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The AIH Transcript for April 03, 2020

Hosts: Carol Off and Chris Howden

Prologue

CH: And... Meanwhile, back at the ranch, we've returned to the As It Happens archives for an interview with a British plumber chafing against new language rules. You can call it a float valve if you want, but to him, it will always be a ballcock.

CH: As It Happens, the Friday edition. Radio that's ready to dissect any kind of throne speech.

[Music: Theme]

Part one: U.S. 3M supplies, job subsidies explainer, From Our Archives: Saucy plumber

U.S. 3M supplies

Guest: Bruce Heyman

CH: It's America First — but Canada wants its southern neighbours to take a second look. Today, manufacturer 3M announced that the White House has asked the company to stop exporting N95 respirator masks to Canada and Latin America. The move, which follows the U.S. government's invocation of the Defense Production Act, aims to prioritize and increase supplies within the country.

But 3M says the move could have "significant humanitarian implications." And they're not the only ones concerned. Today, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was asked about the situation.

[sc]

JUSTIN TRUDEAU: We've been working very closely with the Americans to highlight what Canadians know very, very well: that the level of integration between our economies goes both ways across the border. That we are receiving essential supplies from the United States. But the United States also receives essential supplies and products and, indeed, health care professionals from Canada every single day. I think of the thousands of nurses, for example, who cross the bridge in Windsor to work in the Detroit medical system every single day. These are things that Americans rely on. And it would be a mistake to create blockages or reduce the amount of back and forth trade of essential goods and services, including medical goods, across our border. That is the point we're making very clearly to the American administration right now.

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CH: Bruce Heyman was the US Ambassador to Canada from 2014 to 2017. We reached him in Chicago.

CO: Ambassador Heyman, we just heard Prime Minister Justin Trudeau saying it would be, quote, “a mistake for either country to limit trade access at this time.” How would you describe the White House call for 3M to stop exporting these masks to Canada?

BRUCE HEYMAN:I would describe it as unfortunate. I would describe it as in line with the president's behaviour of short-term behaviours, not thinking strategically, not valuing the importance of relationships. And in this particular case, the most important relationship the United States has as a country is our relationship with Canada, and the depth and breadth of it. And I hope he rectifies that. And I think it's a mistake.

CO: Right. But the government in your country believes it has to enforce this order under the Defence Production Act, which gives the U.S. government more control over industry during emergencies, which this clearly is an emergency. So doesn't have the right and perhaps even responsibility to say no, we have to get all the N95 masks that are being made by 3M and bring them to the United States?

BH: You know, if life was that simple, you know, the way you described it, where I think the president is portraying it, then and I think people might be aligned with that perspective. But I think we should just pause a minute and understand the complexity of the relationship and how we do not only make things together, build things together, but we supply each other with important needs. Eighty per cent of Canadians live within 100 miles of the U.S. border. And we are much more integrated than any next door neighbours that exist on the planet Earth. And when the U.S. is in need, Canadians are there for us. Whether it's in wars, whether it's 9/11, whether it's Katrina or Sandy, hurricanes or forest fires, who are the first people there there? They’re the Canadians, they've always been there for us. Now, I understand the issue that we face here, but a large part of that issue of not having the number of masks that we need, the number of ventilators we need, the amount of personal protection equipment that we need in terms of suits and et cetera. And having the medical teams and staffs that we need is in large part due to the lack of leadership that we've experienced from the White House. And now they're in scramble mode. And the decisions that are being made are being made without strategic thought and implications to the long-term consequences of those decisions. I think that we could find ways of working together to satisfy both the U.S. need and Canadian need. This is a global virus. This isn't a virus or problem in any one country. We're tackling this around the world. And the best way to do that is with your allies.

CO: We heard in that clip that the prime minister suggested that there could be retaliation. That's certainly what 3M has warned the administration if these masks aren't let into Canada. And Mr. Trudeau mentioned the number of Windsor nurses who cross the border. We spoke with a hospital administrator in Detroit last night, who said that they are asking for nurses and doctors to come from Canada into the U.S. emergency. Do you think that Americans are aware of how much it relies on medical professionals who go to the United States from Canada?

BH: I would say the American public is probably not as fully aware, but I know that people in Detroit are aware of the importance of having Canadian nurses and professionals come across the border and work in those hospitals. And so, again, this is the shortsighted nature of the president's behaviour that is causing these difficulties. And I really hope this doesn't escalate into something more problematic for both of our two countries. We need to find paths to solve this problem together. People will die every day while we have this virus. We need to figure out ways to reduce that mortality rate. One, we're doing it by social distancing. But another way to do it is working together with the medical equipment and with the research and efforts that are going to be needed to treat people and to get vaccines. And we've got to do this as a global co-operative, not just in any one country.

CO: We also are hearing from Germany that apparently, that a supply of these masks were diverted in transit from 3M's manufacturers in Asia, diverted in Thailand to come to United States and not go on to Berlin. The Germans are furious about that. They're checking into how that did happen, whether it did happen. But how does this play in the United States? I mean, Americans would like to see its administration acting vigorously to defend its health needs. How do you think it plays out among Americans?

BH: Well, I think in early days that whatever the president does, if he says I'm doing this to protect American lives. You know, he has a certain media and Twitter following. He has a certain constituency that may actually believe that, yes, he's just doing this to help us. And they don't have a full understanding of the complexity of global relationships and the importance of them and the importance of having allies and working together. This is a problem that it may very well be that the Germans, as you know, recently reported, are working on a potential vaccine that may actually work. What did he try to do? He tried to buy the company and take it away from Germany. I mean, that's just not the way we're going to operate successfully in the world.

CO: But, again, do Americans, for the most part, feel more confident knowing that their president is acting so strenuously on the international stage, on their behest?

BH: I don't know very many people that are confident in the president's leadership at this time. And I think his decisions and comments of putting the states against each other in a virtual Hunger Games, buying equipment and saying it's up to you. Putting his son-in-law up there and saying the national strategic reserve of this equipment isn't for the states. And then changing the website this morning to change the terminology of what that was actually for the longest of time. I think his leadership is causing the problem that we're now facing today. And the problem we're facing today is a lack of equipment, a lack of strategy in tackling this and we had several months lead time in approaching this. But it was just 30 days or so ago that he was calling this a hoax. He said there are only 15 people; it's going to go to zero. And he didn't even encourage social distancing. And now, a number of states are on a go-it-alone, and they don't even require social distancing. And he doesn't have the leadership to call for that even on a national basis. So I think the leadership is faulty at this point. And, unfortunately, it's costing lives.

CO: Ambassador Heyman, we'll leave it there. Thank you.

BH: Thank you so much.

CH: Bruce Heyman is a former US Ambassador to Canada and the author of "The Art of Diplomacy: Strengthening the Canada-US relationship in times of uncertainty." We reached him in Chicago. We requested an interview with 3M Canada, but the company declined. In a statement, it says its primary concern is the safety of healthcare workers and first responders, and that 3M is quote, "currently reviewing the specific details of the executive memorandum, and looking at every possible way to meet domestic needs for Canada." Unquote.

[Music: Pop]

Job subsidies explainer

Guest: Jennifer Robson

CO: Professor Robson, thank you.

JR: Thank you.

CO: Bye.

JR: Bye-bye.

CH: Jennifer Robson teaches political management at Carleton University. We reached her in Ottawa.

[Music: Ambient]

From Our Archives: Saucy plumber

CH: Old firearms had a mechanism called a "hammer" that you pulled back to fire the gun. If you only pulled it back half-way, the gun wouldn't fire, except by accident. And that's where we get the phrase "going off half-cocked". That is fine to say, obviously. But if you're uncomfortable with that expression for some reason, you might want to skip tonight's interview from the As It Happens archives. Earlier this week, a listener named Mary Shields from Victoria wrote to ask: "Could you please broadcast Michael Enright's naughty interview with the English Plumber?" Well, Mary, here it is, but we're not sure what's naughty about it. It's simply an interview with Allan Robinson, Director of the U.K.'s National Plumbing Association from 1994. The British Water Authority had just decided that certain terms of the trade were outdated or sexist. So Michael solemnly discussed the language change with Mr. Robinson. From our archives, here they are, weighing the merits of the terms "ballcock" and "stopcock".

CO: Which the animals that you see have rebounded — the ones that the other people in your study have actually reported on?

BW: So we've looked at a number of examples really ranging from fish to whales to invertebrates, the whole gamut of life in the ocean. Whales are a great example because, of course, large whales were on their way to extinction in the mid-20th century. And then we had a global moratorium on whaling come in in 1986. And since then, at least half of the species have rebounded very significantly. For example, in humpback whales that increased by about 15 to 20 per cent per year from, you know, a few hundred individuals to tens of thousands. The same is true for elephant seals. They were down to just 30 individuals, the whole global population, you know, just a handful. And now they're back to 250,000. So these recovery stories for large animals that are not particularly fast-growing has been remarkable.

CO: And not just they're recovering on their own. This is because of interventions, because people, countries programs are actually working to recover parts of the ocean. So what's been most successful?

BW: Well, you know, sometimes it's enough to just leave the ecosystem alone, like in the Marshall Islands. That's a good case where nothing was done to recover the corals and the fish and the sharks and so on. They just came back by themselves. And the reason for that is that the ocean is really well connected. In the end, it's just one big global ocean, right? And animals can move freely from one place to the next, something we're not really used to on land. But sometimes you need more often an intervention. For example, there were efforts to restore depleted mangrove forests in Asia, which act as storm buffers to shield local communities from the impact of sea-level rise, tsunamis and the like. And some of those recovery stories are remarkable, with thousands of hectares restored in just a matter of a few years. So we call this marine infrastructure [chuckling], you know, some of the kind of essential bits and pieces we need to have in place, not just for marine animals, but also for ourselves to remain safe.

CO: I hate to be the downer in this, but of course, we are still seeing oceans reaching record high temperatures because of climate change. Trawling is still happening in many parts of the world, where they're dragging everything that lives off the seafloor. And we're still seeing huge amounts of manure and fertilizer running off of farms into places like the Gulf of Mexico. So I hate to introduce that [chuckling], but I mean, is any of that being mitigated?

BW: Oh, definitely. Those concerns are very real, Carol. And I share them just as much as you do. Particularly, climate change, of course, is the fastest accelerating threat we have. And just as we speak, the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, which is largely protected by one of the largest marine protected parks in the world, is bleaching for the third time in five years due to climate change. And there's nothing that people there can do to prevent that, unless we all work together globally to mitigate these global threats that you're talking about that are much harder to address. The good news, I think, is that we have to address them anyways, not just for the oceans, but also for our own sake. And the question is, will we win the race for time before we reach the tipping points that scientists are predicting will happen around one-point-five or two degrees temperature rise? And that could mean the end of coral reefs as we know it. Or we could have a world with more vibrant coral reefs, you know, in our kids’ lifetime. So we have to choose this.

CO: We spoke with a NOAA scientist about the coral bleaching event. And one thing he said, and I want to just quickly get you to see if you share this view. He said that the one optimistic thing he can say is that what he's seeing in the midst of this pandemic is how people can be mobilized on a very large scale, willing to make very large sacrifices in the interest of the public good. And he thinks that that's a good sign for our ability to actually deal with climate change. Would you share that optimism?

BW: I would 100 per cent share that optimism. And I think we're at a breaking point here in the development of our society, globally speaking, where we really understand that due to the global connected nature of our society, which we cannot roll back, which will only amplify, there's only one way forward, which is to work together to mitigate some of these threats, be it a pandemic, be it global warming, be it the decline of ocean life. And we do have the solutions at hand, but they only work if we work together and we can. ANd I think there now is an understanding that that's exactly what we need to do.

CO: Professor Worm, thank you for shedding a little bit of light and optimism into a very dark time. And thank you for speaking with us.

BW: Thank you. Thank you very much.

CO: Bye-bye.

BW: Goodbye.

CH: Boris Worm is the co-author of a new study that says ocean life around the world is rebounding quickly — when it gets the chance. We reached him in Halifax.

[Music: Indie rock]

NL cars

CH: Normally, women fleeing domestic violence in Labrador could call a cab and get to the local shelter, Libra House. But because of the pandemic, taxis in Happy Valley-Goose Bay are off the roads. That's left the shelter with no way to help women stuck at home with their abusers. Now, though, a local car dealership has offered a car free of charge to the shelter. Here's the executive director of Libra House, Jessica Keating, talking to the CBC.

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JESSICA KEATING: I said, you know, is there a rental or something that we could get at a low cost maybe to use during this pandemic? And without a doubt, without a second thought or hesitation, he said, absolutely. We will give you a vehicle. Just give me a few hours to get it situated. And you can have it for free as a donation.

JANICE GOUDIE: So what difference does this donation from Goose Bay Motors make to the Libra House?

JK: It makes all the difference. Without this vehicle and with this donation, we would not have any way to pick up a woman and bring her to our shelter. We were scrabbling, thinking, what are we going to do? You know, there was nights I was actually kept awake, wondering if we get a call in the middle of the night. What are we going to do? Am I going to have to pick them up in the middle of the night in my own vehicle? Like what does this mean? So it was very stressful trying to come up with scenarios. But to know now that we can still serve our women and get them to our shelter without any worry, it's a huge relief.

JG: And I imagine, Jessica, that this is a pretty stressful time for women who are in domestic violence situations because it's really stressful for everybody right now. Are you seeing that there is a need for your service, that they’re increasing as the impacts of COVID-19, are rising?

JK: We are seeing an increase in the telephone services right now. We're seeing a higher volume of calls because we are communal living, right? So I think that in itself causes a little bit of fear for a woman in a situation of should I leave? Shouldn't I leave? You know, not such an emergency crisis where they're kind of teetering back and forth. The thought of having to come into a communal setting, even though we are taking all the precautions and, you know, we feel like we're very safe there. I think some women are unsure of making that step.

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CH: That was Jessica Keating, the director of the Labrador domestic violence shelter Libra House, talking to the CBC’s Janice Goudie.

[Music: Jazz]

Homeless in Belfast and Las Vegas

Guests: Paul McCusker, Brittany Corder

CO: Brittany, what did you think when you first saw photos of this temporary shelter at the Cashman Center?

BRITTANY CORDER: Absolutely. I think like most people, I was very disappointed. And it was shocking to see the conditions that they had these people. And even if it was temporary, these are still human beings. They definitely deserved a better situation that they were put in.

CO: What was shocking about it?

BC: Um, just the fact that they have them just on the cement. There was no mats. There was no carpeting. There was nothing. And this parking lot that they set them next to is just right next to the street. So I know those people couldn't have had, you know, a good night's sleep by any means. And it seemed really just inhuman. There was nothing dignified about it.

CO: Yeah, there's actually, I guess, markings, like parking spot markings, put out for the area to sleep in.

BC: That's exactly. It looked like, you know, like a chequerboard. And I think they were trying to do that for the social distancing was the idea of it. But it almost just looked like cages about the bars, honestly.

CO: This is a parking lot outside the Cashman Center. Why couldn't they sleep inside?

BC: They were trying to keep the inside available if they had to move people from the hospital. So if they needed extra hospital beds, that’s what they wanted to have it open for. But, you know, this was going to be a temporary thing. And the odds of them having to use that space during that time were pretty slim. And so I'm not sure why they chose to not move them inside? If it was a sanitation issue, or what exactly it was.

CO: What happened, though? I mean, I guess there was one confirmed case of COVID-19 at the place where many of these people were staying. And then they announced that they couldn't stay there anymore. This is at the Catholic Charity. So was there no other place for them to stay, no other shelter?

BC: You know, [said with laughing inflection] we were all wondering the same thing. The Catholic Charities does house about 500 people in their overnight shelter. And so when they had someone that tested positive, they felt it necessary to close it down to do a thorough cleaning of the place. But what’s really disappointing to me is that everything has just been a reaction. There has been no forethought. There's been nothing planned ahead of time. And they had to have known this was gonna happen. Of course, someone in our homeless community was gonna test positive. And so the fact that there was no forethought into more appropriate alternatives is kind of mind-blowing.

CO: Are they able to move back in? Now, I guess it's been they've isolated that person. It's been cleaned up. Can they reuse that Charity?

BC: Yes, they are allowing people back in Catholic Charities for their overnight stay. And so far, it seems that the Cashman Center has been closed for that purpose. But we'll see what happens. Because if someone else tests positive, I don't know if we're going to be exactly back in the situation in a few weeks.

CO: So it's possible these people can be back sleeping on the pavement in this parking lot?

BC: Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And it's bound to happen. I know the city is working on a quarantine site, but I feel like that in and of itself still has a lot of questions that need to be answered.

CO: We just heard from someone in Belfast, Ireland, where they have provided enough temporary housing to get everyone off the streets. They've now proven that it can be done. In Tampa Bay, we understand there's a tent city for the homeless. In New Orleans, they've put people up at the Hilton. How does Las Vegas compare with other cities, other jurisdictions, that you know of in the way it treats its homeless?

BC: Yeah, absolutely. It has been really disheartening, even in the past few months. There has been a lot of, you know, policy and actions towards our homeless that haven't been the most positive. And this is kind of highlighting it. And to look at these other places that are doing really wonderful things, that are treating this population in a dignified and respectful manner. And then to see how we're handling it, it's really, really frustrating. And, you know, being a service provider, like we care about this population. And they at least deserve a roof over their head, if nothing else.

CO: There are some in Las Vegas who are saying this has to happen, that there are empty hotels right now, resorts, that could be put to this purpose. Is that something that's possible?

BC: Oh, absolutely. I don't see why that wouldn't be a great alternative. But if not, at least lifting there is a camping ban in Vegas. So at least lifting the camping ban, so these individuals have an opportunity to be in their tents if they need to self-isolate, and not crammed into one little area where there is no chance for social distancing.

CO: Because there are restrictions on even people being outside, aren't there?

BC: Yep, that's exactly... As of a few months ago, they began enforcing it in February. So there's no sleeping, there's no sitting, there's no standing on public sidewalks in the Corridor of Hope, where the majority of the homeless people are. So there’s just no way for them to do any kind of social distancing because they are corralled all into this one area.

CO: Where apparently you can sleep in a parking lot.

BC: Yeah, yeah, that's okay. Right next to the street [slight chuckle].

CO: Brittany, I appreciate speaking with you. Thank you.

BC: Yeah, of course. Appreciate you. Thanks.

CO:Bye.

CH: Brittany Corder is the Director of Care Complex, a nonprofit that supports homeless communities. We reached her in Las Vegas.

[Music: Ambient]

Part three: Encore: Brian Jungen

Encord: Brian Jungen

CH: At first, it looks like a spectacular blue whale skeleton. Then slowly, it comes into focus, and you realize that what you're looking at is a bunch of white lawn chairs from Canadian Tire. Brian Jungen, the Indigenous artist from B.C., uses ordinary things to create extraordinary work. Like when he bought Air Jordans in bulk, sliced them up and turned them into visual plays on Indigenous masks. Or turned golf bags into totem poles. This past summer, all those creations were showcased at the Art Gallery of Ontario's celebration of 20 years of Brian Jungen’s work. Mr. Jungen joined Carroll in the studio at the time. Here's an encore presentation of that feature interview.

[sc]

CO: Brian first of all welcome to the As It Happens studio.

BRIAN JUNGEN: I'm happy to be here.

CO: We have tried to describe your sculpture "Cetology" -- this blue whale skeleton made out of lawn chairs, plastic lawn chairs, and I don't think we have done justice to it. But just for yourself -- when you are seeing people and people walk into the room in the gallery and they see that massive thing and it takes your breath away to see it. Have you watched people do that and seen the reaction?

BRIAN JUNGEN: Well not much. I mean I tend to -- once I'm finished making art work -- I tend to just launch it in the world and let it have its own life. But when I was making them I definitely saw that experience and I was very interested in that shift that people would have when they would see the form first and then what it was made out of -- it kind of breaks people's familiarity with the material world around them. I mean I think I saw the possibility in those chairs because I kept seeing them on the street broken. And you can't fix them once they are broken so they become this like disposable thing -- that is real tragedy. But anyways, I was curious about what I could do with that form because I saw them as being kind of liberated once they were broken and they had a completely new possibility.

CO: How did you decide that they could be refashioned into a whale skeleton?

BRIAN JUNGEN: I think I was actually down at the Vancouver Aquarium. This was like 20 years or so ago. And I stumbled upon exhibit on the history of the whaling industry in the West Coast, and how whale oil was once used to light the streets of the cities in Canada. And that had been replaced by petroleum. And I think that was the kind of spark for what I wanted to do with those chairs. So I decided to try to make something organic -- something skeleton like. And I've always been kind of fascinated by how people have kind of like preset or predetermined ideas of what they will see in a museum. Like I had seen whale skeletons in museums of natural history. So I wanted to just kind of take advantage that people might have that same memory of what that object is. I also like that I could just make those whale skeletons anywhere. I've made three of them and I just kind of show up at a museum and just go to big box store and buy a bunch of those chairs and then make another one. So I make kind of three variations with that basic system.

CO: The one recreation out of ordinary objects that I think for people seeing this exhibit that will just really blow their minds is what do you do with Nike Air Jordan running shoes which has such a huge history. When did you first learn about those shoes?

BRIAN JUNGEN: I was a teenager in the 80s and so that hit me kind of perfectly. I was probably about 15. I saw the ads for them on TV and there wasn't much basketball on television back then...

CO: But there was Michael Jordan.

BRIAN JUNGEN: There was Michael Jordan for sure and his accomplishments. And I remember there was one kid in my school who had them and he was like a rock star just because he was wearing these shoes, right. So it had this incredible appeal to like all kids. And I never actually owned any until I was probably in my 20s. But later -- around the late 90s -- I was in New York City and I stumbled into a Nike town store and that's where I first saw how they were displaying their prototypes of their sneakers in a museum like display cases. And that was the start of that project.

CO: Do you want to describe for people what you do with Nike Air Jordan’s? It might make them a bit nervous and uncomfortable after all the things they probably went through in order to own one pair. But what do you do with them? [Laughter]

BRIAN JUNGEN: I started to use them as material for sculpture. And I started making masks that resembled a lot of First Nations art from the West Coast. But initially I just really wanted to take them apart and take photographs of them so the art would actually be a photograph. But I decided to put more effort into it and start to kind of stitch them back together to look like they were actually made by the Nike company so they would look like they had been mass produced. But yeah so I took them apart very meticulously at first and then re-organized them and then sewed them back together. Like back in the 90s their design really lent itself to a lot of like very familiar West Coast motifs -- curves and stuff. So I actually didn't have to change them that much. I wanted I guess people to see these things as something that there is a connection between ceremony and sports and ceremony in much smaller kind of Indigenous communities and how they both fulfill this kind of basic human desire for ritual and ceremony.

CO: Well I understand that Footlocker staff are accustomed to you coming in and buying a dozen or two pairs at a time for your art, right? They know you well.

BRIAN JUNGEN: Yeah. The funny thing is because the Air Jordan trainers have their own like trade almost -- like there are collectors who just collect those sneakers in particular and sit on them and then resell them. So they didn't really ask any question [laughter].

CO: What would they have thought if they'd known you were taking them home to cut them up into pieces?

BRIAN JUNGEN: When I first started buying them on like a mass scale like in 1999 that was still kind of unusual. Like they'd always ask if I had a basketball team. And it was just easier to say yes than try to explain what I was planning on doing with them. They may not have sold them to me if I told them I was going to cut them off [laughter].

CO: But even for you what was it like to take a pair of scissors to those shoes that were like gold -- they were just objects of desire throughout your high school years?

BRIAN JUNGEN: I kind of got a bit of an illicit thrill out of cutting them up. They're brand new. And at first I cut them up or I took them apart very carefully. And then I got more comfortable with it and I started using all sorts of different tools. And it's funny because now I'm very good at it and there's very similar motions that I use with a knife cutting up an Air Jordan that is very similar to like getting a salmon or skinning a moose. So there are skills that are kind of translatable. [Laughs]

CO: It's interesting because when you go back to that Nike store display that almost looks like a museum and when you talk about Indigenous art in museums -- they're fetishized, aren't they? I mean people collect them like fetishes. And Nike Jordan’s are like fetishes as well. There is a connection there between how things get displayed from the Indigenous world and from this commercial world.

BRIAN JUNGEN: Yeah I mean going back to that time I was in New York and was at the Nike store -- I had actually that same day been at the Museum of Natural History and I saw a lot of -- not only northwest coast -- but a lot of Indigenous artwork that's kind of still in the realm of the Science Museum. And that was kind of upsetting to me. And so seeing how kind of those objects became fetishized and held up as specimens of nature rather than being put in an art museum that got me thinking about how other objects are treated in a very different way like putting sneakers behind glass and stuff.

CO: I'm speaking with Brian Jungen, the artist behind a new exhibit opening Thursday at the Art Gallery of Ontario which showcases 20 years of his remarkable work. And Brian, I want to take people into the gallery at this point because you've done something that -- well maybe this week wouldn't seem so surprising in Toronto but you've made a recreation of basically a high school gymnasium. You want to describe what you did and why you did that.

BRIAN JUNGEN: Yeah. So I've been working with AGO for over a year on this exhibition and I guess about a year ago I had a chance to visit the galleries while they were between exhibitions and they were completely empty. And the curator and I -- I remarked to her how it felt like a gymnasium in there -- also just architecturally: the ceiling, and a lot of the lights looked (and) felt like a gym. And I decided that it might be an interesting context to show the Nike trainers work. Now I got to thinking about my history and I guess maybe a collective history of people with high school gyms. It could be a sight of you know incredible pain for people who you know weren't involved or interested in sports. But it's also a place for a lot of First Nations people that is a site of like ceremony especially for gatherings and dancing. And I wanted to try to explore that territory. And one important memory I had was spending time at the Vancouver Friendship Centre on East Hastings. I use to have a studio that was right behind it and I saw all sorts of different activities in that gymnasium including basketball games. And I wanted to make the creative space in a museum that seemed a bit more kind of welcoming -- a place that possibly like a lot of youth could identify with.

CO: Well especially this week. And we should point out that it's just a coincidence that you happened to have opened an exhibit that recreates in part what looks like a high school basketball court in a week where basketball fever has taken over this entire nation. So this is just a coincidence, right?

BRIAN JUNGEN: No -- I actually worked really hard to plan all that. [Laughter]

CO: You were the one behind the Raptors' success. Now it's clear to me! [Laughter]

BRIAN JUNGEN: Yeah I was watching the series for a bit with Milwaukee and then when the Raptors made it to the finals I was like -- I couldn't believe it. Then I looked at the game schedule and if they did go to Game 7, it would've been on Monday -- like the two days before the opening of my show. So I really was hoping that they would win. [Laughter]

CO: Well people would have connected with basketball anyway but in a huge way because of that. There's another part -- recycled object -- that you use that is really fascinating and you use golf bags. All these golf bags redesigned into what appear to be totem poles.

BRIAN JUNGEN: Yeah I mean I made that for a specific exhibition in Vancouver years ago. I made a series of them. But I was very struck by the design of these golf bags. Like when I go into a store typically like a sports store, Canadian Tire -- I don't really look at objects maybe the same way most people do. I look at them how...

CO: Clearly. [Laughs]

BRIAN JUNGEN: ...how they might come apart. The golf bags -- I didn't actually have to do much to them. I really just doubled them up and put them over a tube. But again there's something that speaks to the iconography of Indigenous art that everybody knows what a totem pole is.

CO: But again so much like your other work where these kinds of layers of irony and humor that are there and history and what it is rooted in. You know it seems that it connects to the fact that there's golf courses on Indigenous land all over the place. And having followed the Oka Crisis closely this is something you put into the exhibit too -- this connection with how golf courses have used Indigenous property.

BRIAN JUNGEN: Yeah especially in and around urban centres in Canada -- and that's something I first noticed in Vancouver is the kind of disparities between the community whose reserve that it belongs to and then the leased out golf courses and completely different types of land use -- but they are often just right across the street from each other. So I was fascinated by that. And then of course the Oka Crisis in 1990 -- those of us who can remember that remember that it started from an expansion of a golf course dispute.

CO: I have Brian Jungen in the studio here. He is the artist behind this extraordinary new exhibit opening Thursday at the Art Gallery of Ontario. And I want to talk about where your inspiration comes from and to go back to a story -- tell if this is true that you bought the entire stock of Lego at your local Hudson's Bay department store. Is this true?

BRIAN JUNGEN: [Laughs] Well I'm not sure the entire stock but quite a bit of it.

CO: Enough to fill a freezer I understand!

BRIAN JUNGEN: Yeah well my parents lived on my grandparents' cattle ranch. And so when I was a little boy, my dad was trying to get us kids involved in agriculture and I had a young foal and I also had some calves when I was quite young and so I had to take care of them. And then when opportunity came that we could auction off livestock when we would be taking cattle to the auction, my dad gave me the choice if I could keep them or auction them off. So I went to the auction and was a part of it. And it was my first time earning money and I was so excited. Well my dad needed -- we needed -- a new freezer so he bought a freezer at the Bay and I bought all the Lego in stock. [Laughter] And when we got home he kind of just dumped it all into the freezer box and then lifted me into the box.

CO: Wonderful. Wonderful. And did you love working with Lego?

BRIAN JUNGEN: Oh yeah. I was very imaginative in my own world. I was like constantly creating stuff. And when I discovered Lego I was like silent for months just playing with it.

CO: Your art obviously connect so completely with your Indigenous culture, your awareness of that. But there was a large stretch of your life where you were being raised by your father's family who were non-Indigenous. How did you come to be being raised by your aunt and her family?

BRIAN JUNGEN: Yeah my folks died in a fire and our place burnt down when I was about 7. So then I went to live with my dad's family. My dad came from Switzerland when he was a kid. And so I went to live with my immigrant family and I spent like 10 years living with them.

CO: I asked you that very coldly and I apologize for how I phrased that. And you answered it so matter of fact-ly. I'm aware that this period must have been quite painful.

BRIAN JUNGEN: I went through a lot of anguish then. And that's something that took me quite a while to get over. And I think a large part of my kind of self-therapy was art and creating my own world -- and I became very good at drawing and painting. And then after I graduated from high school, I went to art school in Vancouver at Emily Carr. And I started to get back in touch with my mom's family. And I think that time of like being in art school and in Vancouver was really very hard for me because I grew up in northern B.C. so I got a lot of kind of support from my Indigenous family and my community up there and that was very important to me.

CO: What was that like when you reconnected with that? Because often when people are away from something and they come to it they see it with fresh eyes, they see it with a way that maybe you wouldn't had you stayed in your mother's community.

BRIAN JUNGEN: Yeah I mean I think I really learned a lot about -- my experience is kind of shared by a lot of Indigenous people whether their separation from their community is within the family like my experience or it was like legislated. And so there's a big shared history of loss in First Nations communities and I think some of my work started to touch on that. There was a lot of unanswered questions I had as a teenager so it was very it was a tough time for me for sure.

CO: You have in the exhibit -- you have this lovely quiet film (of) you and your uncle moose hunting in northern B.C. And you spoke earlier about how it's often when you're carving up a Nike running shoe it's kind of like filleting a fish. How do you put these two worlds together? This rarefied world of art. You know what it's like -- it can be quite pretentious, quite elite. And then you have this other world where you're in the bush, where you are fishing. You must have whiplash most of the time.

BRIAN JUNGEN: [Laughs] Well I don't know. I really need to be in a lot of nature and be in my community in northern B.C. quite often and that's very important to me. And so I do travel quite a bit for more exhibitions not as much as I used to. But I made that film with my friend Duane Linklater. He's from Northern Ontario. And we both enjoy hunting and we do a lot of hunting with our families in the past and we remarked about how the conversation is always about you know typical family stuff. And we wanted to do a hunting project where we talked about contemporary art while we were in like [laughter] There's a lot of quiet time...

CO: That's weird.

BRIAN JUNGEN: Yeah I know. It was weird. But we never really thought of it as being such a big project and we thought it would make a kind of funny video. So we kind of revisited it with actual film camera like a 16 millimetre camera man and we just decided to just let him follow us. And we didn't know if we were going to get a moose or not. But we also didn't know if the film footage would turn out.

CO: It worked.

BRIAN JUNGEN: Yeah it worked pretty good.

CO: But again how politics was an undercurrent but not overstated in any way of politics throughout your work and that this location -- the landscape -- is the proposed Site C Dam -- destined to make a huge impact on that area. What do you want people to take away from that knowledge?

BRIAN JUNGEN: I mean the film is somewhat of a love letter to northeastern B.C. where I grew up. That part of B.C. is actually more like the prairies. It's on the east side of the Rockies, and it has oil and gas. And so it is kind of more aligned geographically and politically maybe with Alberta. A lot of people in B.C. don't realize that. They also don't realize that that's where their electricity comes from with the previous dams on the Peace River. And now more people from the rest of the province are realizing that that energy part of the province is becoming more and more developed and less important in terms of conservation and tradition.

CO: This whole exhibition at the AGO is happening at a time when it seems to me as though there is an awareness in this country, there's a new conversation going on between Indigenous people and the rest of Canada. And it's beyond just with government. It is with all of us. Am I wrong in that -- that it feels from our side, from those who are trying to connect with the story, that there is a new conversation going on?

BRIAN JUNGEN: Oh yeah I definitely think so. I think there's much more of focus and interest in Indigenous communities across the country within mass media. And there's also lots just on the ground locally. Like in my community Doig River First Nation there's an open house of sorts for the school district to come and learn and witness and participate in traditional Dane-Zaa skills and culture. And it's flooded with kids from like non-native kids and they love it. And it's really amazing to see how all these kids are fascinated about how to skin a beaver, and learn that this was how the country was built in a way. The fur trade was like the first kind of resource extraction economy that built Canada, and that there are still people who do this in parts of the country and their technology of trapping beavers helped create the country that they live in now.

CO: It gives me great hope the thought that that is happening with the next generation that they will have a deeper understanding of the land and the people who lived here for generations before colonisation. At the same time though I guess we're seeing that everywhere I go now there is recognition, acknowledgement, of whose land we're on at the beginning of events. There are books. There are movies. There is art. But where is that line going to reach? We just saw with the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls report when they used the word "genocide" and the nation went [Makes gasp sound] 'What? No. No. You can't cross that line.' Do you feel we get to this place where 'yeah we understand, but we're not going to go that far?'

BRIAN JUNGEN: Well yeah I mean I think when you start to use that kind of language it takes in a direction where people will argue whether just ignoring a segment of the population or turning your back on them is the same as some sort of legislated extermination. So I think there is definitely a separation there but it's definitely a tactic that people may use to get people's attention. And I think the tactics that some people have to use to get people to realize that things like the missing and murdered women, has been ignored for so long and that the treatment of First Nations women and health and their health has been something that has been a big failure to Canada.

CO: Do you think it's a tactic that will work?

BRIAN JUNGEN: I don't know. Sometimes it's dismaying to see how people have such short attention spans now with media and with how things like social media have taken over opinion making and like storytelling and truth telling. And I learned a long time ago that I can't control what the media says about my artwork and I'm not going to try and like steer a specific interpretation -- I'm kind of open to all sorts of things.

CO: What do you want people to take away from this exhibition?

BRIAN JUNGEN: I mean I think it would be great if people found that like going into a museum -- as an art museum -- it shouldn't be about not knowing how to behave or not knowing what to say or see -- but that they can ask questions, they can look at artwork and interpret it in all sorts of different ways. And that Indigenous art can be a lot of different things that they might not think of.

CO: But what will they learn do you think?

BRIAN JUNGEN: That the world around them that anything can be art.

CO: The ugliest things can be beautiful?

BRIAN JUNGEN: [Laughs] Yeah.

CO: Brian it's really lovely to speak with you. Thank you.

BRIAN JUNGEN: Thank you.

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April 03, 2020 Episode transcript

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