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The AIH Transcript for May 14, 2020

Hosts: Carol Off and Chris Howden

Prologue

CAROL OFF: Hello. I'm Carol Off.

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

[Music: Theme]

CH: Tonight:

CO: Justice delayed. It was good news for Donald Trump when the Department of Justice moved to drop its case against Michael Flynn. We reached a former federal prosecutor who says the US president shouldn't celebrate quite yet.

CH: Leaders of the pack. After weeks battling the outbreak in Europe's worst hit region, Canadian charity workers pack up their field hospital and get a hero's sendoff from grateful Italians.

CO: Truth be told. Quebec's Premier calls out a reporter for stoking fears about the virus with his coverage of Montreal's outbreak. But the reporter tells us the premier's problem is with the facts.

CH: Deep bleep. A former top vaccine official in the US says he could see trouble coming months ago. And speaking before Congress today, he did not self-censor.

CO: He's got a keg up. A London brewer finds a way to help customers stuck at home have a sorely missed taste of British pub culture by taking his establishment on the road.

CH: And all hands on deck. We return from a free range wander through the archives with tales of chickens. One guest who knitted sweaters for them and another who hypnotized them. As It Happens. The Thursday Edition. Radio that's always happy to play a little chicken.

[Music: Theme]

Part 1: Montreal health reporter 'surprised' premier criticized his COVID-19 reporting

Trump/Flynn

Guest: Mimi Rocah

CH: The case against Michael Flynn seemed open and shut until it opened again. Last week, the Justice Department filed a motion to drop its case against Mr. Flynn. He was US President Donald Trump's national security advisor for a short time, and he pleaded guilty to lying about his conversations with the Russian ambassador. But the judge overseeing the case has not approved the Justice Department's request. And he's appointed a former federal judge to look into whether Mr. Flynn should be held in contempt for perjury. Mimi Rocah is a former federal prosecutor and former legal commentator for MSNBC. She's a professor at Pace Law School. We reached her in Westchester County, New York.

CO: Mimi, when this motion to dismiss was filed last week, Donald Trump declared it a big day for justice in the USA. Should the president still be celebrating?

MIMI ROCAH: No. I think that was premature. You know, here is an example of where someone in the justice system, namely Bill Barr, the attorney general, head of the Department of Justice, did something that really was politically oriented, in my view, and not based on the law and the facts. And what we're seeing now are the repercussions of that and why he shouldn't have tried that. And now we have a judge who is pushing back basically. A federal judge who has the power and the authority and frankly, the obligation to review this and is doing that and saying, hold on, wait a minute, not so fast.

CO: This is Judge Emmet Sullivan -- and just describe may be in simple terms what he is saying.

MR: Yeah. So the motion to dismiss the case or the request to dismiss the case filed by the Department of Justice is filed under a rule, a court rule, that requires leave of the court or approval of the court. And, you know, usually judges, federal judges would defer to prosecutors quite often -- okay, prosecution doesn't want to go ahead with their case. But there is a reason why that check is there. And a judge has to approve it, because what happens in the justice system is bigger than just what the attorney general or Department of Justice wants. The court is obligated to make sure that it's proceeding in a fair and impartial way. And so this judge is saying you're looking at the circumstances here, namely the Department of Justice dismissing its own case that it brought where someone pled guilty twice in open court under oath, and we can talk more about, you know, what else is unusual about what they're doing. But the judge said, you know, we're going to hear about this, I want to look into this more, I'm not just going to rubber stamp this. So he's inviting what's called amicus curiae briefs, different ways to pronounce that. But it's basically Latin for 'friends of the court.' He is inviting outside parties to brief, you know, weigh in on whether they think this is the right or the wrong thing to do. And in particular, appointed essentially a former federal judge, John Gleeson, a retired judge, who I know well because I worked for him, to represent the sort of other side here, the interests of well I would call it the interests of the Department of Justice, even though he's outside of the Department of Justice. But he's supposed to brief and write to the judge about why the case should not be dismissed. And then the last thing that the judge did is actually asked whether there should be consideration of perjury charges against General Flynn.

CO: The idea they're throwing out because it's untethered to and unjustified by the FBI counterintelligence even to have been interviewing Mr. Flynn . Even if he was to say that even if he lied, it doesn't matter because they shouldn't have been talking to him anyway. And it wasn't in the interests of justice or the United States. Just quickly, can you go to the nub of this? What is it that Mike Flynn did that was so potentially threatening to the security of the United States?

MR: Well, I mean, I think those are two different questions. I mean, because as you point out by what you just quoted, the standard for whether they could have interviewed him legitimately and therefore he should have told the truth is pretty low. I mean, when you're starting an investigation, it's not you know, is this person a national security threat? Do we know that definitively? The question is, is there reason to believe it? Is there something going on here that we should probe further? I mean, at the beginning of an investigation, which is really you know, kind of what stage they were in is pretty low. But I will say they had a lot of information at that point. I mean, they had started to close the investigation, the original investigation of Flynn, but then they found out about this phone call he had with the ambassador from Russia, Kislyak, in which they were talking about basically, you know, the US government's reaction to the pretty definitive information at that point that Russia had interfered in our elections and was basically, you know, he was telling the ambassador you know, kind of hold off, don't worry about it. I mean, Trump was not president yet. We were still in a transition period. So, you know, that combined with the fact that he had this call, he then lied about it to people in the administration, according to the administration. I mean, that's what Mike Pence said. And then lied about it when interviewed about it. So all of those things together, I mean it puts him in a position where he's vulnerable to perhaps blackmail because he now has lied about something important. And also just raised the very important question of why was he having these discussions and why was he lying about that? What else was going on? And so, of course, the FBI was entitled to probe that.

CO: Can Michael Flynn possibly be facing new charges?

MR: Well, you know, so he pled guilty pursuant to a plea agreement. And whenever a plea agreement is vacated, if that is what happens here, if this plea agreement is essentially vacated and the charges are dismissed, it will depend whether a future, you know, prosecutor somewhere could bring charges. It really will depend on whether these charges are dismissed with or without prejudice. I don't believe that there is a sort of overarching like legal impediment to him being charged again. It really is going to be a question of how this is resolved, and that's going to be up to the judge.

CO: And we will be watching. Mimi I appreciate speaking with you. Thank you.

MR: Thank you. Great to talk to you.

CH: Mimi Rocah is a former federal prosecutor in the US. We reached her in Westchester County, New York.

[Music]

Legault Blames Journo

Guest: Aaron Derfel

CH: Quebec's premier made a rare pandemic trip to Montreal today. The city has become a global COVID-19 hotspot, and Francois Legault was visiting one day after blaming a reporter for local fears about the virus. A poll suggested that Montrealers whose mother tongue is not French might be more concerned than francophones about the coronavirus. On Wednesday, Premier Legault was asked to explain. He said this.

FRANCOIS LEGAULT: I think that journalists, you have a responsibility. I like to read certain journalists of the Gazette that are specialists in health. Sometimes I really disagree with him. It's a question of information. So I'm trying to do my best in French and in English, or I don't see why the result is not the same for francophones and anglophones. I guess he maybe the Gazette has a certain responsibility.

CH: That was Quebec premier Francois Legault on Wednesday. Aaron Derfel is that health reporter for the Montreal Gazette. We reached him in Montreal.

CO: Aaron what's it like to be called by your premier like that?

AARON DERFEL: Well, I was quite surprised. It was embarrassing. You know, in the context of a live news conference that I was watching, I didn't expect that at all.

CO: And of course, the subject matter is concerning whether people are afraid of getting COVID-19.

AD: Precisely. But this is not a language issue. It has nothing to do with that. It's a public health issue of paramount importance. And people are dying in Montreal and we have thousands of people sick with COVID-19. Our hospitals are overwhelmed. Our long term care centres are also overwhelmed. So I can't understand that comment. It came out of left field and I would hope that we can move past it actually.

CO: The question was concerning this poll that showed that where as fewer than half of francophones in Quebec are afraid of getting COVID-19. It's much, much higher for Anglophones, in fact, in Montreal it's more than 70 percent fear that they might get it or afraid of getting it. If that question was posed to you, how might you answer that difference?

AD: Well, I think that a number of Montrealers, when you drill down into that poll, there were more Anglo-Montrealers who know or knew someone who had COVID-19 or who died from COVID-19 than perhaps some of the francophones who took part in that web survey. I live in NDG, which is a rural (community) that's been hard hit by this. So I have been concerned. I try to stay objective as a journalist, but I'm also in the thick of it.

CO: And do you think that consumers of news in the Anglophone community are getting different reporting than those who are following the French media?

AD: I don't think so. I think that the Francophone news media has been quite critical of the government's response to the pandemic. That all changed, I think you'll recall after the tragedy at the Residence Herron, the nursing homes where there was a mass desertion of staff. You know, I was one of the reporters who broke that story. And prior to that story, there was this feeling of solidarity. And the premier was justifiably praised for his approach. But after that story, lots of journalists started to ask questions. So I can't explain why the premier decided to make this a linguistic issue. For me as a journalist, you know, my overriding concern has been what's happening? Where is the pandemic moving in Montreal? Initially it was concentrated in the largely Anglophone part of the city in the west end and it since moved to Montreal north, where there are great numbers of immigrants of Haitian descent, asylum seekers. And I've also asked these questions about the government's response. Were the workers properly equipped? And then the pressures on the ERs. At one point the hospitals were so overwhelmed here that they were sending patients off island. These are all legitimate questions. And so I've been doing what I've always been doing. And I guess my coverage touched a raw nerve.

CO: You had a piece today. You compared Montreal's long term care home where as other parts of Canada have had the largest number of these outbreaks, you compared it to the notorious cruise ship, the Diamond Princess. What could Quebec have done to prevent things from getting so out of hand in Montreal?

AD: I think that clearly there was a systemic problem that existed for years before the pandemic, and that is that our long term care centres have been understaffed. But I do think that mistakes were made. There were these orderlies who were going from one institution to another. They were probably carrying the virus and didn't realize it. And so they were infecting these elderly residents from one institution to the next. The government at one point promised to test everyone, residents and staff of the long term care centres. This was on April 8th. 10 days later, the health minister said that this couldn't be done. And now, belatedly, the government is ramping up the testing to be able to do this. So this is a question about a lack of resources and perhaps institutional inertia. What I also found very bizarre is that at one point the Canadian Red Cross had set up a field hospital in a hockey arena of all places. It was intended for the overflow patients from the long term care centres. And that raises also a question, why could they have not done this earlier in the pandemic to limit the spread of the coronavirus?

CO: Let's just take this back then to the polls, because we also know one of the polls that Premier Legault who's criticizing you. He has extremely high support in the polls. Very very high poll numbers. Is it possible that people in Montreal and the anglophone community, in particular, don't have as much confidence in Premier Legault as the Francophones do?

AD: That is true. There has been the suspicion, you know, this goes back to decisions that the government has taken, for example, to close the English language school boards. And then there was the government's decision to prohibit the wearing of hijabs, et cetera. That was a controversial legislation and was not popular in Montreal. The mayor of Montreal Valerie Plante was against that legislation. But even now, the latest polls are showing that although Premier Legault still enjoys widespread popularity off the island of Montreal, that popularity is beginning to dip even among Francophones in light of the way his government has handled the pandemic.

CO: All right. We will leave it there and we will be following the story in Quebec. I appreciate speaking with you tonight. Thank you.

AD: Thank you.

CH: Aaron Derfel is a health reporter at the Montreal Gazette. He's in Montreal. And you can find more on that story on our website: cbc.ca/aih.

[Music]

Rick Bright

CH: Rick Bright says the 2020 could be the darkest winter in modern US history if the government doesn't step up today. The former top US vaccine official turned whistleblower testified before Congress about the government's handling of COVID-19. Last month, Dr. Bright was ousted from his position. He says it was because he sounded the alarm on how ill prepared the country is to deal with the pandemic. And because he would not push the drug hydroxychloroquine as a potential cure, which President Trump had repeatedly claimed without evidence. Today, Dr. Rick Bright warned that the US is running out of time to turn things around. And he said that he realized how bad it was going to get. Months ago. Here he is answering a question from Democratic Representative John Sarbanes.

JOHN SARBANES: I am sure there are specific conversations, e-mails, moments in time that you remember, like they happened yesterday, inflection points where if the response to your warnings had been heeded, things might have been different. And I'm sure they haunt you and keep you up at night. From January of this year, tell me about just one specific moment when you had that sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach because you were not seeing a response that you knew needed to happen.

RICK BRIGHT: Congressman, I'll never forget the emails I received from Mike Bowen indicating that we are mass supply -- N95 supply was completely decimated. And he said we're in deep (censor sleep) -- the world is. And we need to act. And I push that forward to the highest levels I could in HHS. I got no response. And from that moment I knew that we were going to have a crisis for health care workers because we were not taking action. We were already behind the ball. That was our last window of opportunity to turn on that production to save the lives of those health care workers. And we didn't act.

CH: That was Dr. Rick Bright, the former director of the federal office responsible for developing drugs to fight COVID-19 in the United States testifying today before Congress.

[Music]

Pub on Wheels

Guest: Pete Brown

CH: With the days merging together, it's easy to feel lost. Sometimes you find yourself wondering what is the point? But if you're Pete Brown, you've been asking a different question. Where is the pint? Mr. Brown owns the Forest Road Brewing Company in East London, England. For the past two months, his customers have been unable to stop in and enjoy a beer after work. And since they can't go out for drinks last week, he started going out with drinks after constructing a portable pub on wheels. We reached Pete Brown in London.

CO: Pete, I got to ask you the question that thousands of Brits have been dying to ask, for weeks now, what's on tap today?

PETE BROWN: We have our three core beers, Posh Lager, which is a 4.1 percent filtered lager, ork IPA, which is my original flagship, India Pale Ale it's low bitterness, good juicy beer. And the third one is our session pale, it's called "Easy" brewed with a good amount of wheat and it's British hops. It's a great beer.

CO: Is it ice cold?

PB: It is ice cold. It's perfect ice cold right out the tap.

CO: And ice cold at the tap right at your curb. Can you describe your operation?

PB: Yeah. So basically, I've been homebrewing for a while I started off homebrewing maybe 12 years ago. And when you graduate from doing 50 bottles every batch to putting it in a keg, you need a way to dispense that keg. So ever since I started it off after I first started kegging it's not an unknown concept for me to be able to drill a hole in something and make beer come out of it. So on Monday last week, I got a little utility van, pop some holes in it, the drill bit actually broke when I was trying to do it so I just did it with the normal wood drill bit and board it out and put the tap lines in there, just rigged it up like it was part of the bar wall.

CO: And where did you take it? Where do you go with the van?

PB: Basically the laws here are you can sell alcohol from a licensed premises which I have because it was a bar before. Also my brewing company sells wholesale alcohol. So when the whole coronavirus thing came, we flipped the bar over pretty quickly into like a liquor store. So I didn't really think I just kind of did it. And all of a sudden we had a van that could serve beer. And we found a way on our website to schedule like bookings, like if I was a plumber or something and all of the sudden I just started booking up quite quick.

CO: And these are your regular customers for the most part?

PB: No, there's two guys that I recognized. But besides that, everybody's new.

CO: Okay. So you pull up to the curb, you flip it open, and you start pulling the tap?

PB: Yeah -- don't even flip it open, it's drilled right through the side. [CO Laughs] So I basically just park up on the side of the road where the houses with the taps facing the house, I put my gloves on and the facemask up, and hop out and get some pint glasses and fill them up and let them go.

CO: Okay. So an ice cold pint of beer pass to a customer. Tell us how they respond.

PB: It is a beautiful thing. And you can't make it up, but I wish last week -- it still happens everyday, even today as well -- when you've taken away, especially in England, when you've taken away the concept of a glass of cold beer, which almost everybody lives in the capital has experienced at least once, after not having it for six weeks it's pure joy on their face.

CO: I can tell by your accent that you're not native Brit. You're an American. But you've probably discovered that the pub is an institution and being able to have that pint is I think Boris Johnson was saying this is the right of every Brit is to have this [chuckles] in his hand or her hand.

PB: And that's where it goes beyond what it is. It is a pint but also, I think it transports the customer to a time where things were normal. And, you know, that experience brings you right back to finishing along a day of work and going off and meeting your pals on a sunny day and doing the thing.

CO: You are at the side of the road and you're pouring a beer for somebody, do neighbours come out? Do you create a little party?

PB: Yeah, they do. But we can't do the party because it's not legal. So this is my secret. So don't tell any other London brewers. The service is you've ordered a certain amount of alcohol and we've delivered a certain amount of alcohol. So as much as I want to, we can only serve the people that have ordered it. We do give the customer an option to buy some pints for their neighbours if they have the foresight. But we can't do it to random people off the street otherwise you need a licensed premises which doesn't exist for a moving target.

CO: And you also have to keep your social distance, I guess.

PB: Of course.

CO: Which defies the whole idea of the pub tradition. [Chuckles]

PB: Exactly. But again, that's why it's not like we roll up to a park corner so much as I would love to, I was thinking back it would be awesome if we could have done this in the past. But it's not like the ice cream truck.

CO: [Laughs] I was going to ask you, is there a little jingle that's playing as you come down the street?

PB: We play Eye of the Tiger really loud. [Laughter]

CO: [Laughter] Wow. Great. And you also have a slogan on the side that reads "Tactical Beer Response Unit."

PB: Yes. Yeah. I was going to call it the "Beerbulance" but my girlfriend thought it might be a little bit too touchy for the certain time. So I was Googling SWAT team and kind of emergency services just to see what they looked like. And the special police here in London have some funny things that we wanted to just use for the sake of beer.

CO: You're going to get another truck? Sounds like you've got a lot of customers.

PB: Yeah. Yeah, we are. Absolutely. Soon as we announced, every single postal code in London has asked if we could come to them.

CO: All right. We'll be watching for your fleet.

PB: Yeah [chuckles] well, again you know, there's no sign of pubs opening up, so we might as well start bringing little pubs to people.

CO: All right. You can bring them over here too, if you want.

PB: [Laughs] I would love to.

CO: Thanks Pete.

PB: All right. No worries. Thank you.

CH: Pete Brown is the director of the Forest Road Brewing Company and its Pub on Wheels. He is in London, England.

[Music]

Part 2: 'They were never alone': In Italy's darkest hour, international medics held COVID-19 patients' hands

Italy Travelling Medics

Guest: Bev Kauffeldt

CH: As the virus hit Italy like a tsunami, they arrived to help stem the tide. The charity Samaritan's Purse saved lives by setting up a field hospital in the parking lot of an overwhelmed hospital in Cremona, Italy. Staff helped hundreds of coronavirus patients when the country needed it the most. Now the group has decided its help is no longer needed. In a hopeful sign for the fight against the virus, Samaritan's Purse has dismantled its field hospital and is preparing to leave Italy. Bev Kauffeldt is a Canadian who's been running that hospital since the virus first struck. We reached her in Cremona, Italy.

CO: Bev, after all you have been through, what is it like to be packing up your field hospital?

BEV KAUFFELDT: I think there's a sense of satisfaction and relief. Satisfaction that we came with a mission to support alongside the Cremona Hospital and we were able to do that. And the satisfaction of knowing that the disease here in Italy at least is going down. And yeah, it's a huge relief for the people here and for us.

CO: We should point out that Italy -- my gosh, more than 30000 fatalities from the coronavirus and you are in Cremona, it's the heart of Lombardy, one of the hardest hit parts of Europe. When did you know? At what point did you realize that okay you'd weathered the storm and now you could go home?

BK: I would say, Carol, 10 days to two weeks ago. We had seen a significant drop in some of the numbers. The hospital, you know, was able to support the patients that they had. And we weren't getting as many admissions from them as we had had before. And they were getting to the point where they were discharging some of their patients and they're able to reopen some of their services like, you know, get the people who are in OR theaters and reopen their OR or their cardiology units because they had patients in every crook in any of their hospitals for the past almost two months since the beginning I would say now probably mid-March.

CO: What are you going to remember most about what it was like when your hospital, your field hospital was running at full capacity?

BK: That's a good question. I think I'll remember two main things. The incredible love and acceptance that we've had from the Italian people. The town of Cremona is going to be passing something and we're all becoming honorary citizens. Just incredible love that we have felt in our patients were just amazing and their family members bringing us food. And I think I'll remember my staff just the 24/7 care that they, you know, loved on these people, cared for them and the professionalism that they exhibited day in and day out, praying with patients, singing with patients. But most importantly, being there as they passed. We did lose 25 patients, but they never were alone.

CO: It's interesting. We spoke with a number of medics and doctors and nurses in Italy over this time. And that one of the hardest things they dealt with was that the families couldn't be with those who were dying. And so they were the ones -- they were the last person to hold their hand, the last person to speak with them. What do you remember about that experience?

BK: Well, what we did also, Carol, is we had a phone inside each ward where we could call family members and have them Facetime with their family members during those moments. They knew that their family member was not alone, that they could say their final goodbye, their final "I love you's."

CO: You had a quite a remarkable visit, you mentioned all the other ways that the community, the town was giving you their gratitude. And there was a cellist who arrived one day. Can you tell us that story?

BK: Yeah, there's a cellist, actually, that's right beside our hotel. And at night, sometimes you can hear him playing in the courtyard because, of course, he's been on lockdown. So we've got special permission for him to come and bless our nightshift staff at around 9:30. He set up and played right in the middle of the wards in the safe zone for our staff and for our patients. And that was just a really special moment. It was a clear night. The stars were all out. And yeah, we are in Cremona, that's the home of the violin -- Stradivari., this is where he lived. And we've just been very, very blessed by many artists here.

CO: I understand that as he was playing his cello, there were people who were possibly losing their lives inside the tent that that would be the last thing they'd heard.

BK: Yeah. Our night shift supervisor informed me of that. And when I was there, I didn't even realize it was of course, my staff were in the ICU focusing on their patients. So, yeah, it was very special.

CO: You're going to be made honorary citizens. Have to say, it reminds me of those gestures in Europe when Canadian soldiers would help liberate a town in the midst of the war and then they would be honoured in that way. And it's kind of like you were liberators in a way, weren't you?

BK: Well, I would definitely say it was a war. And I think, you know, just the world itself is still very much in it. And, you know, I think more than liberators, we just came to, again, support and just bring some sort of hope. One of the Cremona hospital doctors had said that they had asked, you know, all around Europe and the EU and no one really took them serious because, hey, it's Italy, it's Lombardy, it's a very well established district of Italy. And I can remember sitting in North Carolina with the vice president of projects, making a call to some government officials in Italy. And you know, them asking for support. And I said, yeah, we can come in and this is what we can do. And, you know, within three days we were there. It's just been a real beautiful partnership.

CO: Okay. So you are going to be flying home soon. Where are you going to head? Are you going to go home or do you have to go on another mission?

BK: No. I'll head back to Boone, North Carolina, where my husband and I right now live. We work at headquarters there. And I'll quarantine for two weeks and then wait for the next phone call.

CO: You deserve a long vacation, you know.

BK: Yeah, I'm going into 21 years of this work with Samaritan's Purse this June, and it doesn't get boring. That's for sure.

CO: Bev thank you for being there. And thanks for speaking with us.

BK: No problem. Thank you very much Carol.

CH: Bev Kauffeldt is a team leader for the charity Samaritan's Purse. We reached her in Cremona, Italy. For more on the story, go to our website. cbc.ca/aih.

[Music]

Oscar’s Wildlife Museum

CH: At this point, after weeks of being inside and getting sick of your own home, mounting a crocodile on your wall might feel like a home improvement idea worth exploring. Maybe you need a vintage CN Railway clock to keep track of your work from home hours. Whatever your fancy, there are plenty of items up for auction at Oscar's Wildlife Museum. For decades, the taxidermy and antiques museum had been a popular tourist destination in McBride, British Columbia. But the family that owns the museum has decided it's time to pack it in, and the collection is now up for auction. Lori Bonneville-Kimpton spoke with Sarah Penton, host of CBC's Radio West, about the family's decision to part with the collection. Here's some of that conversation.

LORI BONNEVILLE KIMPTON: There's full mount wolves and wolverines and lynx and bears and three full mount cougars. There's porcupine, geese, ferrets, basically wildlife from all over the province.

SARAH PENTON: So can you tell me a little bit more about what the museum meant to your dad and to your family?

LORI BONNEVILLE KIMPTON: So dad purchased it -- mom and dad -- as a piece of property, and it was a functioning tourist attraction. And so mom and dad opened the museum to the public and had a campground in the yard for about 10 years and then the highway run right past it. So every day in the summer there were about 350 people from all over the world that would stop in. And then the highway bypassed so mom and dad closed the museum to the public, but still kept it open all these years for, you know, if anyone had company or if anyone was just driving by and heard about it, they would willingly open the door. You know, we know that a lot of people in McBride are disappointed and sad, you know, I'm getting emotional here, that the collection isn't staying in McBride. But we're hoping that, you know, some people will purchase things that are dear to them. And we will also be leaving part of the collection to the little museum that is established in McBride so that some of the history can stay local.

SARAH PENTON: What are your favourite memories of the museum over the years?

LORI BONNEVILLE KIMPTON: So us girls -- well, not me particularly, but I'll throw myself in there, used to work in the museum you know, when it was opening. We'd be kind of the tour guide. And, you know, we loved working in there because we would wander around and we'd see something new every time we met, you know, great friends from all over the world. And, you know, just a wonderful wonderful memories. And I was a schoolteacher in McBride for 30 years and I took my class there every year in our little end of the year field trip. And so a lot of the local kids have kind of a special spot for it.

CH: That was Lori Bonneville-Kimpton speaking with Sarah Penton, host of CBC's Radio West, about her family's decision to auction off the collection at Oscar's Wildlife Museum in McBride, British Columbia. The bidding closes on June 15th.

[Music]

Amazing Chickens

CH: We don't specialize in what's called news you can use on As It Happens. We cover a lot of stuff, but we tend not to air a lot of recipes, household time savers or life hacks because there's a lot of news. And also I refuse to say the phrase "life hacks." Well, tonight we have two interviews from the archives. Both involve chickens. And in the first our guest does offer some helpful real life tips for anyone interested in learning a new skill while you're in isolation: chicken hypnosis. In 1983, former as it happens, host Elizabeth Gray spoke with Livan Gibson of Apache, Oklahoma. His wife had just placed third in a chicken hypnotising contest. And Mr. Gibson himself had grown up learning the craft. So get a pad and paper and your chicken and follow along.

ELIZABETH GRAY: Mr. Gibson, I guess there must be a real knack to hypnotizing chickens eh?

LIVAN GIBSON: Well, it's not that much of a knack. I mean, anybody can do it. A chicken has got a small brain. And just to distract the chicken is the only thing you've got to do.

ELIZABETH GRAY: All right. How do you do it? Tell us some of the ways.

LIVAN GIBSON: Well you can take by placing your chicken on the ground, hold his head straight out in front of him, down against the ground, draw a straight line out about a foot and a half and make a circle coming back around to the chicken. Plus, make sure the head of the chicken stays looking at the line and do not cross that line. If a shadow or bug or anything crosses that line, that chicken will get it.

ELIZABETH GRAY: You mean you draw the line and the chicken is watching you and the chicken get so interested watching the line that it...

LIVAN GIBSON: Just forgets about everything. That's all he thinks about that, it's that line.

ELIZABETH GRAY: And even if a bug crosses the line, he will wake up?

LIVAN GIBSON: Yes ma'am.

ELIZABETH GRAY: You've seen that happen?

LIVAN GIBSON: Yes. Shadow or anything. Anything that crosses the line will distract the chicken. It'll take his mind off of that line.

ELIZABETH GRAY: How else can you hypnotize a chicken?

LIVAN GIBSON: You can place their head under their wing and kind of spin them in a circle about two or three times. Lay them down on the ground on the side so their head is on their wing and they will lay there because they think they are asleep because it's dark under their wings and they will not pull their head out for a period of four-five minutes. Sometimes maybe longer than that. But the one that won this contest down here in Apache, he took his chicken and held it by the feet and by the head and spun it, kind of shook it in a circle about six or seven times, laid him down, and he just laid there. And I don't know how he it works. But he won the contest.

ELIZABETH GRAY: He won the contest because the chicken was hypnotized for longest?

LIVAN GIBSON: Yes, he stayed in a position he put it and told him to stay in the lump. He stayed over ten minutes. He probably would stay there a lot longer. But the other chicken moved so he woke his chicken up.

ELIZABETH GRAY: Is that the longest you've ever seen a chicken out?

LIVAN GIBSON: Yes, ma'am.

ELIZABETH GRAY: Can you talk them into a state of hypnosis?

LIVAN GIBSON: He talks to his. I've never really got out and really talked to one that way but some people say you can.

ELIZABETH GRAY: What sorts of things does he say to the chicken?

LIVAN GIBSON: He just talked to the chicken -- he gets the chicken's attention very much so. He gets the attention of that chicken where the chicken pays attention. In other words, like I say, chicken has got a small brain. And if you get to looking and staring at that chicken, that chicken will look straight at you to pay attention. He won't look off.

ELIZABETH GRAY: So they never shut their eyes.

LIVAN GIBSON: Some of them do. Some don't. If you hypnotize them or whatever it is long enough, they will kind of go back like they go to sleep, they will just shut their eyes and lay there.

ELIZABETH GRAY: And what can you do to them while they're in that state of hypnosis?

LIVAN GIBSON: You can walk around. You can do anything. You can pop your hands, clap your hands. Matter of fact, other chickens are crowing off, the main thing about it is to make your chicken where he will not pay attention to anything around. In other words, you could honk a horn, shoot a gun, do whatever you want. If your chicken don't move, if it'll just stay in one position, it can move its head, but it cannot get up -- in other words, some chickens, you clap your hands real loud, if that chicken jumps up and moves, it was never put under so it'll be disqualified.

ELIZABETH GRAY: So at this contest, I guess you had a whole lot of people running around trying to distract the chickens.

LIVAN GIBSON: Yes. Everybody was talking and laughing and everything else. Kids were running and play -- they were not intentionally trying to. The dogs were barking.

ELIZABETH GRAY: What do you have to do to enter it?

LIVAN GIBSON: It costs you $2 to enter the contest when they have a contest. And they have eliminations, your chicken must stay under for two minutes and then you have another trail. You pair your chickens up. In other words, you go get someone else, and if your chicken gets up for his, well, he's the winner of that one and just goes on down till there's two chickens. And the last one to get up, he wins the prize of $50.

ELIZABETH GRAY: Mr. Gibson, how long have people been hypnotising chickens?

LIVAN GIBSON: Well over probably a period of 12 years, maybe longer than that.

ELIZABETH GRAY: Have you been doing it for that long?

LIVAN GIBSON: Well, I had done it when I was a kid. You know, I'd take chickens and just, you know, be playing with them. Really never think about being in a contest.

ELIZABETH GRAY: And your wife was the third prize winner, I'd take it.

LIVAN GIBSON: Her and one of my uncles. They were tied for third.

ELIZABETH GRAY: Well, thank you very much for talking to us.

LIVAN GIBSON: Yes ma'am.

ELIZABETH GRAY: Goodbye.

LIVAN GIBSON: Goodbye.

CH: From our archives, Elizabeth Gray talking to chicken hypnosis expert Livan Gibson of Apache Oklahoma on February 28, 1983. Nancy Kearns had a different approach to loling chickens...less manipulative. She and the other residents of her retirement home in Milton, Massachusetts, discovered that some birds of a feather molt together, and since it was cold outside, they decided to knit sweaters for their local poultry. Carol spoke with Ms. Kearns in March of 2017.

CO: Nancy, how are the chickens enjoying their new sweaters?

NANCY KEARNS: They seem to be loving the sweaters. When we went to visit the Wakefield estate and gingerly put the sweaters on the chickens, and then put them on the ground, they just sort of trotted away like they were in a fashion show. I think they liked showing them off.

CO: [chuckles] How did you think they were going to react to them?

NANCY KEARNS: We thought that they would feel that they were kind of confining, but the way this sweater works it's almost like a poncho with a, like a rectangular section in the front and in the back, and joined at the shoulders with an opening for their heads. And then if you gently take their wings outside, then they can still flap the wings if it's needed. So our fears that they would sort of peck at them and want them off, that didn't happen so it was good.

CO: How did you decide that chickens needed to have some sweaters?

NANCY KEARNS: Well, there's a wonderful director at the Wakefield estate, her name is Erica Max. And part of what she does is invite schools, inner city schools, especially in Boston, and they have a bus that comes to the Wakefield estate and teaches the children about growing dogwood trees and rhododendrons and chickens and sheep. And it's a wonderful educational opportunity. So she was telling the children that they have a miniature rooster who comes from Malaysia and his breed of rooster is used to warm climates. And so he's very cold, even in the summer he is shivering, and she was worried about him. And some of her chickens are more fragile than the others. And just for the fun of it, she asked me if any of our knitters would be willing to make a sweater. So of course we all laughed at the idea. But I went online and found a pattern from England, and the woman who made the pattern included some pictures of her chickens wearing the sweater. So anyway we got started and despite the fact that our neighbours thought we were a little bit silly, it worked out fine.

CO: [laughs] How many birds are wearing knitwear by you and your friends?

NANCY KEARNS: [laughs] Well, there's probably a flock of about 30 chickens all together.

CO: [laughs]

NANCY KEARNS: It's not a huge place. And when they molt, you might know that in the winter they lose their feathers, and they're almost like a bald person, and they're cold. So they don't all molt at the same time, so it's not like you have to knit a sweater for every chicken. So we made probably about oh, a dozen sweaters.

CO: [laughs]

NANCY KEARNS: In varying sizes.

CO: They can share the sweaters then?

NANCY KEARNS: They can share them, yes.

CO: Do you have any evidence that it’s actually benefiting them? Are they looking warmer, are they laying more eggs?

NANCY KEARNS: They actually are. We started putting them on a month ago, and at that time their production was quite low. Since then, they have started laying again. So we haven't done a scientific study, but we agree with people who say that is better for them.

CO: And what does it look like to see all these chickens and roosters wearing their little jumpers?

NANCY KEARNS: It's really funny. We've been amazed at the outreach of this whole story. And we feel that we're living in kind of a politically rough time right now with a lot of worries and that people needed a fun story that showed two communities working together to benefit chickens. What could be better than that?

CO: But I imagine even for those who are knitting their little chickens sweaters, that it comes as some respite from all the news and the drama going on these days.

NANCY KEARNS: Absolutely. And we have one lady who is deathly afraid of birds of all kinds. So for her to knit a sweater and then pick up a chicken and hold him was beyond her stretch of imagination and she was so proud of herself. We get out of our comfort zone and who knows what'll happen.

CO: The women who are knitting the sweaters are actually the ones who dress the chickens then?

NANCY KEARNS: We did. Yes.

CO: [laughs]

NANCY KEARNS: It’s a two person job. One person holds the chicken, almost like you’d tuck a football under your arm and the other will gently put it over the chicken’s head and then carefully take their little wing outside. So then when you put them on the ground, they trot away as if they like it. So that made us all feel good.

CO: We have done this story before. We've spoken with people who, I think, the people in England who put the pattern up, so we know that this is not the first time. But do you think this idea will catch on?

NANCY KEARNS: I think it will, because backyard chicken coops have been very popular in the suburbs of Boston, something that probably two years ago was unheard of. So some of them have been calling us for the pattern, and if they don't knit themselves, they ask us if we might be willing to knit a few for themselves. We'll have to have a little meeting to decide if we want to reach out even further.

CO: Well I think you're being hit by a big snowstorm today or are getting some pretty nasty weather, so maybe more chickens need your sweaters.

NANCY KEARNS: [chuckles] I think you're right. Yes, they do. They do.

CO: Nancy, it's great to talk to you. Thanks.

NANCY KEARNS: Okey dokey. Very well welcome.

CO: Take care. Bye bye.

NANCY KEARNS: Bye bye.

CH: From our archives, Carol speaking with Nancy Kearns of Milton, Massachusetts, about knitting sweaters for chickens on March 14th, 2017.

[Music]

Bennie Swans

CH: 35 years ago this week, police in Philadelphia dropped a bomb on a local building. The building housed the members of MOVE, a black liberation and back to nature group. And now W. Wilson Goode says an official apology from the city is long overdue. Mr. Goode was Philadelphia's first black mayor and he was in office when the MOVE bombing took place. He says the path to healing for the victims and their families starts with an official apology however late it may be. On the day of the bombing as it happened, spoke with Bennie Swans, the director of the Crisis Intervention Network in Philadelphia. He'd been involved in negotiations between MOVE and the police. From May 13th, 1985, here's Mr Swan's speaking with host Elizabeth Gray.

BENNIE SWANS: Let me try to look at what the issues are now. I'm not going to do anything (inaudible) -- and I urge people to look at it objectively, to try to look at the position of the resident, to look at the position of the city, to look at the fact that everyone turned out in a lose-lose situation. MOVE lost. The residents of a block lost. The neighbourhood residents lost. The city lost. I can say that at six o'clock that morning, I was home in my bedroom and I heard the weapons. I was in Vietnam. And clearly a fear, a fright went through me. It made me reflect on a number of firefights that I was involved in.

ELIZABETH GRAY: That bomb, 60 houses destroyed. A terrible fire. Was that the right thing to do?

BENNIE SWANS: Anybody can say what should have happened in that day. My role here now is to try to help the neighbourhood to come together, to try to ensure that our young people don't get caught up in this and act out where they make a bad situation worse, where they place themselves in jeopardy or place other people in jeopardy where additional property is damaged. I'm basically an optimist, even in a tough situation like this I'm an optimist.

CH: From our archives, that was Bennie Swans director of the Crisis Intervention Network in Philadelphia. He spoke with former, As It Happens, host Elizabeth Gray on the day of the MOVE bombing in Philadelphia, May 13th, 1985. This week, the city's former mayor, W. Wilson Goode, is asking for an official apology.

[Music]

SHOW ANNOUNCER: The Quiz Kids! resented by the makers of Alka-Seltzer and One-A-Day Brand Vitamin. If a brick weighs one pound plus one half brick, how much does the brick weigh? That's the first question for the quiz kids tonight. Here they are! The Quiz Kids! [Applause and music]

CH: First on radio and then on TV, The Quiz Kids were household names touring America, raising gobs of money for the war effort. But even among these remarkable children, Joel stood out. He was earnest, sometimes overly so, unable to perform complex mathematical calculations in his head. He was said to go to sleep each night, softly singing the multiplication tables to himself, and he regularly bested the celebrity guests on the show, including Jack Benny.

VOICE 1: 5 and a half times two equals 11. 11 times 3...33...34 and 4.7.

VOICE 2: 34 and 4.7 is right! Good for you. [Applause]

VOICE 3: I had 33 and a half. I was just a little bit off there. I'm sorry. I must had figured that wrong. Joel after the broadcast will you get together with the judge and explain it to him.

VOICE 1: Well you have to multiply by 2. [Crowd laughs]

CH: Joel Kupperman spent a little more than a decade on the show from age 5 to age 16 when he left for university. But despite the widespread admiration, he found the experience scarring and his family knew the subject was strictly off limits. His wife said if someone brought up the Quiz Kids or even television, he would walk away. In part, that was because even as he was loved, he was equally loathed, particularly by other children. In a rare interview in 1982, he told The New York Times that being a bright child among your peers was not the best way to grow up in America. Joel Kupperman died in April. He was 83 years old.

[Music]

Bulgaria Remains

Guest: Jean-Jacques Hublin

CH: One tooth and six bone fragments doesn't seem like a major haul, but that small seeming find has meant big revelations about ancient Europe. And the man behind their discovery says they could help demystify the period during which Homo sapiens gradually replaced Neanderthals. Jean-Jacques Hublin is the director of the Department of Human Evolution at the Max Planck Institute in Germany. He's one of the people who was in a Bulgarian cave when these ancient human remains were discovered. We reached Mr. Hublin in Paris.

CO: Jean-Jacques let's start with the items that you found in this cave. Can you describe what they are?

JEAN-JACQUES HUBLIN: Well, this is a pyloric sites, a cave where humans were living more than 45,000 years ago and they left bones of animals they hunted and butchered and also stone tools and also some kind of more precious elements like bone tools and also pendants that they were making of cave bears.

CO: Like bear's teeth?

JEAN-JACQUES HUBLIN: Yeah. Yeah.

CO: Wow. And this is what you discovered. You believe it to be 45,000 years ago. So you think they're Homo sapiens are not Neanderthals.

JEAN-JACQUES HUBLIN: Well, in this time period, it could be both. But we're lucky enough to discover a human tooth and also small bits of bones which were identified as human by molecular techniques. And then we could analyze the DNA in this piece of bones. And it proves these humans were close to us, modern humans.

CO: So humans around 45,000-46,000 years ago in these caves in Bulgaria.

JEAN-JACQUES HUBLIN: Yes, exactly. And this is much older than anything we had in Europe before that could be called modern humans. So the only human quite all that has been directly dated by radiocarbon in Europe so far was about 40,000 years old.

CO: What do you make of the fact that there are these other artifacts like the tools and also even more interestingly, that there are pendants, a kind of jewelry that was found?

JEAN-JACQUES HUBLIN: What this kind of artifacts tell us is that we can connect these humans with later population that we have in Europe doing all sort of I would say fancy things in terms of stone tools and also art, you know, it's the time when people start free to paint animals and sometimes humans on the walls of the caves.

CO: And these humans who had arrived in this part, were they learning that from others or had they brought these skills from where they came?

JEAN-JACQUES HUBLIN: No, we think that they brought this with them. We have sites with the same kind of technology, you know, in Israel, in Lebanon, in Turkey, in these places they have the same kind of stone tools, but they don't have pendants made from teeth of animals, but pendants made of shells.

CO: But again, being an area where there are Neanderthals there's, of course, this debate about whether Neanderthals started making art and jewelry on their own or did they learn it from Homo sapiens. What's your answer to that question?

JEAN-JACQUES HUBLIN: Well, the data at this site is quite exciting because it means that when the first modern humans arrived in Eastern Europe, there were still Neanderthals in the West. And these Neanderthals survived for the next eight thousand years before being replaced by modern humans. So there is a long time for this possible interaction between modern humans and Neanderthals. And the interesting thing is that during this time period, we know that there were some cases of hybridization. I mean, they mated sometimes. And we also see something happening -- we see these very last Neanderthals after, say, 45,000 years ago, starting to produce also almost the same kind of pendants with carnivore teeth that are pierced. But now we know that modern humans moved into Europe with the same kind of objects much before Neanderthal themselves produced them.

CO: I'm just picturing these Neanderthals going to workshops for making crafts with the Homo sapiens. [Chuckles]

JEAN-JACQUES HUBLIN: Well, I don't think that was the case [chuckles]. But, you know, 8000 years, it's a long time to have interactions between groups of humans and especially if you want to mate and produce a hybrids, you have to get rather close. And by doing so, which practically probably means that some individuals were exchanging or moving from one group to another. Then these individuals were carrying their own traditions and knowhow and et cetera. And if technology or any kind of invention is interesting, increase the fitness is going to be adopted by the neighbours, even if their neighbours are not your best friend. But they will be smart enough to adopt the thing that's interesting. For example, in terms of weaponry for a hunter gatherers, we see the very last Neanderthals producing the same kind of weaponry that we find with the early modern humans.

CO: So the modern humans got together with some tools and trinkets with the Neanderthals at this point. So does it change what you understand about the Neanderthals or Homo sapiens and when and how and what they did in Europe?

JEAN-JACQUES HUBLIN: Well, I think for a long time we had this picture and that there was a sort of a wave of modern humans moving into Europe and replacing the Neanderthals. And most people concede that this was something rather abrupt, you know, lasting one or two millennia, but not much more. But now we have this much more complex picture with modern humans moving into Eastern Europe. And so it's a much more complex picture of this portion of history that we have. It also shows something is that there was not a sort of overwhelming superiority of modern humans over Neanderthals.

CO: All right. It's very interesting that you discovered in this cave Jean-Jacques. And thank you for telling it to us.

JEAN-JACQUES HUBLIN: Thank you.

CH: Jean-Jacques Hublin r is the lead researcher behind a new study of forty five thousand year old human remains discovered in a Bulgarian cave. We reached him in Paris.

[Music]

Invasive Jellyfish

CH: This week, Princeton University announced its first ever black valedictorian. And it only took 274 years. Nicholas Johnson is a Canadian from Montreal. He studied financial engineering and operations research at Princeton. Since the announcement, Mr. Johnson has gotten calls and congratulatory messages from the likes of New Jersey Senator Cory Booker and even Michelle Obama. His biggest cheerleader, though, is right here at home. Nicholas Johnson's father, Dr. Dexter Johnson, is an oral surgeon in Ottawa. He spoke with Robyn Bresnahan on Ottawa. Morning.

DEXTER JOHNSON: It's exhilarating. It is as if the world was waiting for a happy story in this COVID environment. It validates Nicholas's work. He is a very hard worker. I mean, we knew he was doing well through Princeton all along. He only got A's and A-pluses, but I didn't realize that he would actually walk away from Princeton with the prize of prizes. And it's also a milestone for Princeton. Princeton has a somewhat controversial history when it comes to slavery. The first nine presidents were slave owners. Princeton actually had auctions of slaves on their property. So for us, this is a major milestone, not only for black people, but the world in general. Just move this forward. And we want to get to a point where this is a normal thing. Nicholas was fortunate in that he ran into black male role models on campus. People who are professors who actually encouraged him to get involved. There's one Professor Massey who did his Phd at Stanford. He's in the department that Nicholas was studying in. And Professor Massey -- I've never met him, but he just seemed to have taken Nicholas under his wings and just continued to push him. Nicholas is the first one through that door at Princeton. And now we need some more. We want a parade. He leads the parade. We want more people on line.

CH: Dr. Dexter Johnson, father of Nicholas Johnson, Princeton University's first ever black valedictorian. Dr. Johnson was speaking with Ottawa morning host Robyn Bresnahan. Nicholas Johnson's speech will be presented at a virtual commencement on May 31st.

[Music]

Emerson Weber

CH: The famous unofficial motto of the US Postal Service goes "Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds." You could add nor pandemic. And Emerson Weber really appreciates that. Ms. Weber is 11 years old and lives in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. She has no phone. She has pen pals. Even before COVID-19, she wrote and sent a lot of letters and decorated the envelopes she sent them in. After her family went into isolation, she left a letter in her mailbox for her mail carrier. She wrote "I wanted to thank you for taking my letters and delivering them. You were very important to me." And the next thing she knew, she was getting letters from appreciative postal workers across the US. Boxes of them full of stamps and personal stories. Then this week, another box inside were some T-shirts, a handwritten letter in a decorated envelope and a fancy wax seal stamp so Ms. Webber can add yet another touch to her own letters. "I couldn't get new ones in time," Taylor Swift wrote. "So I sent you mine." So Emerson Weber is absolutely freaking out. And now Ms. Weber can thank her mail carrier once again because nothing kept him from this particular swift completion.

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May 14, 2020 Episode Transcript

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