of Wrath again -- which I hadn't visited for a long time -- I realized that it's in fact an environmental novel. There's this huge you know environmental calamity that takes place in...

CO: Dust Bowl.

MC: The Dust Bowl. And the Okies are displaced and they become climate refugees within their own country and they're forced to travel to California. And so we can think of these new sort of like climate fiction as a new thing. But in actual truth you know people have been doing it for a long time.

CO: And children are very central to each stage of your book as they would be in kind of dynastic work. But the children -- all of them have this intimate relationship with forests. I'm wondering do your own children interact with the forest in that way?

MC: Absolutely. I mean you know they can't have no choice but to because it's sort of our playground. [Laughter] But yeah -- I mean it's just something that children get. You know they see a natural space and they're just itching to venture out into it. I don't know. It's innate in them. And the presence of my own children -- I have two young sons -- you know in my life has certainly upped the stakes for me in terms of you know the amount I think about the future and the degree to which I feel I'm invested in you know how this whole thing turns out. So my own sort of climate consciousness has been raised by them in the process.

CO: But we're hearing from so many young people. Their feelings of despair. Entire groups -- they're joining little societies of teenagers who are declaring that they will not have children, they will be the last generation because they feel there's no place to bring anybody else -- any other generation -- into it. Are your children aware of that? Are they aware of climate change and how it's affecting your forest?

MC: They are. And you know as particularly my youngest son who is 6 he has a very kind of emotional relationship with animals. He remembers animal facts. He can identify trees. Like he's got a really just sort of strong connection. And you know we'll watch you know Planet Earth, BBC documentaries, quite often and you know the section near the end when you see the polar bear floating on the tiny piece of ice and it can't hunt you know because of climate change, he gets very upset and sometimes we have to kind of turn it off or I'll say okay that's it you know it's over, sort of thing, because it's devastating. And I think that we ought not ignore that. I think that kids are tuned into something that we have built this callous over you know throughout our adult lives and they're right, it is horrific. It is grotesque. And it's terrifying. And it's something that we must manage.

CO: I am speaking with Michael Christie about his latest novel "Greenwood." And this is course As It Happens. When you say that about the despair just how depressing this can be for young people -- what I really admire about this novel is that it's hopeful. It actually doesn't make you feel that dystopian despair that works of fiction like this do elsewhere. And I'm wondering how you managed to do that. Did you consciously say, no -- I'm not going to infect people with the complete sense of suicidal despair after this book?

MC: Yeah. I mean I think that you know books that sort of traffic in you know just sheer outright pessimism are false. I don't think that life is meaningless and we're all doomed and blah blah blah. You know I do see hope everywhere and I see hope in the climate strikes and I see hope in all kinds of initiatives that are coming. And so I mean I think the sort of central idea of the book is that is our interconnectedness. And in every generation of this family there are people reaching out to others. There are people who are sacrificing for others. There are people who are you know falling in love and finding hope in one another. And so I mean the central idea of the book I think is this kind of interconnectedness that we all are part of a human family and only through that kind of thinking and through that kind of collective response are we going to be able to deal with this crisis.

CO: I think also all of your characters are infused with a tremendous amount of humanity -- even the bad guys. And there are some really evil people in this [laughing]. But even they are looking -- the timber tycoons and the rich who are trying to exploit the Earth -- they're all looking for some kind of joy within their lives or love within their relationships. And so I'm sure that's very conscious on your part.

MC: Absolutely. I mean that is what I understand about human nature. I mean I spent seven years working at a homeless shelter on Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. And I came in contact with pimps and drug dealers and people you know who are predatory and people who are you know what you could normally say as evil. But even in them you know you'd see these glimmers of humanity and you know these sort of sad moments where you know either they're reaching out and they're trying to you know connect to their own life and trying to find joy in some small way. So you know that is what I understand about people. I don't think there are any evil villains in the world.

CO: It's such a page turner, right. I mean you have all those things that make book so un-put-downable. The recognition scenes. The "Oh my gosh! Are they related? Are they not related?"

MC: I love that stuff. I mean I love good storytelling. And I love you know that propulsive feeling that you feel when you're reading a novel. And you know I tried to sort of marry that with bigger picture ideas and depth of character and all the good stuff that literary novels do. But at the same time you know it's hopefully a good story.

CO: And there is sex, cross-country chase scenes, lost and found objects -- always a good one. But at the same time what you had to try to avoid -- I would imagine you did because you did avoid it I presume consciously -- that it could have been didactic. It could have been preachy given the thematic basis even the shape as we described -- the structure of the book. How consciously did you try to avoid that?

MC: I mean not too consciously. A novel I kind of think is just a series of balancing acts in the sense that you are trying to strike this perfect balance between doing it and overdoing it you know pretty much over and over and over again. And you know the editing process which was long for this book -- I put an enormous amount of work into it. There were you know hundred drafts. Just like incredible you know revisions, fine tuning. So you just hope that you can get that mix right where you know things are believable and exciting but at the same time human and rooted in life and affecting.

CO: But it is a book with a message. And perhaps we can all extract our own message from it. But what is yours?

MC: It's so hard to sum up a book of this size to one message...

CO: Sorry [laughs]

MC: I mean I'm happy to try. The message of the book is the interconnectedness of all living things -- which sounds grandiose and I apologize but the fact that we are intimately tied to one another, that we are intimately tied to our environment, and we ignore that fact at our peril.

CO: Okay since you are willing to venture yours. I'll say mine. My takeaway.

MC: Please do. I might like yours better.

CO: That we need to have a whole new relationship with planet Earth.

MC: Yes absolutely. And that's part of that interconnectedness. I think this is something that everyone is realizing you know increasingly that we have to radically change how we are living on this planet if we have any hope of surviving. And this book while it is not a didactic argument for that -- you know it is an argument. And my hope is that it would demonstrate the importance of collective type thinking.

CO: We just want to get you to do a little reading. And just set it up for us if you would.

MC: You bet. So I'm going to be reading from the future section of the novel which is 2038. Takes place in the year 2038. And Jake Greenwood who is a forest guide in the Greenwood Arboreal Cathedral has just had a meeting with a man from her past. And he has given her a book that he alleges was the property of one of her ancestors. And I should also say that books and paper have become in short supply obviously after the trees have withered across the planet and so not only is she amazed by this book's relationship or potential relationship to her own history, she's amazed by it as a physical object as well.

MC: [Starts reading] Later that evening, Jake returns to her staff cabin. Pours herself a hefty bourbon and curls into the love seat with the paper book spread in her lap. After five more tours shepherding pilgrims through the cathedral, her eyes are sludgy and unprepared for parsing the book's tricky cursive script. She hasn't seen anyone write in this antiquated fashion for years and never learned the technique in her Delhi elementary school. Just two pages in, Jake's chin begins to dip thereby unraveling the few narrative fibers that she'd managed to weave together. It was silly to get your hopes up, she tells herself rising to place the paper book in her father's old cardboard box filing it away with all her other meaningless family heirlooms. Though she understands this journal is something that ought to have great bearing on her life. Unfortunately for Silas and his scheme, Jake has always mistrusted the expression "knowing your roots." As though roots by their very definition are knowable. Any dendrologist can tell you that the roots of a mature Douglas fir spread for miles. That they're dark. And intertwining -- tangled and twisted and impossible to map. But they often fuse together and even communicate secretly sharing nutrients and chemical weapons among themselves. So the truth is that there exists no clear distinction between one tree and another and their roots are anything but knowable. Jake snaps back her drink and retrieves the paper book from the box, flipping to the inside front cover where she finds facing the first page -- a splash of crudely penciled words scrawled in a child's block print: Property of Willow Greenwood. Despite her reservations about Silas's true motivations and her general bafflement with the book's cryptic entries, Jake's heart takes a little skip at the sight of her grandmother's name however misspelled it may be. And while drinking herself toward a welcome oblivion throughout the evening she wonders about Willow Greenwood and who she was and what impelled her to give her fortune away. She wonders about her father and if he also drank and whether that's what made him troubled. If he did ,Jake already forgives him. Maybe she drinks because of his genes or because of his absence. Or maybe his genes created his absence which created her drinking. Or maybe he felt just as unwelcome in the world as she does now. And drinking was the only thing that allowed him any reprieve. Or maybe her roots are all too tangled and there's no single story to be told about any of it. Deep in the night just after she's dragged her cathedral issue comforter over her body and is preparing to pass out, she lifts the paper book one last time and fans its grimy hand-inked pages. How intimately a book is related to the tree and its rings she thinks. The layers of time preserved for all to examine.

CO: Michael thank you and thank you for this book and thank you for speaking with us.

MC: Thank you Carol. It was such a pleasure speaking with you. That was just so fun.

CO: All right. Take care.

MC: You too.

CH: That was Michael Christie speaking with Carol from a CBC studio in Victoria this past October. He is the author of the novel "Greenwood" which is published by McClelland and Stewart.

Back To Top »

Provide Transcript Feedback

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

January 3, 2020 Episode Transcript

More Stories Like This