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The Current Transcript for April 21, 2020

Host: Matt Galloway

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

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SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: What happened here in our province is not who we are. We are strong. We are community minded and we take care of each other. So let's do that now. Let's do that together.

MATT GALLOWAY: The Nova Scotia premier is as heartbroken and bewildered as all of us by the mass shooting in his province this weekend. We'll speak with Stephen McNeil, and remember the victims from a beloved teacher to a retired firefighter to a family who are making the most of this pandemic quarantine by posting videos of kitchen parties and their time together. That's just a moment. Also this morning, health writer Andre Picard on the challenge of mourning in an era of physical distancing. And later.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: I'm falling through the cracks on all of these programs and I know I'm not the only one like that. I know that there's many other Canadians in my shoes who feel overlooked.

MG: Who is not being helped by the financial aid offered during this pandemic? The stories of those falling through the cracks. And if French economist, Thomas Piketty has his way, we'll come out of this crisis with a better sense of how to close the gap between the haves and have nots in our society. His prescription later this morning. Plus, nature writer Richard Louv on what this quiet moment means for the wildlife in our midst and our appreciation of the natural world. We begin though in Nova Scotia and the stories of lives lost. Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway and this is an extended edition of The Current.

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Teacher killed in N.S. shooting appreciated the 'wonder of life'

Guests: Jenny Kierstead, Stephen McNeil

MG: Like so many of us, Lisa McCully was just trying to make the best of self-isolation during this pandemic, recording a little song with her two kids a few weeks ago and posting it up on Facebook.

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VOICE: Here's a little goodnight song to all our friends and family. We miss you. From McCully's.

[Singing in harmony]

MG: Recorded a couple of weeks ago with her two kids and posted up on Facebook. On Sunday when a gunman tore through rural Nova Scotia, killing at least 19 people, Lisa McCully was among them, a mother and an elementary school teacher in Debert, Nova Scotia. She was well-loved by family, friends and those who knew her. Her sister, Jenny Kierstead, joins us now from Halifax. Jenny, good morning.

JENNY KIERSTEAD: Good morning.

MG: I'm so sorry for everything that's happened in the last couple of days.

JENNY KIERSTEAD: Thank you.

MG: What is it like hearing, hearing that, hearing your sister singing with her kids? It's a beautiful moment.

JENNY KIERSTEAD: It is. And we shared that moment with her and we shared moments with her right up until her life was taken. I have text messages from a few minutes before it happened. And when she didn't respond, she's highly communicative, I knew something was off. So, yeah, it's a pretty raw time. The shock is starting to wear off. So I apologized for the quiver in my voice. Yeah, we're all pretty, we're all hurting.

MG: Can you tell me a little bit about Lisa? Who was she? We got a little glimpse of her there on the ukulele with her kids. But who is she?

JENNY KIERSTEAD: That is such a perfect snapshot of who she was. She was the life of the party. You wanted her at your party because she was just so much fun. She had a crazy sense of humour and just brought so much levity to every situation. And she. She was so musical and gifted. And, you know, we always joke. She loved Jim Cuddy and she was a regular Jim Cuddy. She'd have an egg on her foot, taped around her shoe, a rhythmic egg. And then she'd play the guitar and she'd play the harmonica and sing all at the same time. She was just an outstanding person.

MG: Where did that come from, do you think? That sense of joy and that sense of of of life in her.

JENNY KIERSTEAD: We were brought up to really appreciate the wonder of life and it was just, it was a part of who she was. And that's what's being seen in social media posts at, the communication that we're receiving from people is she's such a loss because she was such a light.

MG: She brought that to the classroom as well. And you're hearing from the parents of students, from students, from people who knew her in that classroom. The head of the Nova Scotia Teachers Union put out a statement saying she was somebody who taught from the heart. She taught her kids not just the curriculum, but teaching about virtues and personal qualities. Tell me a little bit about that approach to teaching and what she wanted to bring. Teaching in Grade 3 and 4, that's such an important time in kids lives.

JENNY KIERSTEAD: It really is and you know, we grew up with a mother who was a United Church minister and so she brought that that sense of spiritual connection and love for children into her classroom. And yeah, she taught things like gratitude and kindness and compassion and respect that spans beyond any academic work that the children did. So I think that's why they're grieving so much because she connected at such a heart level.

MG: What does it mean for you to hear from people who who knew her as well, who, as I mentioned, the students and the families of those students and people who might have just had a casual encounter with her in the classroom or in her life that are now speaking about her and talking about who she was in the midst of this unimaginable moment. What does that do for you?

JENNY KIERSTEAD: I just keep thinking about what she would want and this is why I'm speaking to you. She would want to be remembered in the highest way and people are doing that and sharing that. And it's it's so heartwarming because she was all of that and more and we have received such an outpouring of support and people reminiscing. And I just think that we need to take her light and carry it into our own lives.

MG: You were texting with her that evening.

JENNY KIERSTEAD: I was.

MG: Can you tell me a little bit about the communications that you've had, not even that, but just the way that in this weird pandemic time people are being kind of drawn together through technology and that's often how we're ending up talking to each other. How often were you in contact with her?

JENNY KIERSTEAD: Oh, daily, multiple times a day. She'd send photos through their lifes in that sleepy little spot by the ocean. Yeah. They were just enjoying the quiet life.

MG: What do you know about how she reacted when she heard that something was happening in her neighbourhood?

JENNY KIERSTEAD: Well, I think it speaks to her just, she was always a natural leader and so willing to step in to help and so she put her kids in the basement and then went up to see if she could help her neighbours because their house was on fire. And I don't know if things would have been different, but it it speaks to her personality to step in and risk.

MG: How are you coping with this? You've been through loss in the last couple of years. Your brother died a couple of years ago.

JENNY KIERSTEAD: Yes. Yeah we were just coming through the hurt and the pain of that because he he died very quickly within a few months and he was young as well, 48 at the time. Lisa was 48, 49. So yeah, the family has been has been through a lot.

MG: What are you drawing on for strength in this?

JENNY KIERSTEAD: My immediate family is wonderful. And, you know, Lisa introduced me, we lived in Vancouver for years and she introduced me to the practise of yoga. And I loved it so much. It was such a healing practice for me that I made it my life. So I'm in the business of yoga and mindfulness and really tapping into those tools. And unfortunately, I'm feeling grateful that I know as much as I do about traumatic experiences and how to how to shepherd the children through this time.

MG: When you think of her in this really difficult moment, and again, I'm so appreciative that you would come and talk to us about who she was. It's important to hear her story and to remember who she was and what she brought. What's a moment that gives you a smile when you think of her?

JENNY KIERSTEAD: I think just the pure joy that she would have around children, children were her life, and every morning I wake up and I just wish it was a bad dream, but it's not. And this morning, I thought she would give the message to all Canadians to take care of the children. All children know their hands need to be held right now. Their faces need to be stroked. They need to be affirmed that they are safe right now and I think that would be her main message right now.

MG: I'm so sorry for what your family has gone through and again, the strength that you've had to come on and talk to her speaks a lot about the relationship that you had with her and how much she meant to you. Jenny, thanks again.

JENNY KIERSTEAD: Thank you.

MG: Take care yourself.

JENNY KIERSTEAD: Bye.

MG: Jenny Keirstead is the sister of Lisa McCully. Lisa McCully was killed near her home in Portapique, Nova Scotia.

[sc].

[Sound of church bells]

MG: That's Farewell to Nova Scotia being played on church bells in Banff, honouring those who died this past weekend, part of an outpouring of grief and solidarity across this country. Stephen McNeil is the premier of Nova Scotia and he joins us now. Premier, good morning.

STEPHEN MCNEIL: Good morning.

MG: How are you processing what you're your province has been through?

STEPHEN MCNEIL: Well, there is really no way to process this, really. I mean, we're kind of all in shock. You don't expect this to happen anywhere in Canada, let alone their small rural part of Nova Scotia, where, you know, people for generationally have with their they've known each other. They know each other. They share with each other. They're in each other's lives. And have this kind of awe thrust upon them is really unthinkable. But, you know, we we as a province will find our way to heal and find a way to try to support those families as they continue to deal with what is unthinkable.

MG: And hearing from from Jenny Kierstead there. It's just a real sense of who was lost and who and what those people meant to to the community that they lived in. What is the message that you would give to people who are grieving at a time where they can't grieve together, where they can't mourn together because of the restrictions that are put in place, not just in Nova Scotia, but right across this country?

STEPHEN MCNEIL: Well, Jenny's talk about her sister, Lisa, demonstrates the width and breadth of this tragedy. It is a deep, deep loss to the individual families. And to have the, you know, lose a loved one in such a violent public way is unimaginable. And then when you look at the depth of their involvement in communities, you know, for Lisa and all of those kids, she would have talked. Families are trying to describe and trying to articulate to young people what this is about. And in the midst of all of this, we can not let the anger that will come overtake the generosity of spirit of the people we've lost. They, as Jenny described, the her system was loving and caring for a wife, wanted children to understand they weren't alone, that no matter what may be happening in the world or in our communities, that we will actually hold their hands. And I think that was a beautiful message that she shared with Canadians.

MG: How did you first learn of what was happening?

STEPHEN MCNEIL: When I got up on Sunday morning, I heard there was a incident happening in the county, required, there were shootings happening. Law enforcement were on site. And then it started to unfold during the day. Our attorney general, the Justice Minister would have been involved a little bit earlier.

MG: There were questions as to why an emergency alert wasn't sent out at any point. The Nova Scotia RCMP were tweeting on Saturday night that they'd responded to a firearms complaint, in Portapique and then by eight o'clock the next morning, this had turned, as you mentioned, into this active shooter situation. Why wasn't, you know, some sort of Amber Alert, mass emergency alert sent out at any point during this?

STEPHEN MCNEIL: Well, in for EMO to send an alert, they need to be notified and asked to do so by the agency in charge in this case would be the RCMP. That did not happen. We had our EMO office open for COVID and people were in able to do and for whatever reason, that request didn't come. And that is something in the days ahead that we will have to find out, hear about. I know we've done an internal review to identify was there anything on our end? And we didn't see that. But, you know, in the midst of all of this, you know, I wasn't on the ground with the activity that would have been happening. And I you know, I think it's period of time as we let the agency charge to to define or describe the process that happened.

MG: I guess the last question on this is, is just about the use of Twitter. Twitter was used to communicate this threat. Given the fact that this is a rural community, there are questions around connectivity. There are a number of seniors in an upper view who just may not use Twitter at all. Do you think that it's reasonable to use that as as the means of communicating a threat as severe as the one that unfolded on Saturday night into Sunday?

STEPHEN MCNEIL: Well, we've been using the EMO agency to send out COVID alerts, asking people to stay home through the order came through Public Health and we've been using it. But, you know, RCMP will determine why they chose the vehicle they did communicate to to Nova Scotians and there will be lots to this. It's been a heartbreaking tragedy for the community and right now, as we go through, as they go through the investigation to try to put some closure to Nova Scotians, those families in that community give them some sense of how it unfolded.

MG: The shooter was dressed as an RCMP officer and was apparently driving would look like an RCMP vehicle. What questions do you have about motivation, but also about those two elements of this story?

STEPHEN MCNEIL: Well, you know, it's the frightening aspect of this. Again first of all, I think many of us, if you saw the pictures that were put up, it looked very much like an RCMP vehicle. I didn't see the uniform, but the vehicle certainly looked very much like any vehicle in any town across Canada. The frightening part of it is we all would pull over. It's just what happens. The lights come on behind us and you have no reason to suspect it wasn't a member of the force pull you over. I think there'll be lots of questions of how is it possible that the vehicle can be mocked up to that level and how it is that a uniform, if not being an authentic one, can be made to look enough to convince, to even law enforcement themselves that potentially that was one of their own.

MG: Do you worry that that will affect trust me, because this is in some ways an issue of trust. To your point, if you see that vehicle, you get a knock on the door and it looks like somebody is an RCMP officer. You're going to open the door, you're going to pull your car over. Do you worry about the impact on trust because of something like this?

STEPHEN MCNEIL: Oh, there will certainly be. There's no question. I can tell you, in this province and in part of the province, there will always be a reservation for long periods of time. But I would strongly say this to families and the communities, we cannot let one individual determine our future. We cannot allow the trust of important institutions to be torn down by a sick individual. And it is something that we as a province and I would say Canada will have to fight hard to do. We can't be defined by this. I think the pain, the suffering, the agony will be a huge part of what shapes the province and those communities, but it also needs to be put in the midst of how Jenny described Lisa. Caring, loving, supportive, ensuring that her light is the dominant light that shines through all of this and the light of all of the victims are the ones that dominate what we do going forward. Not the one sick individual who violently went on a rampage. We need to make sure that the love and kindness and joy that's been described about many of our victims is what leads us through this.

MG: There have been some great scenes already of people pulling together, not just in your province, right across the country. And that, I'm sure, will continue in days and weeks ahead. In the meantime, Premier McNeil. Thank you.

STEPHEN MCNEIL: Thank you. And I would say this, those signs of acts of kindness and love across the country mean a lot, not only to this province, but to families that are grieving. It's absolutely critical that they know they are not alone. Not only Nova Scotians are with them, that indeed the entire country. So thank you very much for continuing to show what special people we lost on the weekend.

MG: Thanks for your time this morning. I appreciate it.

STEPHEN MCNEIL: Bye bye.

MG: Stephen McNeil is the premier of Nova Scotia. We reached him this morning in Halifax.

STEPHEN MCNEIL: The CBC News is next and then we're getting back to Nova Scotia with someone who lost a friend in that shooting. My name is Matt Galloway. This is The Current on CBC Radio One. Stay with us.

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Nova Scotia shooting victim known as selfless friend

Guests: Joe MacLean, Heather Matthews

MG: Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway and you're listening to The Current.

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MG: Still to come, the dilemma of physical distancing during a national tragedy. But first, the anger and the anguish over lives lost.

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VOICE: Okay, so your contribution to the COVID Kitchen Party.

[Sound of violin playing]

MG: This is 17-year-old Emily Tuck with encouragement from her dad back on March 26. With long, dark hair and glasses, she stands tall, playing her fiddle, part of a virtual Nova Scotian kitchen party. On Friday, Emily, her mother and father were all killed by the gunman, terrorizing the people of rural Nova Scotia. They were at their home in Portapique, Nova Scotia.

SOUNDCLIP

[Sound of violin]

VOICE: There's some fiddle for ya.

MG: The rampage came to an end outside a gas station just about an hour south in Enfield. Joe MacLean lives just down the road from that station. He lost his good friend Tom Bagley in the shootings. And we've reached Joe in Enfield, Nova Scotia. Joe, good morning.

JOE MACLEAN: Good morning.

MG: I'm sorry for your loss.

JOE MACLEAN: Thank you.

MG: How are you holding up?

JOE MACLEAN: Well, I'm thinking about his wife and his daughter a lot. I haven't talked to them since this happened. Tom and I were very, very good friends for a lot of years. And today's his birthday anyway. He would have been 71 and I was 67 on Sunday. So, yeah, I didn't realise the impact last and I'm feeling so I can only imagine what his wife and daughter must be feeling.

MG: What do you know about what happened to Tom?

JOE MACLEAN: Well, we were in the fire service for I don't know. He had near 40 years, I think, but we worked around 30 years together. And, you know, firefighting was his passion. He was a volunteer. He worked in the Navy, was a firefighter on this on the ships. He was a volunteer firefighter. He joined the airport fire department. He you know, he was out for a walk, apparently, and seen the smoke. And he probably would have seen the smoke and fire and went down to try to help. And he wasn't expecting that. He didn't deserve that. That's that man was anyways. I'm just guessing here. But, you know, make it known, Tom, the way I knew him and the way we all knew him. He was a rock solid guy and all out to help. And here you go. He gets that. That's not fair, but he's not here.

MG: You wouldn't be surprised though, that he'd go down and try and do whatever he could to help out.

JOE MACLEAN: Oh, my gosh. That would be, he wouldn't even hesitate. No. You know what to say about first in, last out. Well, Bagley was first in and definitely last out if he could help anybody. You know, he was. That's what's hard about it see that him to go like that, you know. I can see him falling out of a boat fishing or something like that. But not that way. Not some coward doing that to him. That was not, that wasn't right.

MG: You knew him for what you said 30 years or so?

JOE MACLEAN: I met him in 1976 when I moved here to Halifax. I transferred here in the airport fire department and he was on shift. He invited me to come to his place and get to be pretty close. I was kind of a transient. My folks lived down towards Antigonish. So when I was working, I stayed with him and his wife. So, yeah, we were pretty close. I won't go into details about all of our shenanigans, but, yeah, we were pretty tight. Like I said I'm surprised his wife didn't give me the boot or whatever, but we were good to each other, I think, yeah.

MG: You have a bit of a laugh, though, when you think of the shenanigans, as you say.

JOE MACLEAN: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I have good memories of Tom Bagley. You know, there's him and his wife they treated me like a king. They were great and then their daughter, Charlene, that's she's my goddaughter.

MG: Oh wow.

JOE MACLEAN: You know, he's a hunter and a fisherman, of course. I wasn't. But we did do some little off the job projects. He was never idle. The guy always had a hammer and he was. He was a painter. He was a professional painter. He did it all. He fixed up his own vehicles. He did his own carpenter work. He was still working on it. He always had a little business on the go on the side.

MG: When was the last time that you were in touch?

JOE MACLEAN: Christmas.

MG: Christmas.

JOE MACLEAN: Yeah, he was, well, we were in the Knights of Columbus together here in the church. And, you know, Tom was always up to help whatever needs to be happen. So, you know, Christmas and Easter, we always had ushers and stuff like that. So be guaranteed to call Tom and he'd be there and he was, he was a great guy. Just a super guy. That's the last time I spoke to him. Like I said, normally we would have been between Sunday and now, we would have been chatting on the phone or we'd be get together for a little grog or something, you know. Yeah.

MG: Yeah, it's hard to process, isn't it?

JOE MACLEAN: Hard to process, buddy, hard to process. Yeah. Guy broke his neck years ago. He's come out of that. He wore a halo for quite a while and he recovered out of that. He's you know, he's he's been he's had his challenges. I'll tell you that. Come out of it. Great. And then just it just seems so I don't know if somebody had said Deagan had a stroke or heart attack. Yes. A bugger. He worked so hard. He probably did. And. But no, this this wasn't this was not fair aoubt what happened to me here, I tell you.

MG: How, is there is there one thing that you'll think of to remember him, I mean?

JOE MACLEAN: Oh, God. He was a Harley owners. He was a hog man. I'll tell you, I can remember when he bought his first. When I seen his first bike, when he brought it to the fire hall, I mean, I don't know if he stopped on the road, or he cleaned that thing or what, but it was shining all the time. And that's why I and what I remember about him, yes, he used to come down home with me when I had my days off. We do it now and then see my mother. My mother used to make Solomon Grundy. That's a kind of a pickled herring. Yeah. And, you know, we'd have a few drinks and eat that. And my mother loved him and he loved my mother. And he went and he went to Newfoundland on a Harley group trip. And he drove 40 miles outside of St. John's to visit my mother. Like it was. And there's pictures of that here and he that's something that sticks in my mind lately, because, you know, it's I lost my mother 11 years ago and well, you know, I know he's she's in good company right now with him. I think that they'll be having a little laugh. So, yeah, I don't know, there's a lot of good memories with him, a lot of good memories. And specifically like. Yeah I can't tell you. I can't tell you on the media, some of the stuff, but there's there's good memories in it all right. I mean I thank God every day for the friendship that I did have with him for sure. Yeah.

MG: It's hardly fair.

JOE MACLEAN: No, that's my fear. That's my thoughts of it, anyway. Not fair, no. I mean, look at here. Don't get me wrong, I feel sympathy for all these people. I mean, that guy just he was a bad actor to do what he did there, he took a lot of innocent people, some unsuspecting. It was, no, it's gonna be a while for the healing here in Nova Scotia over this one. This, you know, the police station is just half a kilometre for me here, I swear that female officer was stationed and and then buddy was shot down right at the Big Stop, right down about a mile from here. So yeah. No.

MG: You're a good man for doing this Joe. Appreciate it.

JOE MACLEAN: Hey, buddy, this is, If I can make a tribute to Tom Bagley, I'll do it any day.

MG: I'm sorry for your loss and thanks again.

JOE MACLEAN: Thank you, sir.

MG: Take care of yourself.

JOE MACLEAN: You too, bye.

MG: Thanks. Bye bye. Bye. Joe MacLean is a friend of Tom Bagley. Tom Bagley was killed in his small town of Wentworth, Nova Scotia. We reached Joe in Enfield. When Heather Matthews and her husband went out for their early morning walk on Sunday, they were unaware of any warnings to stay inside that a gunman had been on a shooting spree overnight. Nor did they know that their neighbour, Lillian Hyslop was also out on a walk of her own. They learned later when they heard that she had been shot and killed. And Heather Matthews joins me now from her community of Wentworth, Nova Scotia. Heather, good morning to you.

HEATHER MATTHEWS: Good morning.

MG: You were out, as I mentioned, for a walk on Sunday morning. What happened?

HEATHER MATTHEWS: My husband and I were walking her dog, as we usually do most every day. And sometimes we take the road to get down to the Valley Road where we would go in and walk to an off road from there. This morning he said, I think we'll take the path. We took a footpath that follows the road between the road and the river. And it's not seen by the road. However, we can still hear traffic and that sort of thing. And partway along our walk to the three quarters of the way in the path, we heard this sound and we talked about it. I said, what do you think that sound is? And my husband thought it sounded like a gunshot, but we weren't sure. We didn't hear any other sounds. We didn't hear any of the commotion or anything, we continued on our walk.

MG: What did it sound like to you?

HEATHER MATTHEWS: It sounded like a pop, maybe like a firecracker or something. And it was coming from the direction in front of us and we weren't quite sure where it was or what it was, but we just continued on our walk and about 45 minutes later we returned home to phone calls from our neighbours, telling us to stay inside, lock our doors and stay away from the windows. And so that's what we did. It wasn't until later that we. When talking to the RCMP about what we had heard earlier this morning, he informed us that, you know, you chose the right path instead of walking the road. He said you could have been next. And because it's the person that was shot was just across from the park.

MG: So had you been had you been out on that road not on that hidden footpath?

HEATHER MATTHEWS: We were it was out on the main road where we normally would have walked. But my husband's gut instinct told us to take the path.

MG: When did you start to become worried about your neighbour Lillian's safety?

HEATHER MATTHEWS: It was after my husband had spoke to one of the RCMP that was on the other side of the barricade down the road, just to tell him what we had heard this morning. That morning my husband came back to the car and we put two and two together and I said the only person that could be walking from that direction that I think would be Lillian. There's other people that walk, there's many of us walk, but alone person, one person, she was the first person I thought of.

JOE MACLEAN: It's a terrible realization.

HEATHER MATTHEWS: And it wasn't till later in the afternoon when we got a call saying, yes, it indeed it was Lillian.

MG: Tell me about her, what was she like?

HEATHER MATTHEWS: She was a very nice person, very quiet demeanour, community oriented. She helped out in a lot of functions that took part in around the community. The first time we met her was probably about four or five years ago when she and her husband returned back to Nova Scotia to retire. We were walking in the park one day, and around the corner came Lillian and we fell into step together and started talking and invited her over to the house after our walk, and she came and visited with us. And after about an hour or so, she continued on our way and walked back home. She was a very nice lady.

MG: And she had an overnight lady. She had no connection to this gunman or anything like that?

HEATHER MATTHEWS: Not that I'm aware of. No, she was just simply walking.

MG: What is that like to process and to understand that, to your point, she was just out walking and just happened to be?

HEATHER MATTHEWS: It's so surreal. It just it doesn't make sense. There's any number of people in my community that could have been a walking at that time of the morning. And there's so many other people that could have been hurt. My concern was that we didn't receive an alert of any type. We've had COVID-19 alerts. We've had Amber Alerts, but there was no alert to warn people that to be careful and I'm sure if there had been an alert, perhapds she wouldn't have been walking.

MG: We were speaking with the premier in the last half hour of the program and he talked about an investigation is under way right now just in terms of trying to figure out why there wasn't an alert and whether the use of Twitter to let people know that something was happening was the right approach. What do you think should have been done?

HEATHER MATTHEWS: Well, not everyone has a Twitter account or Facebook account or even uses an Internet, but everyone is receiving the COVID alerts and we receive Amber Alerts. And there should have been some sort of a warning that would have, you know, more people stay inside.

MG: That you wouldn't have been out for that walk, but Lillian wouldn't have been out for the walk either had there been that that morning.

HEATHER MATTHEWS: Right. And most of our neighbourhood wouldn't have been out for the walk.

JOE MACLEAN: Because it's a Sunday morning and it's spring and the snow is melting and you want to get out.

HEATHER MATTHEWS: And you want to get out and it was a nice day. It was a good day for a walk. But I wouldn't have gone had I been warned. It wasn't until we returned home about 45 minutes later, 50 minutes later, that we received a call from a neighbour friend to warn us to stay indoors. And then we heard sirens. And we realised that the sirens were not continuing on, that they were stopping down the road.

MG: How does that leave you feeling about your own personal safety? I mean, we live in our communities and our neighbourhoods and they can be in a big city or they can be in a small town or in a rural community. But there are communities and we we have an attachment to them and we feel as though this is our place. How does this leave you feeling?

HEATHER MATTHEWS: Your safety has been shattered, your community has been shattered. Wentworth is a very quiet community, and we've always sort of taken pride in our serenity here in our community. And now you step out and you're you're forcing yourself to step out now to get past this and to continue on. It just doesn't feel the same.

MG: One of the things that the premier raised is that is that issue of trust and not just because this gunman was driving a car that looked like an RCMP car wearing what appeared to be an RCMP uniform, but also to your point that in our communities we have a sense that there is trust that we can rely on each other. What do you think this will do to your community? Do you worry about that?

HEATHER MATTHEWS: I worry about them, but I also know that we are a strong community and we will pull together and COVID-19 or not, we will be able to get through this in our own small way and we we will come out the other side.

MG: That's the other piece is, is the COVID-19 element of this, that these aren't normal times, even before this awful tragedy unfolded, that we can't go to the spaces that we would normally go to and be together and gather.

HEATHER MATTHEWS: There's so many people that need hugs right now, but we're not allowed to do that. But just letting them know that we are here, that we will persevere. That's all we can do right now.

MG: What will you do to remember Lillian and the others?

HEATHER MATTHEWS: We will continue to walk. We will think about her often. We actually ran into her. I met up with her the day before that and had a chat. She was on her side of the road and we were on our side of the road.

MG: Doing your social distancing.

HEATHER MATTHEWS: Doing our social distancing and we had a chat. And we ironically, we were talking about how quiet things were in the community since COVID-19 began. the traffic had decreased and just there was a an element of quietness that was sort of pleasing. And we we spoke about that and little did we know that that quietness would be disrupted the next morning with her life gone.

MG: But as you say, I mean, the instinct for some people would be we're not going to go back if you're going to go out and you'll continue to do your walk.

HEATHER MATTHEWS: We are going to continue. We are going to keep going. We're not going to let this hold us back. And Lillian walked every day and we can continue to walk for her.

MG: I'm sorry for what your community and the people that you hold dear in that community have been through, Heather.

HEATHER MATTHEWS: Thank you very much.

MG: I appreciate talking to you. Thank you very much.

HEATHER MATTHEWS: Thank you.

MG: Take care.

HEATHER MATTHEWS: Byebye.

MG: Heather Matthews lives in Wentworth, Nova Scotia. Her neighbour, Lillian Hyslop, was one of the 19 people killed by a gunman over the weekend in Nova Scotia.

[Music]

MG: We've seen over the course of this pandemic in Nova Scotia, those online kitchen parties, people gathering virtually to come together in the space that they're in, but share music through the Internet. Joel Plaskett comes from that tradition of the Halifax and Nova Scotia, more broadly, Kitchen Party. He's from Halifax. He's a huge part of musical life in Nova Scotia and right across this country. And he has a brand new, very ambitious album that's out. It comes out at a difficult time, obviously. It's four discs, 44 songs recorded in four different cities with 33 guest musicians and it was released on the last day of his forty fourth year, which was on Saturday. From the album 44, this is Halifax's Joel Plaskett and "Carried Away.".

[Song: "Carried Away" by Joel Plaskett]

MG: Son of Nova Scotia, star of music right across this country and beyond. Joel Plaskett, brand new music called "Carried Away" from his new album, 44. Coming up in about 90 seconds, health reporter Andre Picard will be here. Lots to talk to him about. We'll also head inside one of the first Canadian hospitals hit by COVID-19. The CBC's Wendy Mesley will be here and we'll speak with one of the people on the frontlines in that hospital. She's just off a long shift. What is she seen and what does she see on a daily basis? We'll find out. Coming up. I'm Matt Galloway. This is The Current on CBC Radio One. We'll be right back.

[Music]

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A conversation with Andre Picard

Guests: Andre Picard

MG: Hi, I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current. The province of Ontario got a little bit of good news and some bad news this week. First, the good. The community spread of COVID-19, seems to have peaked, suggesting that physical distancing is actually working. However, infection rates are still going up specifically in long term care homes. And collectively, we still have a ways to go before we are through this mess. Andre Picard is a health columnist for The Globe and Mail, one of Canada's leading public health voices. He has joined us over the course of this pandemic and is back once again. Andre, good morning.

ANDRE PICARD: Good morning.

MG: I want to ask you about Ontario in a moment, but first, we've been talking about obviously what's happening in Nova Scotia and the difficulty of of mourning, something like a mass shooting amidst all of these physical distancing measures. Do you think, given the desire that people have to be together to come together and grieve, that some of those measures should be eased so that people can be with each other?

ANDRE PICARD: I think it's probably too risky. I think they're going to have to limit it to, you know, five at a time is the law in Nova Scotia. So they'll probably be funerals where it's staggered attendance, etc. I think it's the Premier mcNeil said it well. He said COVID-19, is not going to pause because of our pain. And I think that's true. It's a danger when you get together and imagine going to a funeral or in a group like that and not hugging, not reaching out to people, not exchanging fluids, tears, you know, like, etcetera. I think it's just a recipe for disaster unfortunately.

MG: In the wake of the shooting, the prime minister yesterday said that he intends to move forward with legislation aimed at strengthening gun control, including a ban on so-called assault style weapons. You've written about this in many times over the course of your career. Do you see gun control as an urgent public health issue in this country?

ANDRE PICARD: Gun control is definitely a public health issue. It's something, you know, when it occurs, it occurs routinely. Says about 300 gun deaths in Canada. Another 200 suicides, gun related, twatted every day problem. Now, I don't know if there's a direct link to this case. We don't know enough about the guns that gunman was using. Were they legal, et cetera. So I think it's an issue. It's probably not the most pressing issue at this time.

MG: All right. Let's talk about the other pressing issue, and that is the pandemic that we are still in. Yesterday, as I mentioned, a little bit of good news coming out of the province of Ontario about where that province is at in terms of the fight against COVID-19. What did we learn?

ANDRE PICARD: Well, we learned the projections were redone, so, you know, a couple of weeks ago we heard projections, up to 80000 cases in the province. Now the projection is 20000 to about twice as many as Ontario has now. So that's a that's a big difference. It's an indication physical distancing is working. So it's it is good news. And we have similarly good news out of B.C., Alberta, most provinces. Quebec is the only one now that is still in an upward trend, sort of a crisis mode.

MG: And yet there are essentially two stories within the same outbreak in the province. The other issue in Long-Term Care Facilities, Housing Seniors, not only, as you mentioned, in Quebec. Other parts of Canada, but in Ontario. That situation remains dire. Is enough to being done? The premier of Ontario talked about this building, this iron ring around these long term care facilities, but also saying that that this is spreading like wildfire in those facilities. Is enough being done to protect a vulnerable population?

ANDRE PICARD: A lot has been done, but not enough, because there's still shortages of workers. It's really difficult to to get. I think Kobach alone has a shortage of 2000 workers in its homes. So it's a severe chronic problem that existed before and it's been exacerbated by this epidemic. The other part of that is, again, it's always said the numbers we have today are a snapshot of two or three weeks ago. So two or three weeks ago was a disaster in our nursing homes. And I think what that tells us is we're still going to see a lot of deaths the next week or two. I think there'll be a big jump in deaths in our seniors homes when you have homes with 100 people infected. There's going to be high death rates, unfortunately.

MG: When you talk about a lack of staff there in Quebec, the government is asking for medically trained members of the Canadian armed forces to get involved. Is that the right decision?

ANDRE PICARD: That's a good decision. It's a limited number of people that they are specialised. It's also asked for for doctors to volunteer to actually do. Volunteers are coming into homes in Quebec. It's getting so bad. So there there is a lot of hands on deck, but a lot to catch up on.

MG: Where are we at nationally in terms of the the arc of of this epidemic? Are we starting truly to see you use that phrase that people keep using the curve flatten?

ANDRE PICARD: Yeah, we are seeing flattening of the curve pretty well everywhere. And it's you know, it's not one outbreak in candidates, different outbreaks in different provinces. They got started at different times and different for ferocity, if I could put it that way. So they did these basic outbreaks all over and most of them are doing well with the as I said, the exception of Quebec. Now, what we have to remember is flattening of the curve doesn't mean no more cases. What it means is a decrease in the daily increase. So Ontario, where we've been seeing 500 cases a day, if that file falls to 400, that's that's good. That's progress. But it's still 400 cases a day. So it's going to take a lot longer for the curve to go down than it did to go up.

MG: Premiers and health officials, Bonnie Henry among them, are being very cautious in terms of what they say, saying, yes, maybe the curve is flattening. Perhaps we are at a peak, but the stay at home orders, the other physical distancing measures are going to remain in place for several more weeks at best. Do you worry that that could lead to confusion? People get antsy. They hear that the work is paying off and they want to be over and done with this?

ANDRE PICARD: Yeah, I think it's hard to get that balance right. You know, people do want to be rewarded for their sacrifices that they should be. But we have to be careful. If you open up too quickly, then we're just going to get another big wave. There's some really cautious stories emerging from around the world. You know, Singapore this week, Singapore was held up as the model, a country that did everything right, acted early, kept the cases in check, and they loosened up the restrictions. Suddenly they have one of the biggest rise in cases of the world. Their cases doubled in a single week after keeping a lid on it for three months. So there's really some warning signs there that we really have to be careful how we open up.

MG: As people get antsy, they perhaps are floating some of the physical distancing rules in Toronto. They set up the sort of snitch line where you can report on people who perhaps are not playing by the rules. What do you make of that approach?

ANDRE PICARD: Yeah, I'm not a big fan of the snitch lines, but I you know, I think you were never going to police force our way out of an epidemic like this. You have to trust people to to follow the rules. And you have to make the rules clear. That's my biggest issue is it's not really clear. You know I can go in the park, but if I go on the law and I get a fine, I can't play basketball with my friends, but can I shoot hoops alone? Depends where you live. So I think it's just confusion. So I think we serve ourselves much better if our bylaw officers are police were out there saying, you know, doing PR, reminding people that, hey, here's why we have rules rather than giving these these tickets. You know, the last thing you need is when you already don't have a job is it $700 or $1500 fine for wandering on the lawn when you thought it was OK.

MG: You wrote that heavy handed law enforcement is the antithesis of public health. How so?

ANDRE PICARD: Well, public health is all about reducing harm. So what we want to do with this, these measures is reduce harm to people. We don't need a new harm, which is a economic harm. You know, someone who doesn't have money. We see homeless people getting fined $700. That that's not good public health. That's just bad social policy. We should be feeding them and housing them instead of giving them tickets.

MG: Can I just end with what we're going to be doing on Friday? It's only Tuesday already. The news is almost unbearably heavy for a lot of people. And so on Friday, we are going to hear some stories of hope or joy that have somehow surfaced during this really difficult time. And we're asking people, tell us something good, something that has lifted your spirits in the midst of this given story like that. Is there anything that comes to mind to you, something good that has happened, that has given you a bit of light and a bit of lift in a pretty heavy time?

ANDRE PICARD: Oh, I see good news stories every single day. It's not our specialty in the media, but there's a lot of stuff going on out there. People are reaching out to their neighbours that they've never spoken to. All of a sudden they're bringing them groceries, helping out. You know, you see a senior on the street talk to them from six feet away, see how you can help them. There's countless stories of people volunteering to go into to nursing homes, fairly dangerous places by Canadian standards, because they want to help their neighbour or their their friend who can't get there to see their mother says all kinds of really uplifting stories. And I think the biggest uplifting story is Canada's, you know, life is going on despite all these restrictions, despite all these demands, economic horror, more suffering. People are being good and and thoughtful about it. And that's probably the best thing of all this spending.

MG: We could use those good stories and we will share them on Friday. Andre, a pleasure, as always. We'll talk again.

ANDRE PICARD: Thank you.

MG: Andre Picard, the Globe and Mail's health columnist. We'll check in with him next week. And yes, on Friday, stories of good things happening. Tell us something good. If you have something that has given you a bit of a lift, perhaps a bit of brightness in what has been a pretty dark time for a lot of people. Let us know. Go to the website cbc.ca/thecurrent and click on the Contact link.

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A look inside ICU at Markham-Stoufville Hospital

Guests: Wendy Mesley, Kelly Travers

MG: This is The Current on CBC Radio One. My name's Matt Galloway.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: So we need to talk about your husband. Things are, things are still okay, but they're a little bit worse today. And I think it's getting very close to the point remains to put him on a ventilator. And it's not just the oxygen level, it's how hard he's working. He's really struggling to breathe. And I don't think he's going to be able to breathe like that for very long.

MG: That may give you a sense of the kinds of difficult conversations, doctors like Dr. Anand Doobay are having these past few weeks. Dr. Doobay is the chief of medicine at Markham-Stoufville Hospital just outside of Toronto. And he's part of a team of doctors working day in, day out with COVID positive patients. The CBC got a unique inside look into their work, giving cameras to frontline workers who filmed hours of video from inside the ICU over three days last week. The CBC's Wendy Mesley is here to tell us all about what happened. Wendy. Good morning.

WENDY MESLEY: Hey, Matt.

MG: Tell us about Markham-Stoufville Hospital. That was incredible to listen to. I mean, that is unless you are there in that moment, you're not going to hear something like that. What was happening in Markham-Stoufville that led you to to want to get into that hospital?

WENDY MESLEY: Yeah, it's quite amazing. They were one of the earliest hit by community spread York region, an area just outside of Toronto, hit hard, hit early. Hundreds of patients have been diagnosed, have been found to be positive in that hospital or their assessment centres. But they sort of thought like they trained for it. They've done drills. They knew that this was coming and they were pretty proud of the way that they were handling this, even though nine people died, but they now have 60 COVID cases in that hospital. And there's a whole new phase of what's going on because of all the outbreaks nearby in the in the long term care homes, in the shelters and a lot of these people are arriving in critical condition. So, you know, we heard Matt and you guys talk about it a fair bit about this idea of Trea maybe coming that we would end up like Italy, where the doctors would have to decide who's going to get the ventilators, who's going to get into ICU and have to actually make decisions about who would live and who would die and they were at Markham-Stoufville, they were thinking, you know what, we can we can handle this. There's still room in the hospitals downtown. We can send people there if need be, but now with these outbreaks in the Long-Term Care Homes, they're really they're nervous again. It's not a situation that any of them ever really imagine.

MG: You give cameras to the frontline workers and the hospital staff end up giving you back hours and hours of footage from inside the ICU. Why did they want to offer up this look in to the work that they're doing right now?

WENDY MESLEY: Yeah, I mean, it's so rare. I've been trying for weeks to get inside a hospital because they I kept hearing these remarkable stories about what was happening, both terrifying and on inspiring. But because of privacy reasons and because it's so intense, they didn't want to let us in. But then finally, Markham-Stoufville decided, you know what, if people could see what we see here, then maybe they will understand the sacrifices that they're making because they'll see our sacrifices and and also realise that it's not just old and frail people who are dying. There's a 24 year old who is on a ventilator in that hospital right now. There are so many young and so many healthy. And it's just it's horrible. I mean, you heard that clip earlier of Dr. Doobay of calling the wife of a man who thought he was going to die, but it was terrified of having to go on a ventilator because he thought he'd never wake up and he has to persuade the wife. We have got this big decision to make. We're going to talk to your husband. Are you ready? And then it's you know, so they make all these decisions. They act almost like the family for these people, they're there to comfort them. Meanwhile, they're exposing themselves, particularly in an intubation procedure, to the possibility of being splattered by COVID. And so they're all covered up so that they don't infect their own families, which, of course, is in the back of their minds all the time.

MG: Let's have a listen to another doctor. This is an infectious disease doctor in the hospital, Jeya Nadarajah

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VOICE: It also makes me angry. So when we have called patients who have tested positive at our institution so many of the times they're in their cars or the air. It's very obvious they're in a large gathering. Social media shows people are obviously having still large gatherings or even large meaning over five. And I just don't know how to convey this, to be honest to the public. It's something that I think the government's doing a very good job. I think our minister is doing a very good job. I think our local enforcement agencies are doing a very good job. I honestly don't know until they see the sadness that we feel that they may not actually get it.

MG: We were just talking with Andre Picard about people getting antsy as physical distancing measures continue. You hear the frustration in her voice. Is that a sentiment that is being raised a lot by doctors, that sense that people aren't taking this as seriously as they should?

WENDY MESLEY: Yeah. And Jeya, she was probably the most conscious of all the people we spoke to because she's so proud of what they've been able to accomplish. How many lives they can say. But she's she's furious. And we spoke to a number of other doctors and nurses and therapists, repertory therapists there. And they share the same concern. They're just feeling like people don't get it. And the chief of medicine, Dr. Doobay told us that, you know, we were saying, you know, there there is this pressure now that maybe we're getting close to peak. Maybe it's time to start thinking about getting back to normal. Some people are they just want to get their lives back. And he said, you know what? Wouldn't that be great? But it's kind of terrifying. And he said it's an insult to how hard they are working and the risks that they are facing to try to save people. For people to not keep on treating this as seriously as they have. And others said, you know, we see we see basically your parents and your grandparents or versions of them. And so you may be carrying that disease. You need to be careful because we see it. You don't see it. And nobody wants to die this way and nobody wants to be exposed to this. And it's not just it's not just the older people. So it was a sentiment that was shared widely in the hospital that people need to keep keep taking this seriously.

MG: What did you hear from the patients themselves?

WENDY MESLEY: We heard an interview with one fellow. There was actually a wonderful moment you were talking about on Friday, trying to inspire people there. There was a fellow who was a colleague. He was a physician. He didn't get the call of it at the hospital. It was through community transmission. But he was on a ventilator for 17 days and they shared video with us of him being escorted out after he's taken off the ventilator and they all cheer. It's so heartwarming, Matt. But then we spoke to another young fellow who was saying, you know, I'm young, I've got a young son. I've got it. My dad's got it. He's in trouble. But I'm going to be OK because I'm young. And then he gets horribly ill. He starts to deteriorate really quickly. And the doctors tell him that he has to go on a ventilator and he's like, how is this happening to me? And they say it's happening fast because you can't breathe. You've got a few minutes. Do you want to call your family? In other words, this could be the last time you speak to your family. And they one of the doctors held up. He was so weak she had to hold up a phone for him so that he could call his family and say, I'm going under a ventilator. I'm going to be sedated. I don't know when I'll talk to you again. And he can barely talk. And he remembers nothing after that, except for the doctor saying you're gonna be OK. But then we talk to her later and she says, yeah, that's what we say to everybody. But we never know when we go into the intubation for a ventilator to save someone's life. It could end in heart failure. We just we never know. So it's think they really just wanted people to see what it's like, how high the stakes are and how heartbreaking this virus can be.

MG: It is an incredible look at the work that those on the frontlines are doing. Wendy, thank you.

WENDY MESLEY: Thanks, Matt. Yeah, thanks for letting me tell you about it. It was quite something.

MG: It's really something. Wendy Mesley is with the CBC Investigative Unit, host of CBC's The Weekly. If you want to hear more of those voices and see some of the videos recorded for Wendy's go to our website at cbc.ca. Kelly Travers is part of the Critical Care Response Team at Markham-Stoufville Hospital. She's a respiratory therapist. Kelly, good morning to you.

KELLY TRAVERS: Hello. How are you?

MG: I'm okay. How are you? You just got off, what, 12 hours?

KELLY TRAVERS: Yeah, I just finished a night shift. I'm OK.

MG: OK? Tell me what life is like in your hospital these days.

KELLY TRAVERS: Well, we've as they've touched on already, we've been quite busy over the last few weeks and we were definitely hit hard early in our intensive care unit with the number of colvard positive patients we've had, the number we've had to put on life support. So it's been what we were anticipating to an extent and preparing for. But I think we were all hoping it wouldn't actually occur. So it's been very busy.

MG: There is and we heard a little bit about this in the conversation with Wendy, there's a tendency to think that the only patients with serious cases of COVID are seniors. That is not the case, is it?

KELLY TRAVERS: No, it hasn't been our experience. A lot of the patients that we've admitted to our ICU to intubate and put on life support haven't been seniors. There's been many patients in their 40s and 50s, a few that were younger in their 30s that don't have major underlying health issues that were quite healthy prior to getting COVID. And so it's definitely different than what I think the general population is expecting to see in an ICU.

MG: And those decisions need to be made quickly? Again, Wendy was describing somebody who was fine and then suddenly not fine and you hear it. There's a very dramatic conversation that needs to happen. How does that unfold?

KELLY TRAVERS: It's a little bit different with our patients that are covered positive from our general patient population. We are trying to intervene a bit earlier with these patients. So they're usually quite awake and alert patients that we have in our intensive care unit at other times that need to be put on life support aren't usually as young and aware of what's going on. So it is difficult because they are able to make their own decisions and they are actively deciding to be put on life support and attempt to save their own life and allow us to take over some of the work for them. So it is a very difficult thing to be a part of as a health care provider, to see the fear that they have and to feel very responsible for what their outcome is like, because there are no guarantees.

MG: The fear that they have, you can see that.

KELLY TRAVERS: Absolutely. They're very awake and aware and getting things ready for innovation in a patient that's covered positive is somewhat involved. So it takes some time and we need them in the intensive care unit in a particular room with negative pressures. So there is a lot of time spent after they've been moved to prepare the room and all of the equipment we need in the room in order to do it safely. So unfortunately, that means that they have a lot of time to think. And and with no family members being allowed in the hospital at this time, it means that they're alone. So it's quite scary. They've lost all of their support system that they would normally have their people there to reassure them and tell them everything will be OK is missing. So it's hard to watch as a health care provider, as a human being to see how scared they are.

MG: What do you do to reassure them in that moment?

KELLY TRAVERS: Well, we try, you know, you want to tell them everything will be OK. It's it's difficult because you don't want to give false hope either. But definitely, I always encourage them that we have lots of things we can still do to help make them better and that our goal is to get them better and to reassure them that, you know, we're all on the same team. We want to see them improve. And that's the reason we're doing these things. Sometimes I try to kind of distract things and ask them about their family if they're well enough to talk about it just because it gives them a bit of a reprieve from what they're worrying about and makes them think about something else, make it more personal and less impersonal.

MG: Is there I mean and I know you have to be cautious in terms of what you say, but is there a moment in the last few weeks that stands out to you?

KELLY TRAVERS: Definitely the fear that I've seen in more than one patient, I will carry with me and I don't think I'll forget it. But a positive moment that I've had, I've been involved in, when we a patient has improved after they've been on life support for a period of time, we're able to take the breathing tube out and they're usually very have to be very awake for that procedure as well. So I've been involved with a few covered patients that have begun the road to recovery and they're able to come off life support. One in particular that she was very awake and nervous and once the tube was out, she did so well that she was able to leave the ICU within, I think it was within the next day or so and I happened to still be working, which is nice. And I was able to stand and clap and cheer for her as she left. And it was so wonderful to actually see somebody leaving intensive care and looking so much better than they had. And it makes everything worthwhile, all the sacrifices.

MG: What is that moment where you like when you stand and clap as somebody leaves? Because we hear these stories of somebody being intubated and we spoke yesterday on the program with somebody who went through that exhumation process and is now at home recovering. And he talked about the relief that he has. But for you, when you're right there in the moment of it and you're able to stand there with your colleagues and applaud as somebody goes out, what is that like?

KELLY TRAVERS: It's nice. You feel like it's your part of a more personal level of things as opposed to just clinical. To finally be able to show your emotions freely and how happy you are for that person to be doing so well, because I think a lot of the time when you're working in health care and especially with critically ill people, you have to put your emotions to the side because you need to be able to do your job without any clouded judgement. So I feel like that's the moment where, you know, you're not in a critical situation and you can actually show how happy you are and and be more relaxed about things. It's nice to share and especially with your colleagues as well, so they can see how many people were cheering for them all along.

MG: This is, what, week five? Week six? It's hard to keep track now of the physical distancing rules. And people were saying earlier, starting to get a little antsy. They want to know when life is going to return to normal and they might be triying to look for the shortcuts to get back out there and maybe think, well, it's not that big of a deal because we seem to be heading towards the other side of this. Knowing what you know, given what you do, how concerned are you that people aren't taking those rules seriously enough?

KELLY TRAVERS: I'm very concerned that people aren't taking them seriously simply because if people don't, it will potentially lead to situations. We've seen other places where our health care system gets overwhelmed and there'll be an unnecessary deaths as a result of it, because we don't have the resources to manage all of these patients. And that's the whole reason they've put the physical distancing in place. It's frustrating because I think until it touches you personally, you don't always recognize that it is a big risk. It may not be your friend or family member, but it is somebodies and you can't ignore that. And we really all hold a very personal responsibility in keeping not just the very high risk population safe, but everybody's safe, because at the end of the day, if this spreads at a greater rate than we can manage the patients as they're coming into hospital, the outcomes will be poor. And that's everybody's responsibility because we're the only ones that can stop it from getting to that point.

MG: What are you doing, just in the last minute that we have, what are you doing to take care of yourself in this?

KELLY TRAVERS: Well, I definitely am very careful leaving work and entering my home. I have three kids and I'm trying to hopefully prevent, you know, carrying anything home with me that I wouldn't intend to. It's hard because, you know, you come home, you take everything off to go shower so you don't contaminate anyone. So there's a lot of shifts where by the time I get home from work after a twelve hour day, I don't get to see my children at all because they're asleep by the time I've showered and I'm clean enough to actually be around them. So it is difficult. It's different than a normal workday and it's stressful when you don't see your own family or you have to distance yourself from them. So definitely very careful though what I'm bringing in and out of the hospital and what I'm bringing home with me.

MG: You're right there and what you see is the thing that we are the most concerned about escalating. Thank you for the work that you're doing and do you get to go home and have some some sleep now?

KELLY TRAVERS: I'm going to try. I have children at home, so I'm definitely going to try and get some sleep.

MG: And hang out with them as well. Kelly, thanks for the work that you're doing and I appreciate talking to you.

KELLY TRAVERS: Thank you.

MG: Take care yourself. Kelly Travers is a respiratory therapist at Markham-Stoufville Hospital. The CBC News is next in six minutes to speak with the economist Thomas Piketty. He sees this crisis as an opportunity for radical change. He'll talk about spreading the wealth once and for all and how we might because of what we're going through, take meaningful steps to close the gap between have and have not. That's coming up. I Matt Galloway. This is an extended edition of The Current on CBC Radio One. Stay with us.

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Pandemic could prompt swing to nationalist politics, says economist Thomas Piketty

Guests: Thomas Piketty

MG: Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to an extended edition of The Current.

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MG: Still to come, the Grammy nominated singer Jewel. She'll be here to talk about experiencing homelessness and the habits that have helped her heal. But first, confronting inequality during and after this pandemic.

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MG: I think it's fair to say that it's not all that common or common at all for a 750 page book by a French economist to find its way to the top of bestseller lists around the world. But in 2013, "Capital In the 21st Century" was the must-read of the year. That book has now sold more than two and a half million copies. It's helped popularize the idea of the 1 percent. The small group of people who control much of the world's wealth. And it made its author famous, not just with economists, but with general readers. Now, Thomas Piketty is back with a new book that argues that inequality is not an inevitable function of economics or technology, but a result of political choices. "Capital and Ideology," covers a sweep of world history and has profound implications for this moment that we're living through right now. Thomas Piketty joins us. Thomas, good morning.

THOMAS PIKETTY: Hello.

MG: We are in the midst of unprecedented times. We are constantly told this. We're seeing this dramatic and sudden transformation of everything around politics, around economies, around the world because of COVID-19. Everything that we seem to hold dear has been turned upside down and inside out. In watching what we're going through over the last few week, what has surprised you the most?

THOMAS PIKETTY: Well, you know, everything is surprising. You know, I'm in Paris right now. This is my sixth week of lockdown in my apartment in Paris. You know nobody has ever seen that before. So, you know, I think that top priority is really to do everything we can to limit the casualties and, you know, this is already quite a big challenge. What this experience is also showing us, in a sort of very bleak manner, this violence of inequality in a way, because, you know, if you are in a very small apartment with a large family, you know, lockdown doesn't mean at all the same thing that if you are in a large apartment, in a large house. If you don't have any income or any savings or any income support, at some point you need to go out and work. And, you know, I can see, you know, in Paris, in the Paris area, you know people from the most disadvantaged areas will have to go and work whether it's on their bicycles, doing delivery work, very badly paid work, and taking a lot of risk for their health. And at the world level, you know, that's even worse. You know, it's a lockdown in a country like India. In practice, you know, this meant, you know, pushing away from the cities, a large part of the migrants and rural population were working from construction work in the cities and were suddenly pushed away back to the countryside, something with a lot of violence, sometimes with a big mass transportation of people, which which was probably not so good from the point of view of the virus. So what this shows is what we would need today is not so much state, but no social state with no social transfer or the introduction of safety net in countries that do not have yet safety net system. And, you know, even in rich countries like Canada or France, you know, there's a big part of the population that is left out of the safety net system. You know, lots of homeless in the streets of Paris, lots of people with precarious working conditions who don't receive unemployment benefits. You know, even with the extended unemployment benefit system that has been put in place and who have to go out, you know, to get work and to get money and to get food for their family. So, you know, as the violence of inequality that we see in these extreme circumstances is really what I find the most striking.

MG: You start your new book, the opening line of your new book is "Every human society must justify its inequalities unless reasons for them are found, the whole political and social edifice stands in danger of collapse." In this moment, do you think that's what's been exposed? What you're talking about, but also how we value work and suddenly new appreciation for, for example, people who work in grocery stores or nurses who weren't paid more, and that that I'll use your phrase, the violence of inequality has been exposed in some way?

THOMAS PIKETTY: Yes, very much so. And I think, you know, theis kind of crisis, you know, also, of course, we don't know yet and it's a very unique type of crises in many ways. You know, but this of crises, broadly speaking, is exactly what I showed in my book is triggering, you know, major political and ideological change in history. What I show in this book, by the way, I should say, you know, sorry for writing such a long book. But let me tell you, it's very readable. You know it's very readable. It does not require, it's not a book for economists. You know it's a book for anybody interested in human history. And, you know, it's a bit long, it takes a bit of pain. But after all, you know, we have time with the lockdown. And you know I think, you know, it's a sort of broad historical review on how this kind of crises, you know, the a kind of social crises, sometimes financial crises and other type of political shocks, trigger a big change in the ideological system that societies develop to structural their inequality. And this is a book on how different societies in Vienna are trying to learn about justice, about what an equitable economic system looks like. And of course, it's a very complicated question. And so no society will ever have a complete answer to that. And, you know, I certainly don't have to answer to that, but at least we are trying. And of course, we adapt our belief system to what happens or when we have a big shock like this one. And, you know, we see how much we need nurses as doctors, how much we need as a public health system. Well, yes, this is likely to change our belief system. Now, there can be manual's effects as well. You know, I think after these crazies, you know, globalisation, broadly speaking and you know, the world trade and the world. Your from. You know, he's going to be viewed in a way that will be, you know, certainly more negative and more sceptical than before the craziness. So the question would be, you know, in some dimensions, Maybe it's necessary to have less long-distance trade, you know, including in part for the environment or carbon emissions. But we'll have to to learn how to build new international co-operation when necessary. In particular, arguably, if we want to co-ordinate our international taxation's firm regulation of financial. And I think we need to develop new kind of cooperation. That's what in May look a describe and also rehome of social federalism. So the idea that we need transnational treaties that care about sustainable and equitable development and not only about trade and capital flows and unifying stance, you know, I'm definitely know I'm sad that you write up Tales of Paris Agreement of 2015 and company issue. And, you know, we had a trade treaty actually between the European Union and Canada. But Windsor was nothing at all about equitable and sustainable development. So we just continue business as usual. You know, as if, you know, the discussion about carbon emissions, a discussion about inequality was all theoretical and research rhetorical. And when it comes to real treaty, we only care about, you know, business as usual, international trade, capital mobility.

MG: Do you think that the era of business as usual is over now because of what we're going through? That the fact that there is no business and any business that's happening certainly isn't usual?

THOMAS PIKETTY: Well, also, I think people will realize, you know, that it's necessary sometimes to to produce at home a number of goods, particularly in terms of medical supplies. You know, I can tell you that in French industrial right now, there's a lot of angriness about the fact that you don't have the medical supplies, the masks.

MG: Same here in Canada.

THOMAS PIKETTY: As professionals. And so this is something that will have to change. The question is, what would it be? The broader impact on, you know, puts it off thinking about globalisation. And, you know, I think there's a risk that is the big winner in terms of political ideology from this crisis could be the sort of nationalist movement, broadly speaking. You know, I can tell you in France, I can already see, you know, who is going to argue for a complete closing of frontiers, etc, stressing migrants in a very negative manner.

MG: Or Donald Trump saying that he's going to close the United States to immigration? Just announced that last night on Twitter.

THOMAS PIKETTY: Exactly. Now, in the case of Donald Trump, he's been in power for a number of years. So maybe people have already realized that you know, his time has gone. Also, you know, nobody knows. You know, it could be that he's re-elected in France. You know, we're so sad. You know, people have made the experience on which you saw the xenophobic right foot even pull wherever you know, this could run, solve them. And the thing is, this is what's going to happen. But what what they mean is that, you know, the Ideological shifts coming out of a crisis can be, you know, very diverse. You know, some going in the direction of reinforcing the need for public services, but some going in the direction of reinforcing the need for boders, closed borders. And I think there's a real challenge of how we built the new kind of internationalism, because you are an internationalist federalist, you know, in Europe, but also from a world perspective. But we need to put in our international treaties, you know, some very valuable and explicit target about sustainable development, equitable development, which includes, you know, cooperation in terms of pandemics, in terms of earth, of course. But This also includes co-operation in terms of taxation because otherwise how do you fund a public health system? You know, you should You have all of this tax competition across the world, which allows the most prosperous economic actors to basically escape taxation.

MG: What about nationally? What about national programs? We're seeing now in the United States controlled by Republican government or public administration, what is essentially a move towards, at least temporarily, a basic guaranteed basic income. We're seeing this in countries around the world as well. Are those measures that, I mean things that would've been previously unimaginable, are those things that you think might be possible now because of the crisis that we're in to help close that gap, that that sense of inequality that you've written about over the course of your career?

THOMAS PIKETTY: Oh, yes, I think it can. It can move, you know, policy direction and in particular, you know, I very much hope that in the poorest countries in the world that have currently no safety-net programs that will accelerate the development of a system of income transfer and safety net. Now, I'm thinking you in the case of India last year, there was an electoral campaign, India, where in fact the Congress Party and also those of lower caste and socialist parties were advocating for the introduction of a basic income in India. They lost the election. It was pretty tight six months before the election. And then you had these terror attacks in Kashmir, which completely transforms the election in the direction of more identity politics. And we've seen was just anti Muslim. And to some extent, anti war rhetoric may be the Modi government, but this could change in the coming months because, you know, at some point you should have a look done and a big part of your poorer population, you know, they don't have any terms. They don't have food, unity. We'll have to grow. But then it gets really bad. You know, you get them Tomson to grow. So you need to introduce, you know, basic income and then transferring an accelerated manner. And you have similar iscussion right now in the number of countries in West Africa. You know, I don't know how far this will go, but that would be the natural answer.

MG: But you're optimistic about that?

THOMAS PIKETTY: Well, again, I can see you know, I think there's a diversity of trajectories, particularly the kind of destruction finds that they study. May my kept to an ideology where, you know, It's not written in advance what's going to happen, and it very much depends on the mobilization of the different social groups, you know, trade unions, political parties. And, you know, The future belongs to all of us, and to what we will do with it and then will be very different group of people, you know, trying to explodes or crazies in very different ways. And, you know, and, you know, it's it's a balance of sort of Bushworld that we will choose a particular trajectory. What I want to stress, and that's mainly the main idea of my book is balance of voice, not only material. It's also intellectual and ideological. So it's a battle of, you know, of ideas about how to organise the economy and taking a historical perspective on these and a broad comparative perspective as a trade book. I think it's useful to 2 2 2 APUs. Think about the future. You know, find some public debt because we'll get today everybody saying, OK, we're going to be you know, everything was not put in debt. But at some point, of course, we'll have to do something. The public debt. I think we have to due to increase taxation and very tough, very tough questions, features. And then we are back to the issue of international corporation. You know, what do you do with international capital mobility? I think we cannot have free capital mobility anymore.

MG: In terms of moving people's money around so they don't pay taxes?

THOMAS PIKETTY: Yeah, exactly. So this has to change. You know, We've lived for a couple of decades with this particular way of organising the international economic system where in effect, you have almost sacrilized the right to accumulate wealth in your country, by using the public infrastructure, the education system of your country — and then you just push on a button and send your money elsewhere and nobody's able to follow you anymore. No tax administration knows where you are. And then you end up telling the more disadvantaged social group, or the middle class: Well, sorry guys, but you're going to have to pay because we don't know where the rich are, we are not able to tax them, so you're going to have to pay because at least you don't move. But, you know, of course, At some point the people in the middle and in the bottom don't like that. And so if someone is telling them, well, look, we are going to get rid of all these globalisation, we're going to go back to the. That was a nation state. No effect from just protect identity. As long as there is nothing else in store and there is no deal done, it evens the table. You know, this, unfortunately, or you know, is pretty attractive or looks like the only alternative that's being proposed and perhaps very dangerous.

MG: This is an opportunity for people to think about this and to think about, to your point, the future is in our own hands and they have time. So we'll send them to the book to read more about how you've seen this over the sweep of history. Thomas Piketty, it's great to speak with you. Thank you.

THOMAS PIKETTY: Thank you. Thanks for that.

MG: Thomas Piketty's latest book is "Capital and Ideology." He was in Paris, France. If you want to read more about this and how he has seen this over the sweep of history, you have time. As he mentioned, it's an 1100 page book. So maybe use that opportunity of lockdown to look at that.

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Tom Power in conversation with Jewel

Guests: Tom Power, Jewel

MG: This is The Current on Radio One. I'm Matt Galloway. Top Power, the host of Q is back. Hello, Tom.

TOM POWER: Champing at the bit, Matt. Champing at the bit to talk to you about this.

MG: Oh, yeah. What are you going to talk about?

TOM POWER: I can't remember. No, I'm not kidding around. I'm going to talk about mindfulness.

MG: Oh.

TOM POWER: You're familiar with mindfulness?

MG: I am indeed.

TOM POWER: Oh, yeah. Yeah. I'm going to talk about Jewel. You're familiar with Jewel?

MG: Singer?

TOM POWER: Oh incredible. No, not the actual element.

MG: Not the element.

TOM POWER: No, Jewel itself, the singer songwriter, has a new documentary called The Mindfulness Movement. It's all about her journey with being more mindful. I don't know if you know, this but Jewel was once lived on the street. She was once homeless. She found herself really lost and she credits a lot of her success. And a lot of the great things that happen to her to mindfulness, but more, she says that it's something that we need to really look at at this time while we're all stuck inside. So she has a new film actually all about mindfulness.The question is, who will save your soul? The answer? I got to talk to Jewel. Take a listen.

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[Tom Power's conversation with Jewel]

MG: That's Tom Power in conversation with Jewel. This is The Current on CBC Radio One. I'm Matt Galloway. We're back in 90 seconds. Stay with us. [Music]

Canadians falling through the cracks on financial assistance, and growing a sourdough starter? This microbiology researcher wants to know about it

Guests: Michelle Meister, Jess Bretzlaff, Erin McKenney

MG: Hi, I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current. Some saw the money appear almost right away. For others, not so simple. Applications are now open for a second cycle of payments for Canada's Emergency Response Benefit. And still, there are many Canadians caught in the technical crosshairs, struggling with criteria they don't meet, forms they don't understand. Michelle Meister is one of many Canadians scrambling for financial aid. Michelle, good morning.

MICHELLE MEISTER: Hi there. How you doing?

MG: I'm great, thanks. You were working in Toronto as a server before this pandemic hit. What happened with your work?

MICHELLE MEISTER: Yeah. So I lost my job at the end of February. Unrelated to COVID, so I spent the next two weeks or so, I guess, before the pandemic got really serious applying for jobs in non-profits and serving. And then yeah when they announced all the restaurants were going to close, I decided to apply for EI.

MG: And what happened then?

MICHELLE MEISTER: So I've been approved for EI. It's actually, it's less than half of the CERB. So I decided to pick up and move back to Nova Scotia, actually.

MG: How much? I apologize for asking about money. How much would you get from EI?

MICHELLE MEISTER: Yeah. So currently I'm going to make, it's $190 a week.

MG: $190 a week?

MICHELLE MEISTER: Yeah, that's right.

MG: You were living in the city of Toronto. What would $190 a week have got you?

MICHELLE MEISTER: Yeah. So that would have covered my rent and then I mean maybe food for a week? That's pretty much it.

MG: Not a whole lot though?

MICHELLE MEISTER: No, no. Definitely nothing left over.

MG: You don't qualify for the CERB?

MICHELLE MEISTER: Yeah, that's right. So if you and I've been on the phone with Service Canada, and EI and it's been reiterated three or four times now if you didn't have a job before March 15th, you don't qualify for it and you have to go through EI.

MG: So because you lost your job in February, not when the pandemic hit, you don't get it.

MICHELLE MEISTER: That's right. Yeah. And he told me basically I will qualify for it once my 17 weeks of E.I. runs out. So I'm thinking what happens after all this is over if I need to draw EI, it will all be go on.

MG: Yeah. Did you try to apply for the CERB or you spoke with people on the phone about it.

MICHELLE MEISTER: Yeah. I called me on the application over the phone and it actually reminds you that it's a federal offence to lie on the application and it asks you if you are eligible for or have already applied for EI. And where I had I answered truthfully and it disconnected me and said that you don't qualify.

MG: What was it like to be in this position? I mean, again, scrambling to get work at the best of times is difficult. And then this hits and you're trying to figure out how to make ends meet. Was that like to be to be stuck there?

MICHELLE MEISTER: Yeah. I mean, it's definitely. To make the choice to move home, I moved away from those Scotia in 2010 and I haven't lived back here since then. So it's not really something that was on the table at all. And I'm just thinking about like my situation is very fortunate to have a family to return to access to credit, to get a flight, just the ability to able body to pick up and fly. But I'm thinking that I'm probably in a very lucky situation compared to many others who are who are also not eligible.

MG: And you're living at home now?

MICHELLE MEISTER: That's right. Yeah. I'm in a self-isolation away from my family. We have a pregnant family member at home and then I will be then I'll be home.

MG: What was it like moving home?

MICHELLE MEISTER: Very emotional. And the decision was made over probably three days to pick up and move home. So it's a lot to process, I guess, with the pandemic and picking up your life and money, all of it. Just a lot.

MG: Emotional though.

MICHELLE MEISTER: Yeah. I am somebody that I like to work and I like to be self-sufficient and be on my own. So I guess it's kind of silly, but it's kind of a kick to the ego to have to pick up your life and move back in with your parents at 27.

MG: And at the same time, as you say, you're lucky to have a place to go and I'm sure that, I mean they're your parents, they would have been happy to have you home.

MICHELLE MEISTER: Yeah, absolutely. I'm very fortunate to be in this position at this time.

MG: Do they often, though, you move out and there's no nest for to move back into. They might have converted your bedroom into an office or something like that. Is there space for you to come back into the house?

MICHELLE MEISTER: Yeah, there is. Luckily enough and I'm just thinking about. I have some friends who are also in school with me this year who just really don't have that at all. And I have friends that moved here from abroad. That yeah, they're just in a much, much more difficult situation than I am. And that's kind of stressing me out more than anything. Just thinking about what are people supposed to do if they don't have somewhere to go.

MG: Would you stayed in Toronto if you were able to receive the emergency response benefit?

MICHELLE MEISTER: Yes. Yeah, I would have stayed there.

MG: What do you think needs to be done to make sure that the financial support from the government and the government has shovelled a lot of money out the door already? But there are people who are falling between the cracks. Like yourself. What is it that needs to be done to make sure that that financial support is more accessible right now?

MICHELLE MEISTER: I think like removing that bureaucracy is a huge, huge thing. And there's so many barriers in place like English speaking. I think if they made the application in their eligible eligibility criteria much more clear, it would help many people. And even topping up E-I for people who are currently only, I could be a big help and that you had to you had to have made $5000 last year. And I'm just thinking, if this is a service to help the most vulnerable, the really the most notable in this country probably didn't meet that threshold. So I think like really clarifying the eligibility requirements with would be a huge step.

MG: In the meantime, as you say, you're living back home, 27 years old. Do you have a sense as to how long you can stay there or how long you will stay there?

MICHELLE MEISTER: Not really, I'm lucky to be in Annapolis Valley, so there's a lot of agriculture here. I've got my fingers crossed that I can find some sort of labour over the summer. I am pretty much just gonna try to do what I can and wait till this is over and not really worry too far in advance because we really don't know what's gonna happen with this.

MG: You'll do whatever you can in terms of work just to try and get some money in.

MICHELLE MEISTER: Yeah and just try to be productive right now.

MG: Good luck.

MICHELLE MEISTER: Thank you very much.

MG: It's good to talk to you.

MICHELLE MEISTER: Thank you. Stay safe.

MG: Aand you. Michelle Meister was laid off from her job as a server in Toronto. She has since moved home with her family and we reached her at the Annapolis Valley in Nova Scotia. It's not just individual workers who are scrambling for financial aid. There are small businesses too that are looking for help to stay afloat. Jess Bretzlaff owns a bakery. It's called The Bagel Oven. It's in Beamsville, Ontario. Jess, good morning to you.

JESS BRETZLAFF: Good morning, Matt.

MG: How has your business been affected by Colvard 19?

JESS BRETZLAFF: Well, our business is predominantly a commercial bakery, which means that most of our customers have been restaurants, hotels, specialty shops. So you can imagine that the commercial business really flatlined when this happened. Those places shut down so they were no longer ordering. We because we're a food production business, because we're considered an essential service. And because we wanted to have a chance of survival, pivoted the business completely to offer kerbside pickup on Fridays to our local community. And people have been great and coming out in force. We've been able to kind of keep our revenue from dropping too much by doing that. But the reality is, you know, for a small business, we really didn't have any room to drop at all. So we're just kind of scraping by.

MG: How have you, what was that pivot like in terms of, I want to talk about, you know, the financial aid that you might need, but just in terms of reshaping your business. What was that like to go through?

JESS BRETZLAFF: Well it was pretty fascinating.Obviously, it involved a lot of work by myself and my very small, very dedicated team of workers. And it also involved, you know, changing hours of operations. It meant that my employees lost hours. We actually are covering the balance of those hours out of our own pocket to make sure that they have a living wage right now.

MG: Oh wow. So you're it's just not coming from the revenue of the bakery, but actually out of your own accounts?

JESS BRETZLAFF: Well, there's there's no revenue for the bakery to take it out of. So we're kind of just scraping by. And of course, that plays into exactly you know, the impact on even accessing paid because we've been able to pivot and we are scraping by, we don't actually qualify for some of the opportunities that are out there.

MG: So explain that to me. What sort of financial assistance are you getting now? Anything?

JESS BRETZLAFF: So the item that we've been able to apply for and receive is the CEBA loan for $40,000. What we would have liked to have had access to is the wage subsidy, because obviously our largest expenses, our employees were subsidizing their wage ourselves. But because we haven't lost enough income, we don't qualify for that. Also we're a relatively new business, so the criteria for qualifying has made it difficult.

MG: So you can't get, just to be clear, you can't get the wage subsidy because you haven't lost enough money?

JESS BRETZLAFF: That's exactly right. So because we've been adaptable and because we've worked extra hard to make sure that we're putting in place the infrastructure to be safe, to keep ourselves safe, our customers faith and our staff safe and we haven't lost a ton of money from the revenue side. We do not qualify for that wage subsidy at all.

MG: How much is it costing you to pay for those employees?

JESS BRETZLAFF: Well we're topping it up by about twelve hours a week. So we pay above minimum wage, so you can do the math and it's not nothing for sure.

MG: You talked about the loan. Why isn't that, the $40000 is what you qualify for or that's what the?

JESS BRETZLAFF: So that's the loan that is being advertised as zero interest and a quarter forgivable. But the reality of that is that in order to access those features of a loan, $30,000 of it has to be paid back by December of 2022. And that's 32 months from now. So if you split that $30,000 that you would need to pay back over those 32 months evenly, it works out to just under a thousand dollars a month. So that's money I don't have right now. And every month I don't put aside that money for that payback means that there is a shorter term to pay it back over and the monthly payments get higher and higher. And if we don't pay back the $30,000 in that timeframe, we then become responsible for repaying the full $40,000 and the balance of the loan converts to interest bearing at 5 percent. So it's not really free money.

MG: It's just more debt that you don't want to have to take on.

JESS BRETZLAFF: That's absolutely right. That's the last thing we need as a small business. That's more debt and it's more expenses on our expense line going forward.

MG: You could have received the wage subsidy had you laid your staff off, right?

JESS BRETZLAFF: We could have received the wage subsidy if we hadn't had pursued a pivot in the business. If we didn't do our best to stay viable and also do our best to keep food in our community. Now, one of the good things about being a food producer is that we bring a sense of food security to our local community. We have people who come out to us and they're just so grateful that they know that we're small enough that they can access. Brandon Bagels, things that seem kind of normal and help them feel like there is going to be food on their table. So, of course, we want to do that. But by doing that, we've basically taken ourselves out of the running for the support.

MG: Like it almost sounds like you're being punished for not failing.

JESS BRETZLAFF: You know what? That's exactly what I've come to it. It just kind of feels like our efforts are putting us at a disadvantage. You know, we're being told that we need to completely fail if we want any significant help, and that really just seems backwards to me.

MG: What could be done to make sure that a business like yours doesn't fall through the cracks?

JESS BRETZLAFF: I think what needs to happen is that the government and the people who are setting up these programs need to take away some of the rules and the threshold and start to trust the people of Canada, to be honest, and to take the help if they need it.

MG: Tell me more about that. I mean that idea of honesty, because right now we were just talking with a French economist in the last half hour of the program about the enormous change that has gone on right now and the sense that the rules are being remade in some ways as they are coming together. And so you're seeing people kind of try to piece things together almost on the fly. Do you have the sense that the government doesn't fully trust people like yourself to do the right thing?

JESS BRETZLAFF: I don't know. I think the government is set up to be a bureaucracy. Right. So they are inclined to put things in place that have rules, that have benchmarks, that have threshold. Ultimately, they're going to be held accountable for how these things have played out. So it's hard to sit here and and judge what it is that they're doing. But on the other side, you know, there's a lot of very smart, very dedicated small business owners and people in general in this country who also are good at making decisions and who also have the ability to be smart about how they use aid that's available and I think it's important that the government starts to think a little bit outside of their normal box and and believe in us that we will do the right thing and that we will be a part of the rebuilding of this country as things move forward.

MG: What kind of calculations are you doing around how long you can continue to pay employees essentially out of your pocket?

JESS BRETZLAFF: Well, we now have that $40,000 dollars, which we actually just got a couple of days ago. So we're really just trying to look at things, see if we can transfer any of that now to the business. Now that there is a little bit more flexibility in terms of the, you know, the what we have in. In our pool of funding, so hopefully that will give us a little bit of leeway, but it's hard to know sort of how long this is going to last, but we'll keep going as long as we can. Hopefully we'll make it through. You know, I'm really grateful to be in a position to have our business open at all. And I'm really proud to be helping our community keep food on their table. And I'm proud to be keeping my team employed through this really uncertain time, you know, and I'm hopeful that we're going to make it through. On the flip side, I'm exhausted. You know, we're working super hard. We've we've had to change things so completely. And as you know, as we've said, sometimes it feels like our efforts are really just putting us at a disadvantage.

MG: What is it that's keeping you going in this? Running a small business is stressful at the best of times. And you're right on that knife edge and now in some ways, the game has changed and you feel like you're falling through the cracks. What is it that's keeping you going?

JESS BRETZLAFF: Well, I think a couple of things. I think for one, it's a dream. You know, that we've had and this is supposed to be our our future for my family. I'm some kind of security into the future, having this business in our family, keeping food on the table in our community, getting the feedback from our new and growing customer base that, you know, they're so grateful that we're there is certainly helpful and from our amazing, amazing team that works with us. It's been definitely a challenge, but also an experience I think ultimately worth having experienced.

MG: Just not exactly the way you'd wanted it to go.

JESS BRETZLAFF: No, it's definitely not the way we would have wanted it to go, but sometimes you just don't get what you want.

MG: I wish you the best of luck and I hope that you continue sailing and you're fine on the other side of this. Jess, thanks.

JESS BRETZLAFF: Thank you so much, Matt.

MG: Juess Bretzlaff owns a bakery. It's called The Bagel Oven. It's in Beamsville, Ontario. She, as I mentioned, supporting her local community and getting fresh bread and bagels out to members of her community. If you aren't getting it to your local bakery right now, you're not alone. But maybe you're still eating a lot of bread. Baking bread remains a very popular quarantine hobby and online many experts are stepping in to help people like British Baker and food writer Ed Kimber.

SOUNDCLIP

[Clip of Ed Kimber teaching how to sourdough]

MG: You're listening to a virtual sour dough lesson. A modern twist on an ancient tradition. Even though humans have been making it for thousands of years, there is still a lot that we actually don't understand about the science of bread. Erin McKenney teaches at North Carolina State University and is leading something called the Wild Sourdough Project. Erin, good morning.

ERIN MCKENNEY: Good morning. Happy to be here.

MG: Thank you. I love bread and I love making bread. So this is right up my alley. You're speaking my language here. Humans have been making bread for a long, long time, but as I mentioned, there's still a lot that we don't know about the science behind it. Why is that the case?

ERIN MCKENNEY: Yeah. You know, that's a tremendous question, and I think, I mean, there are a lot of discussions we could have about, you know, power dynamics in science of what gets studied and funded and why. But I think for us, it's mostly just made this a tremendous potential of low hanging fruit. This microbial phenomenon, these microbial gardens are grown in jars across the world and they're relatively simple microbial ecosystems. So whereas in a pinch of soil, you get thousands or tens of thousands of different types of microbes and you have all these different contributing factors that can affect the content and the behaviour of those communities, the sour dough starter microbiome is very simple and has very simple inputs. As we just heard in that virtual lesson, it's flour and water. So we have this great opportunity to engage the public in the creation of a microbial masterpiece that's unique to you in all the world. And then you, the participants, you know, anyone in the world by growing these starters can actually help us to learn, because we really don't know much at all about how these things work or how where you live in the world would affect these communities.

MG: There are people who I mean, they've heard of, you know, their neighbours and friends, you know, creating a sourdough starter while they're locked in their homes and they may have no idea what it is. Just very briefly, why is the starter so important in the making of sourdough bread?

ERIN MCKENNEY: Yeah. So flour and water on its own is a glorified papier-mache paste, right? So if you try to bake bread with that, you'll come out with a rock cake.

MG: Not particularly appetizing.

ERIN MCKENNEY: Right. It always reminds me of Hagrid from Harry Potter, right? So when over time, as you allow and enable the colonization of that flour and water paste with bacteria and with yeasts, the bacteria produce acids and the acids contribute that sour tang that we tend to characterize sour dough bread — that unique flavour. But the acid also prevents molds and potential pathogens from growing in that community. So these bacteria are little ecosystem engineers and they actually favour the growth of very specific yeasts that are acid tolerant. And those yeasts are what churn out the carbon dioxide that makes the bread actually rise, and also a lot of other volatile gases that actually have flavour and smell that contribute those lovely aromas to bread that actually make us salivate because our body recognizes it as food.

MG: And the starters are unique. I mean, my starter is different than your starter. Even if we lived in the same city, we would have different starters, right?

ERIN MCKENNEY: Absolutely, and that's due in part what we know from previous projects but haven't really been able to get a good handle on is that yeast tend to vary depending on where you live, like geography. But bacteria tends to follow rules, not depending on geography so much as depending on your home. So what flour are you using? What microbes are growing on your body?

MG: And so what's the question, or the top couple of questions, that you want to answer with this Wild Sourdough project?

ERIN MCKENNEY: Yeah. So I think we have three major questions. One, how much do grain, like your different flour types, and the geography affect the leavening? So we're focusing on function and not so much on like which specific microbes are growing there because you don't all have sequencing labs in your kitchens. Completely understandable. But you do have rulers, right? You do have a jar and you have a sense of how high things are rising over time. So we'd love to get everyone's help by growing starters all from scratch. They're all going to be babies. They'll all be the same age. And by being housebound at this point in our lives, we are taking the migration out of the question. So they'll all be new starters and they'll all be staying in your homes, so now we can ask very specific questions about how does the grain type and how does where you live in the world geography affected the leavening or the rise, and how much do those same factors influence aroma? And then once we see some extremes, some big differences between those starters as folks send in their data, we can start to ask what creates those really unusual starters with really unusual aromas or leavening properties.

MG: And if somebody wants to get involved in this, what should they do?

ERIN MCKENNEY: You should go online to Wild Sourdough. We have a website online. I generally Google Rob Dunn wild sourdough. But theweb site is robdunnlab.com/projects/wildsourdough. We also have a Facebook page and we just launched a YouTube webinar last week that is searchable on on YouTube. So it's part of a new fermentology series at NC State University. So search for us and you will.

MG: Sourdough is a pretty intimidating thing. And people will look at recipes from bakeries and it's a 37 page recipe and they'll think, oh, my goodness, I couldn't possibly do this. What sort of support are you offering people who are entering into the world of sourdough baking?

ERIN MCKENNEY: Yeah. So first I would offer solidarity. I'm a microbial ecologist. I've been studying the tiny bugs in fancy labs for over a decade, and it was intimidating and humbling to me, too, to enter the world of fermented foods. And so first I would say you are not alone, and the reason that those recipes become 37 pages long is that there is so much variation. Each sourdough is unique and behave differently in different conditions. So all those 37 pages are probably descriptions of, you know, add this much flour, but then you might want to sprinkle in a little bit more. Right? Or a little less until the dough feels right to you. And so I would say, you know, first solidarity, we're all in it together. Those are 37 pages. Instead of feeling like there's no single right way or there's no direction. Think of it as as artistic licence to really learn the specific nature of your particular microbial garden and how it behaves in your home and your hands. And truly, you can experiment with this, right? You can experiment to see how do different additions, different water levels — that hydration — how does that affect the stickiness or the rise or the ultimate aroma of the bread? And also through our Facebook page, we started a Facebook page for all the participants in the wild sourdough project and it is hopping. I mean, there are posts all the time, every day, and they are posted by brand new novice sourdough enthusiasts who have come to the project for the first time. They have a little bit of free time on their hands and they are interested to explore the microbial world of food. And there are experienced bakers who have been baking commercially or all the time at home for decades. And what I love about that community online is everyone is open and eager and excited not only to explore the microbial world, but to share their experiences. So if in doubt, visit the Facebook group and, you know, just say what your question is. Those of us who are involved leading the wild sourdough project, we visit that Facebook page — that's how we're curating an FAQ sheet. And, in the meantime, we don't have all the answers either. That's the meaning of science is probing the unknown. So it's an absolute joy to partner with the public, including these expert practitioner bakers,.

MG: The science of bread, and people can get involved in this. Erin, good luck. Thank you.

ERIN MCKENNEY: Thank you.

MG: Erin McKenney is a professor of applied ecology at North Carolina State University. We reached her in Raleigh, North Carolina. If you want to find out more about how to make your own sourdough starter and participate in the Wild Sourdough Project, just plug Wild Sourdough Project into your favourite search engine. Coming up after the CBC News, wild turkeys in Montreal, deer in Winnipeg, we'll talk about how this pandemic has changed our connection to wildlife. I'm Matt Galloway. This is The Current. Stay with us.

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Staying connected with nature when you’re in lockdown

Guests: Richard Louv

MG: Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to an extended edition of The Current.

[Music: Theme]

MG: Once upon a time in a world just like ours, parents wanted to explain a pandemic to their kids. And so Helen Patuck made a book for them. You'll hear from her coming up soon. But first, why the call of the wild is more important than ever.

[Music: Theme]

MG: In the north of Scotland, there is a place called the Flow Country. It's a huge blanket bog full of peat moss and marshy pools as far as the eye can see.

SOUNDCLIP

[Sounds from Flow Country in Scotland]

MG: That soundscape that you're listening to is from an audio walk. It's available for free online and it's supposed to help people self-isolating connect with nature from the comfort of their own home. Outside of that remote bog though, something curious is happening. Nature, it seems, is coming back to us.

SOUNDCLIP

[Sounds from coast in Thailand]

MG: In Thailand, sea turtles are hatching on empty beaches. In Israel, wild boars are casually walking into cities. And here in Canada, sightings of foxes, deer and rabbits are up. It's one of the unexpected consequences of this pandemic, signs of wildlife returning to our lives. Richard Louv is the author of "Our Wild Calling: How Connecting With Animals Can Transform Our Lives and Save Theirs." We spoke in early March. That seems like a lifetime ago. So much is different now. Feels like a good time to check back in. Richard Louv is at his home in Julian, California. Richard, good morning.

RICHARD LOUV: Good morning.

MG: It's great to have you back on the show.

RICHARD LOUV: It's great to be back.

MG: What does it sound like when you step outside and into nature around your house in these unusual times that we're in right now?

RICHARD LOUV: Well, it probably sounds a lot like it did before the pandemic came, because I live up in the mountains near San Diego, but it's spring. So I hear an amazing amount of birds. Birds, I don't don't know which birds they are.There's a lot that I don't know about right around our house, because we moved here not far, not not long ago. But I put a camera out in on our property. It's about an acre and the other night the camera took a picture of a mountain lion on our property and I'm very excited about that.

MG: You sent a photo of that mountain lion. That's a big cat.

RICHARD LOUV: Yeah.

MG: What was it like to see that image?

RICHARD LOUV: Well, I've wanted to see a mountain lion out here since we moved up here. Most people don't see them. The most you see is the tail disappearing into the into the brush. But I brought the chips in from the trail cams and was looking at them on a computer near my wife and my wife says I kind of screamed when I saw that picture cause I was so excited.

MG: This is, as I said, an odd time, an unusual time, unprecedented time and we see people who are staying home. We see the world industry slowing down the streets and the roads are quiet or empty depending on where you happen to be. What are some of the impacts on animals that you're hearing about?

RICHARD LOUV: Well, one of the things that you mentioned earlier is that wild animals are showing up in cities in odd ways, you know, coyotes walking down the streets of Boston and so forth. The thing is, though, that those wild animals, many of them were there already. One of the things that happens to wild animals when they move into cities and they've been moving into cities more and more in the last 15 years or so is that they change their habits. Animals hunt during the day, become night hunters, for example, and they become invisible to us. They stay away from us more than they would even in the wild, because they become very cautious. But now that people aren't around and the noise isn't there, there perhaps some of them changing their habits from nocturnal today or all. And they're showing up again in the place they've been all along.

MG: One of the things that we've seen across this country was in Montreal, wild turkeys walking down the streets of Montreal. You don't generally see that. Have a listen to David R. He is the executive director of the Eco Museum in Montreal.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: That was quite a surprise because that is one of those species where, to my knowledge, anyway, it was not present on the island itself. And it is a species that's quite wary as well. It's not easily approachable species in the best of times. And the fact that they would have been spotted on the island by people says a lot about what seems to be happening in terms of animals just being more comfortable in a way. We're sharing a space with those animals. We've taken over obviously in urban areas and it might be a good occasion for us to think about what it means to share that space with other living things.

MG: That idea of sharing the spaces is something that you are hinting at and you talk about this in the book as well. We will often ignore or do worse than that to clear those those wild animals out of the space that we share, but is this an opportunity to be reminded of the fact that this is a shared space?

RICHARD LOUV: It is. And you mentioned, obviously, a wild turkeys in the streets of Montreal. There is a biologist in Florida. He was in Florida, who raised wild turkeys from eggss. And he actually started talking to the eggs until they hatched. And when they hatched, they imprinted on him. And he spent months moving around the forest near his house with the wild turkeys, basically lived with them. And at one point, he actually started saying and so we went out to hunt for seeds that day. It became we. And he writes eloquently about the intelligence of wild turkeys. I, like most people, I'd always thought they weren't too bright. He talks about a very different kind of intelligence. And it's something, you know, if we know about it, we will value those wild turkeys much more even in the city.

MG: What is the opportunity that's in front of us to connect with nature? And why should we take advantage of that now in this time do you think?

RICHARD LOUV: Well, first, we have to face the fact that even though what we're finding now is an intense increase in public interest and media interest in nature connection, because suddenly people have realised that it is good for them, it makes them feel better. There's solace. There is a sense of dependability in nature, the sense of connection to something larger. And now people are realising they have to do that in their front yard or if they're lucky enough to have a yard or in a window box outside their urban apartment. You know, we don't know what we've got until it's gone. We don't know truly the value of nature to us until we can't go to it. The parks are closed and so forth. And so now there's this intense interest in that. That's a great moment. That's an important moment to prepare for what's after the pandemic, assuming it ends to value nature far more than we have, because we're feeling that now in ways we haven't before.

MG: This has been, I wouldn't say your life's work, but certainly a lot of your life's work for the last 15 years or so. You've done this when it comes to talking about the nature deficit disorder that we suffer from and the importance of being out and using the restorative power of nature to improve our mental and physical health. Do you feel as though that idea of we don't know what we've got till it's gone has in some ways it's caught up with with us that you've been talking about this for a while and now here we are having this conversation because we can't go outside. We can't go for a walk in the woods.

RICHARD LOUV: You're right. Or I believe you're right. The Children in Nature Network is the non-profit that grew out of Last Child in the Woods about 14 years ago. And what we're finding is the non-profit folks there, the executive director of Children Nature Network is finding as we don't have to convince people like more. It used to be heavy lifting to convince people that nature is important, in fact is essential for our mental health or psychological health, our physical health. Now, it's quite a bit easier and it's odd how quickly that has changed. One of the things that is most important, I think, is that there is a mental health crisis going on right now. There's trauma in terms of our emotional health right now because of the pandemic. But after it slows down or even ends, I think there will be a second trauma and that nature will be even more important than in 2012. You know, after the Sandy Hook shootings, the children in that school in Newtown, Connecticut, I was asked to speak there at the town hall three months after the tragedy. And because people felt this need for nature, they felt that nature would help them heal. And what I learned, I asked them why three months and they said the psychologists that were helping the town said that when a great trauma happens, the survivors, in particular, the direct survivors, the trauma really hit. It hits about three months after the tragedy. And I think that so we have the trauma now from from the time that they put later on, we're going to need nature more than ever.

MG: While we're in this, I want to talk about what we do after because at some point in time, he says, fingers crossed, we'll get out of this. But while we're in this right now and we can't go for the walk in the ravine that we love the park or through the woods or on the trails, what are some of the things we can do now to connect with nature while we're locked down?

RICHARD LOUV: One of the things we can do is guard against fear of wild animals because of the origins, which is controversial in terms of the origins of the virus. There's now a study that suggests it was from industrial livestock raising rather than the wet markets in China. The origin, whatever that origin is, this sense will take a wild animals while they all carry diseases as well. They they don't. But there's a way to deal with them, which is the one health movement in public health. Our cities need to focus on the health of humans, wildlife and the earth itself. All three of those things at the same time to be effective in public health. But in terms of what we can do right now, the Nature Network just launched a site called findingnature.org and there's a long list of ways that people connect in nature, even if it's from their window. They can create a set spot inside their house and a watch outside. They can draw what they see.

MG: The sit spot, just to just to remind people, the sit spot is something the you talked about last time you're on the program, it's in your book where you you take the time to sit. And in some ways, the nature around you, whether it's the birds at your window or what, have you become comfortable with you being there.

RICHARD LOUV: That's right. You know, when I was a kid, I'd go down to the creek all the frogs would jump in the water and then I would sit there long enough very still to watch the frogs pop back up and I'd stay still. And I'd feel I was becoming a frog in a sense. It was a wonderful experience. Well, that's a sit spot.But you can do that in your yard. You can do that on a roof watching birds. You can do that. As I said, indoors, you can create a window watching a world watching window and bringing inside the outside in. You can you know, if you can't see wild animals, you can cloud spot. You can watch the clouds. Your kids can. And learning about the world close up like that, I think prepares to see more deeply world beyond our yard, to see nature more deeply in the places that are truly wilderness and it starts really right next to where we live.

MG: What happens when we get out of this? You've said that this pandemic will either and these are your words, fracture or strengthen our relationships with nature and each other. Which one are you optimistic about?

RICHARD LOUV: You know, I tend to be optimistic because I don't think there's any practical alternative to hope. I think that it will. Increase our connection to nature. I think there are a lot of signs that we now value more than perhaps we have in decades and maybe longer than decades. So the association of Nature with human well-being and for the sake of nature itself, I think that sense will grow during the pandemic. A lot of thinking about this is kind of the slingshot effect. Right now we're pulling back we're pulling back into our homes, the programs that connect kids and adults to nature. They're watching their budgets. In some cases disappear. We've got to help them stay alive long enough. Those organizations. But they're seeing their services and budgets pull back in our lives. We're pulling back. But a lot of tension and a swift flight out happens when you do that, when you pull back. And then it builds. And when you release that slingshot, there's all kinds of pent up energy. There's all kinds of pent up desire for nature. I think even though, you know, I have a newfound appreciation for the Internet and for Zoom like many people, but we will probably have had enough of that to a degree when the pandemic slows and hopefully ends and we'll want what we don't have. We will want to make sure we all want that connection to something larger.

MG: Have a listen once again to David R. One of the things that he points out is that nature seems to be just doing fine or better than fine without us being around. That the plants that might otherwise get stomped on aren't being trampled because people aren't in those areas that you see. There's the story of the pandas in the zoo that are mating now that we're not around to watch. Have a listen to what he says about the ripple effects of this lockdown in the wild.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: You might expect Spring 2020 to actually see a small increase in urban wild populations because timing makes it so that this is breeding season for all those species, basically, and less disturbance, less traffic, which also means less fatal collisions between traffic and animals, which is a factor for them, might make it that these animals are just roaming more. They're finding more resources, less disturbance, more places to establish themselves to hide.

MG: So he's talking about maybe a little baby boom when it comes to the wildlife. Do you worry that I mean, when to your point, we're done with Zoom and we won't actually see each other, but we want to go and see the world that's around us when we take back those spaces that the nature and the wildlife that has had an opportunity to move back out of its hiding could be threatened again.

RICHARD LOUV: Yes. And to the degree it probably will be, because that has been our nature as a species for a long time. On the other hand, when you look out and you see clean air, when you see the stream next to you suddenly running red anymore. When you see animals that you never saw before. I think that is having a profound effect on people. The next question is, could we keep that up in some way? And now, is it time not later to have a discussion about urban design, about how we deal with wild animals in the cities? And I write about this in our wild calling. I call those animals for betweens because they're between domestic and truly wild. And we can ask those questions now. We can ask us questions about our own yard. Should it be native species to actually feed the food chain so that those animals have something to eat and that it's native and that it draws native species back that we've never seen before? Perhaps until now, you know, we can start what I've called a wildlife watch groups in our neighbour is kind of like neighbourhood watch where you the people in the neighbourhood learn about the wild animals that have shown up trade notes on the watch for them, learn about what it means, what it looks like when a coyote is sick and who who to report that to. And these groups would do two things. They would protect people from wild animals that need to be protected from. But they would also protect those wild animals in the future because they would come to value them. They would come to love them, perhaps in ways that they have not before.

MG: And you're confidence just in the last minute or so, we have that we keep thinking about the big changes that might come out of this and how we'll be different. You're confident that we will be different in a positive way when it comes to our relationship, the shared space that we have?

RICHARD LOUV: I believe that many of us, I'm confident that many of us will be different after we realize that we share this space with other othe life and that other life nurtures us. Whether our species will react that way, the odds are against it, but the things that we do now, I believe, will raise the odds that we will find some kind of peace with the life around us.

MG: It's a great pleasure to talk to you again, Richard. Stay safe. Stay well and thanks.

RICHARD LOUV: Thank you.

MG: Richard Louv is the author, most recently of a book called "Our Wild Calling." It's about the relationship that we have with the nature and the wildlife that's all around us. Until you can get back out into that nature, take a moment to breathe and listen to this.

SOUNDCLIP

[Sounds from an audio walk arranged by Chris Watson]

MG: The sounds are recorded and arranged by Chris Watson. He's a wildlife sound recordist in the UK who's travelled to some of the most remote corners of this world. This is described as an audio walk. It's being shared for free online now as a resource for people who are self isolating during the coronavirus crisis. The idea is to offer some sort of imaginative access to the environment. So if you are going stir crazy stuck in your house right now, you might want to search for Chris Watson, wildlife sound recordist, and you can listen to that audio walk wherever you happen to be isolating. Sounds of nature are soothing. So is the right kind of music. We've been asking for your song suggestions to help take some of the anxiety out of the mood of the day. This suggestion comes from Janice Grajauskas. Janice lives in Alberta. She's originally from Nova Scotia, has been listening to our coverage of this weekend's tragedy, or, as she called it, "devastating news in devastating times." Her song suggestion is from her own quarantine playlist. She writes that it also plays in her mind when she wakes up at night. Something I think a lot of us can relate to. Thank you, Janice, for your note and for your suggestion. This is John Wort Hannam and "The Quiet Life."

[Song: "The Quiet Life" by John Wort Hannam]

MG: Thank you, Janice Grajauskas in Alberta for that suggestion. That's the Canadian folk singer songwriter Jon Wort Hannam and "The Quiet Life." What are you listening to in these trying times? Is their music that is taking some of the anxiety out of the world that we're in right now? Let us know. And beyond music, what else is helping you get through? Friday, we are dedicating our show to stories that bring some relief and joy to this difficult time. We'd love to hear from you. You can tweet us @TheCurrentCBC, comment on the Facebook page. Email us and if you can send us a voice message. Get your phone out to look for the voice app, record message and then go to cbc.ca/thecurrent and click on the contact link. You'll find our email address there. Let us know what has lifted your spirits in the midst of these difficult times. Time to say goodbye to our listeners in Newfoundland and Labrador. You have Cross-talk coming up next. For everyone else, stay with us, The Current's back in 90 seconds. I'm Matt Galloway.

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Apr. 21, 2020 episode transcript

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