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The Current Transcript for August 20, 2020

Host: Duncan McCue

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

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Inexperienced Canadian campers leaving waste behind, and risking injury and animal conflict, warn experts

Guests: Nick Frank, Stephen Hui

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Residents living at Mount Allison is definitely the way to go. There's always friends around, there's always people that you can go talk to. You're going to always find people that are in the same classes as you and residents.

DUNCAN MCCUE: Any other year and that promotional video for residents living at Mount Allison University is probably pretty accurate. This year, that first week that's filled with new friends and campus adventures is going to look quite different. We'll catch up with a student who is a few days into her dorm room quarantine. And we head outside to a lonely stretch of road in Banff National Park. How lonely, you might ask.

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To the extent that locals are calling it the Bow Valley poop way rather than the parkway.

DM: It's being called the poop way because the usually busy highway has been overrun with animals, thanks to COVID. It's close to cars. We'll look at how the pandemic is changing, how we use our great outdoors for better and for worse. And we'll continue our presentation of the CBC podcast Uncover: Dead Wrong. I'm Duncan McCue. This is The Current.

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DM: It's the summer of the staycation. Vacations in Europe or American road trips are out. For most of us, instead, there is your backyard, the local lake, the greenspace down the road, or take in some of Canada's beautiful national parks, with a few COVID-19 alterations, of course. Take a Banff National Park in Alberta, for example. Part of a busy highway, there has been completely closed to cars. It's part of an effort to reduce the number of visitors to a popular hiking trail. Now you have to cycle or walk to get there. The CBC's Alex Zabjek, packed up her family and their bikes for that trip.

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ALEX ZABJEK: It's a cool summer morning, and I'm at Cassell Junction near the town of Banff. This is a staging area of sorts for the people riding the Bow Valley Parkway.

ALEX HENDERSON: Well, we've heard it's very safe. Obviously with no cause.

ALEX ZABJEK: Alex Henderson is attaching a chariot to his bike. His kids are strapping on their helmets.

ALEX HENDERSON: So we've got a Johnsen's canyon ahead. The road was closed, but we're really excited to find out that we could cycle. So we've got the whole family here. We've got the bike chariot and all the kids. So looking forward to it.

ALEX ZABJEK: So how old are your kids?

CHILD 1: I'm nine.

CHILD 2: I'm six.

ALEX ZABJEK: And he's two. So would you ever try and do kind of a tougher ride and bounce with such a young crew if it wasn't for the whole road closure?

ALEX HENDERSON: No, we only do this because the roads closed today. We're excited.

ALEX ZABJEK: My husband and I are looking forward to it, too. The eight year old wasn't so sure, but he jumps on his bike and we've head out. All along the smooth road. We keep checking behind us, watching for cars and trucks. It takes a few minutes for it to register that none are coming. Like, everywhere you look at them, the scenery here is spectacular. Thick forests and bright mountain flowers on either side, views of mountain cliffs and peaks in the distance. And riding a bike through it, there's a joy of swerving from one side of a newly paved highway to the other. Just because you can. Earlier this year, at the peak of COVID-19 shutdowns, Banff National Park closed all of its secondary roads, like this one, to limit operations to essential services. Restrictions started to lift in June, but the national park decided to keep this 25 kilometre stretch closed to cars. It leads to the popular tourist destination, Johnson's Canyon. This is the only way to get there. It's usually one of the most popular stops in the park. There's a gift shop and cafe on that day. I was the only customer inside, so it wasn't hard to find the owner. Tim Noakes runs Johnson's Canyon Lodge in bungalows. We head onto the patio watching cyclists cruise into the empty parking lot. This summer, Noakes installed a bike rack for the first time.

NOAKES: On a normal day in a given any given summer. We're just sitting on the patio right now here at Johnston Canyon, and I'd be looking out at probably seven to 10 tour buses. Each bus would have approximately 50 tourists. We would have the parking lot would be completely filled with cars. And then Parks Canada has three or four parking lots. That would be overflowing, which each parking lot has several hundred parking spaces. So this would be an absolute anthill of people that the volume of people would just reflect that this is the most popular hike in Canada, because the hike is probably the greatest scenic value for the least amount of effort.

ALEX ZABJEK: The hike is a one kilometre journey on a paved path leading to the lower falls. You could do it in high heels with a cup of coffee in your hand if you wanted to. The payoff: a gushing waterfall and dramatic rock face that surrounds you on all sides. It's usually crowded with people. A line-up for the best use today. We have it pretty much to ourselves, a chance to goof off and take pictures.

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ALEX ZABJEK: Right. Good advice. And I managed not to drop the phone into the water. Tim Noakes guesses this trail usually gets more than 4000 visitors a day this year, maybe 200. He sees all kinds pulling in; elite athletes, families, seniors on bikes. And of course, at night it's almost empty.

NOAKES: One of the side effects is the animals in the evening have been using the Bow Valley Parkway as a wildlife corridor, whereas normally they're in the forest trudging through up and down the valley with the absence of vehicles. They're using the actual roadway to go up and down and leaving their mark with scatt all over the parkway, whether it's wolf, grizzly bear, moose, elk fox, Pine Martin. To the extent that locals are calling it the Bow Valley poop way rather than the parkway.

ALEX ZABJEK: Most people here are from Calgary. It's only an hour away and weekends can get busy. But in any other year, people come from all over the world to see this canyon and they've been hiking it for almost 100 years. Tim Noakes's grandparents started this operation in the mid 1920s. They built the original trail.

NOAKES: Of course, the dirty thirties and the depression hit in the 30s and then World War happened and in the 1940s, it was very lean years. I'm bolstered by that sense of continuity of history, knowing that we will be fine. You know, we just have to sort of be safe and be intelligent and. And I'm looking forward to looking back and thinking, well, that was an anomaly and an interesting blip. But I don't believe it's anything going to be like the hardship of the Depression or or World War Two or anything like that.

ALEX ZABJEK: He's not sure what the fall will bring or next summer, for that matter. For now, a few cars are being allowed on the road. If they have reservations at the lodge or restaurant and Tim Noakes is hoping the road might fully reopen in October, but nothing is official. For now, he says he's trying to appreciate what an amazing experience this is for visitors. He compares it to seeing the Eiffel Tower or the statue of David without the crowds. A once in a lifetime experience.

DM: Alex Zabjek is a producer on the current cove, it might mean fewer visitors on that one popular trail in Banff, but in other parts of the country, it's having the opposite effect. People tired of being cooped up are heading out into the great outdoors and in some cases making it not so great. Stephen Hui he is the author of 105 Hikes in and around southwestern British Columbia. And Nick Frank is the president of the Nordegg Community Association in Alberta. Hello to both of you.

NICK FRANK: Hello.

STEPHEN HUI: Hi.

DM: Nick Frank, we just heard about a relatively empty trail in Banff. What's the situation where you are, in the area known as the Big Hornback country?

NICK FRANK: The situation is dramatically different. We're seeing parking lots that are overfull, people parking down the highway in just an area that doesn't have the critical infrastructure to handle the sheer volume of tourists that it's seeing this year.

DM: Are there any kind of controls being put in on how many people are allowed in the wilderness areas near you?

NICK FRANK: Unfortunately, being crown land and the lack of ability of enforcement, they do have laws. But the area is only serviced by one wildlife officer and a couple of RCMP officers which are working to try and cover 19, a thousand square kilometres of total landmass.

DM: Busy, so busy, busy. Stephen, who are you and what kind of changes are you seeing on the trails close to Vancouver, at least?

STEPHEN HUI: Yes. Because they have a busy part of the day pass system on some of the most popular trails within the provincial parks, there's, you know, somewhat popular trails outside the parks or in parks without a day pass system there. They're becoming overrun, like the situation, you know, in Alberta with the cars all the way down the road and people camping in areas where there's only, you know, 10 tent pads. You know, there was one place, 60 tents up one weekend. So, yes, places are getting, you know, packed.

DM: Boy! So what kind of impact is is that kind of overcrowding having on the land that you're seeing, Nick Frank?

NICK FRANK: For generally most, the cameras are very well. But there is always that one percent and because of the large increase, that one percent is always the one that stays close to the highway and we're seeing more garbage. We're seeing human waste. We're seeing animal conflicts. We just recently had a black bear put down for somebody failing to clean the garbage up before they went to bed one night. And we're seeing more and more of those conflicts occurring.

DM: Are these folks that are new to camping that are not aware of the kind of the campsite rule, which is to, you know, leave a campsite to better off than you found it or what accounts for it? Or is it just the traffic?

NICK FRANK: I think it has more to do with the increase in traffic and a lot of new people entering the backcountry when we talk about the Big Horn area, we talk about a remote wilderness environment. You know, you're kind of situated dead centre between Fanfan Jaspar and just outside of the national park. So it doesn't have the same infrastructure, the same rules, the same emergency response that is available. The reality is most of the areas are non serviced by cell phone. If you get hurt or you need emergency services, you may be driving half an hour, 45 minutes to get that cell phone call out.

DM: Steven Hui, you mentioned the day pass system that the B.C. Park says has set up what other kinds of ways are being used to try to address some of the overcrowding on the trails.

STEPHEN HUI: Well, a lot of some of these trails are staffed by volunteers, basically they're maintained by the B.C. Mountaineering Club and in their case, with one popular site, they issued a kind of a voluntary call to ask people to stay away while they dealt with the influx of people and cleaned up the place. So other than that, there are no restrictions other than trying to find a parking space.

DM: I interviewed a team member of the North Shore Search and Rescue earlier this summer who told me that there are definitely people who are were biting off more than they can chew just because they're so eager to get out in the outdoors. And some of them for the first time wearing crocs, that kind of thing. What are you hearing at this point in the summer, Stephen Hui, about search and rescue and what kind of stories about they're hearing from people calling for help?

STEPHEN HUI: Yes. Definitely the search and rescue teams here report being extremely busy session on the weekend. And you had Coquitlam search and rescue had to go in and take out 17 campers at [unintelligible] Lake. It's a remote place in Mike Bloomberg, provincial party here. And they were just, you know, uncomfortable. They're floatplane couldn't pick them up because of bad weather. You know, there was no emergency. No one was hurt. They were just, you know, hungry and a little miserable because of the bad weather. And so that's a bit, you know, biting off more than you can chew.

DM: Nick Frank now Stephen, who he's talking about, about the search and rescue, who are often volunteers. And, of course, some of the Back country areas are cleaned up by volunteers. What kind of discussion is there about user fees?

NICK FRANK: The user fees in Alberta and a very positive discussion for the most part on social media. The bigger issue is that it needs to be handle at a provincial level and there hasn't been a movement from the provincial government on that. You know, we're seeing the same increases, search and rescue teams constantly heading out. We actually just recently had three tragedies related directly to inexperience and being in an environment that you're just not ready for. At a local waterfall called Crescent Falls, the beauty is you can drive literally just about to the waterfall. And it's a great, easy access. But the danger of not knowing why those guardrails are there, why the fences are there and why the signs are there can lead to ultimate tragedies.

DM: There were deaths at the falls.

NICK FRANK: There was actually a family of mother and father, and I believe it was a cousin that had passed away. All while the family's children watched it happen.

DM: So what can be done then to try to educate people who may be new to the outdoors, but who are really keen to try to explore the wilderness, especially during a pandemic?

NICK FRANK: I think it comes down to a localised level of partnerships within the provinces where you can create volunteers at staging areas or even hiring staff at staging areas to explain the dangers, the trail they're about to take somebody that can live interact because we know signage and this continued putting up billboards and long term education isn't working currently. We need to find a better solution that helps protect people and protect the environment.

DM: Stephen Hui, what kind of efforts are being made to try to educate people when you get to 60 tents in a place that's only designed for 10 campsites? So what kind of efforts are being made to let people know what the protocols of camping are?

STEPHEN HUI: There's trailheads, signage. There are volunteers educating people. I think this is pandemic highlighted the need for more B.C. Parks funding and rangers to get the message out on site.

DM: What about funding for trail maintenance, that kind of thing, often, again, done by volunteers.

STEPHEN HUI: Yeah, that's it. There needs to be, definitely needs to be more funding, more regular funding so we can have proper trails being built, trails being maintained, especially the really popular trails and having a wider network of trails that are available so people can spread out.

DM: Nick Frank, what do you want people to know about why you love your part of the country, the big horn, and why you want to try to keep travel there sustainable?

NICK FRANK: The biggest thing is the access to random camping, the ability to have the freedom of the views like the national park, the pristine glacier fed lakes, the beautiful mountain ranges, well, having the opportunity to find your own camping area, have some peace and tranquillity without being within a park setting. The ability to develop your own campsite without being in that campground where there is one hundred other people near you. That is probably the most enjoyable part of The Big Horn backcountry. But the big problem is without some critical infrastructure and some sustainability around that, we're going to lead to more and more damage to the point where there is going to have to be a shutdown. So we need to develop our sustainability as a group of users and with the provincial support.

DM: Do you think these numbers are heading out to the wilderness are just an uptick because of the pandemic, or are they going to keep on going? I mean, right now, you walk into a outfitters store and the shelves are just bare of camping supplies. Is that going to keep on going?

NICK FRANK: Well, I think you're going to see the purchasing a carrying supplies go down over the next few years because you use it more than once. But the reality is, I think a lot of people have now got a taste for what is the freedom of crown land camping. What is the big horn backcountry area and why is a staycation so amazing to have. And I don't think we're going to see a major drop in those numbers now because of the beauty and the freedoms that come with it.

DM: As Stephen Hui, what's your top tip for people who want to get out in nature without the crowds?

Well, yes, definitely, I mean, if you pull up to a parking lot and it's overflowing, then you maybe should go to your plan B or Plan C and find it, find a place in the valley next door, because there's usually something close by that is not crowded and still quiet. So, just don't think about other people. Let's keep groups small [unintelligible]. Do not hug the only viewpoint on the hike for lunch. Let everyone else enjoy the area, too.

DM: There are areas, though, that are closer to the highways I'm thinking of Joffre Lakes in B.C., which is probably one of the most Instagramed lakes anywhere in Canada. So are those kinds of sites going to start to change when we're seeing so many people flocking to them?

STEPHEN HUI: Well, the interesting thing about Joffre Legs is it's been closed all summer, so it's been empty. But yes, places that are close to highways and major roads that that don't have a day pass system, they are definitely seeing the impacts from too much traffic and, you know, poop and trash and also just the lack of authorities on those drills.

DM: Nick Frank, can you give us some tips if if for folks who are thinking about heading out into the back country, they want to start enjoying camping and hiking and canoeing, that kind of thing? How should they keep it fun but also make sure that they're treating the land with respect?

NICK FRANK: You know, the biggest thing is packing. Pack out what you pack in continue to develop your plans ahead of time. Understand the area you're going. If you're new to it, stay closer to cell phone service. Stay closer to a community that can support you with the critical infrastructure. And as you get more experience, then spread farther or deeper into the back country, because we have areas where you won't touch a paved road for two or three hours and an hour, that might be no cell phone service. So understanding the risk you're taking before you take it and get yourself in that situation where it's uncomfortable, dangerous, life threatening.

DM: And Stephen Hui, I mean, hopefully people will be turning off their music at night and perhaps leaving some extra wood for the next cappers. But what advice do you have for people who are heading out on hikes, perhaps for the first time this summer?

STEPHEN HUI: Yes. Do some research about the area. Pack the 10 essentials. Let someone know where you're going and when you're coming out and Don't build fires in the Alpine and just tread lightly on the environment.

DM: All good advice. Do you guys have trips planned for yourself toward the end of the summer?

STEPHEN HUI: Absolutely.

DM: Where are you headed?

NICK FRANK: Completely my family's it headed for a week.

DM: Where are you headed?

NICK FRANK: We're headed into the big Hornback country. We're going to go to some random camping in a nice quiet spot that's about three and a half hours from Nordberg into the back country on windy gravel roads.

DM: Nice. And Stephen Hui?

STEPHEN HUI: Yes, I've been up in to see the Sky country recently and will probably be heading out back there.

DM: All right. I both enjoy your trips. Thanks for for sharing your thoughts on this.

STEPHEN HUI: Thank you.

NICK FRANK: Thank you for having us.

DM: Stephen Hui is the author of 105 Hikes in and around Southwestern British Columbia. He joined us from Vancouver. Nick Frank is the president of the Nordegg Community Association. He joined us from Nordegg, Alberta. We'd love to hear your thoughts on this story. Have the trails in your area been blissfully empty or are you tripping over other hikers? Are you heading out into nature more this this year or feeding a lifelong love of the wilderness? You can Tweet us @TheCurrentCBC or find us on Facebook. The CBC News is next. And then first year university, it's always full of new experiences. Residents. Roommates. Quarantine. Well, that last one might be just this year. We'll head to Mount Allison University in New Brunswick after the break, where students from outside the Atlantic bubble are spending a lot of time alone in their new dorm rooms. I'm Duncan McCue, and you're listening to The Current.

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Starting university by isolating in your dorm room for two weeks; Episode four of CBC podcast Uncover: Dead Wrong

Guest: Noelle Cook

DM: Hi, I'm Duncan McCue. And you're listening to The Current.

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DM: Still to come, Episode four of the CBC podcast Uncover: Dead Wrong. But first, we head deep inside the Atlantic bubble.

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DM: Going away to university is usually a pretty exciting time for first year students moving into residence, wandering around the campus. And of course, the parties are nothing like a pandemic to change that experience in almost every way. Take Mount Allison University in Sackville, New Brunswick, for example. Students who are coming from outside of the Atlantic bubble have to isolate for two weeks. Noelle Cook is one of them. We've reached her. Where else? In her resident's room. Hi Noelle.

NOELLE COOK: Hello.

DM: You're on day six of yourself. Isolation. How are you keeping yourself entertained right now?

NOELLE COOK: I'm not going to lie to you, the Internet is a huge helper there, especially Netflix and a lot of streaming platforms keeping me busy.

DM: What's it like being stuck in your room for how long? How many hours a day?

NOELLE COOK: If there's 24 hours a day, we get two hours outside. So around 22.

DM: 22 hours in your room. How are you holding up?

NOELLE COOK: Honestly, things have been pretty good. It's nice having those scheduled outside times to be able to see the other residences, make friends before school starts and all that kind of stuff.

DM: You're allowed to spend two hours outside of your room to go outside, I assume, I go to the bathroom. How strict are they following that?

NOELLE COOK: So the bathroom breaks are included in those two hours. Those are two separate one hour periods of scheduled outdoor time to get some fresh air. But we are supervised. We have to wear masks as well as social distance from each other while outside.

DM: And what about heading to the cafeteria or common rooms? Are those open?

NOELLE COOK: No, they're not. Our meals are delivered directly to us. And then they knock on our door and we have to wait for them to leave. We open the door, take our food, eat it. And then we put our garbage from the food outside the door and they collect that later on.

DM: It's all about keeping people safe. Are you worried about Colvard on campus?

NOELLE COOK: Honestly, no. We've all been a fairly, you know, respecting the rules, respecting that the university is just trying to keep us safe. Well, sometimes you can feel a little bit like jail. We're all just kind of we all understand the process that it's all precautionary. We want to protect the Atlantic bubble as much as, you know, the residents of the plastic bubble want to keep it safe because we'd love to be a part of it.

DM: A nice jail, mind you. But nevertheless, what I understand, though, because you're there, you know, to have a first year university, I'm sure you must be extremely excited about wanting to meet new people, make new friends. But how are you going about doing that when you have to physical distance at the same time?

NOELLE COOK: So around the beginning of the semester or the beginning of the summer, really, they all put us in this fake Facebook group with one another so we could get to know each other. So some of us when we arrived, like we already knew each other. And even with the outdoor periods, we are getting to know each other. So it's not completely loathsome, which is good. But, yeah, we are still getting to know each other. It's just it's different. But I can't say it's any worse.

DM: It's so different. I mean, there are listeners who do remember their first weeks, I'm sure. And just being crowded and excited. What about you? I mean, what are you, like, feeling during this this pretty strange situation?

NOELLE COOK: Honestly, I'm a little biased because I am hoping to major in history and this is such a historic event that I'm honestly like, of course, it's awful. But in a year's time, it's going to be something, you know, we'll be a part of. And it's different, but it's just as exciting in my point of view.

DM: Did you consider taking a gap year?

NOELLE COOK: I did. I did consider that, especially coming from Ontario, where the numbers are so high that a lot of- most universities are completely online. And most of the people I know from my hometown just deferred completely and are all taking gap years. So I did consider it. But university has been something I've been looking forward to since my second day of high school. So I honestly, I just couldn't. And considering I had the option to come about Allison's, it's in the Atlantic bubble, it was a no brainer for me.

DM: When are you out a self isolation.

NOELLE COOK: My last day is August 29th. I arrived on the 14th.

DM: And what's the first thing you're going to do when you're when you're free to roam around campus a bit.

NOELLE COOK: I'm going to start running.

DM: Nice. Is there something that that you were really looking forward to about first year that you won't be able to do?

NOELLE COOK: For the most part, I was looking forward to, you know, going into your classes and talking to other people I love, like going out of my way to, like, say hello to people in classes and stuff like that to get to know them. So I'm not sure how that'll work with, you know, like seating and social distancing and masks and all that incorporated in our schedule. So we've got kind of out of the way, mostly parties I'm going to miss. I was really excited for those.

DM: I bet. Well, listen, you have a great first year and stay safe and enjoy a a mount A.

NOELLE COOK: Thank you so much.

DM: Noelle Cook moved from Bolton, Ontario, to Sackville, New Brunswick for her first year at Mount Allison University, and she has been self isolating in her resident's room.

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DM: All summer, we've been bringing you the best of CBC podcasts. Today, we continue with the investigative series Uncover: Dead Wrong. On November 12th, 1995, 28 year old Brenda Way was found murdered behind an apartment building in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, four years later. Glen Assoun was convicted of the murder, but immediately started to work on his appeal. Here's host Tim Bousquet with Episode four Fresh Evidence.

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FRED: OK. So what I did is I came up here to see how long it would take for Brenda to get from here to where she was murdered. OK.

TIM BOUSQUET: This is Fred Fitzsimmons, the private investigator who was hired for Glen Assoun's appeal. Fred and I are going to drive the route that Brinda Way may have taken the night of her murder and see how that contradicts the statement of Robin Hardwick. A taxi driver told police he saw Brenda at 4:05 a.m. she was hitchhiking. Robyn claimed to have seen Glen near the scene of the murder at 4:15 a.m., 10 minutes later, and that Glen said she is gone.

TIM BOUSQUET: You said she was seen in this building at what time?

VOICE: According to the witness, it would be around 4:05. I'm going to run the stopwatch and we're going to drive as quickly as we can. Following the speed limit speed of. Now we'll turn right on an April street. I drive this route quite often because I go to the grocery store and my house is up this way. So this is absolutely the shortest, most direct way. And here you are. Turn around [unintelligible] lake 109 is the first apartment building here. So let's pull over right [unintelligible]. Let's go back then. This place always gives me the willies to think about this brutal murder happening right here. So here we are at exactly the murder scene. So I had to stop. And that was seven minutes, 27 seconds. So had Brenda left at exactly 4:05 and got picked up right away. Conceivably, she could have gotten right here at four and have been murdered. And then Glenn, out on the street immediately after, it just, it's, it doesn't add up.

TIM BOUSQUET: No.

VOICE: No time for the murder. No time for a pre murder. No time for anything. Even though we don't know who the culprit is, there's no question in my mind it wasn't Glen. And there hasn't been a question since a month after he started looking into it. You don't have to be a genius to do an investigation. You just have to follow it up.

TIM BOUSQUET: On September 17th, 1999, the jury found Glen Eugene Assoun guilty of the second degree murder of Brenda Way. Exactly three months later, on December 17th. Justice Suzanne Hood sentenced Glen to life in prison with no chance of parole for 18 and a half years before he was sentence. Glenn started to work on his appeal from his jail cell in his own handwriting. Glen spelled out the reasons he should get a new trial. Glen reached out for help with his appeal. He wrote a letter to Robyn Hurricane Carter. You might have heard of Carter. He was the boxer whose wrongful conviction was the subject of a Bob Dylan song and then a movie. By 1999, Carter was living in Toronto and was the executive director of the Association in Defence of the Wrongly Convicted. Carter responded immediately. But he told Glen he couldn't do anything until Glen exhausted all his appeal possibilities. Eventually, though, Glen did get help.

JEROME: I can't remember we've even spoken by telephone at that point, but we went to his little room in the prison and I don't have time to waste. I'm not much for small chat. We've got a guy just been convicted of murder. He's serving life in jail and he represent himself at trial. So he needs a lawyer.

TIM BOUSQUET: Lawyer Jerome Kennedy remembers his first meeting with Glenn at Dorchester Penitentiary in New Brunswick.

JEROME: So I go into this room and the room was literally about three telephone boxes. He's sitting across the desk. I think at that point had the black dark glasses, and he proceeds to tell me he's innocent. And after 20 years in the criminal justice system, 20 odd years or lots of people told me they were innocent, you know, so that's not unusual. Well, he won't stop. So finally, I literally yell at him, will you shut the F up? I'm here to try to help you get a lawyer, because you obviously haven't done a very good job and there was a shouting match that went on for a while because he said, I'm telling you, I'm innocent and you're not listening. You're like everyone else. I said, no, I'm not. I want to get you a lawyer.

TIM BOUSQUET: Glen remembers the meeting as well.

GLEN: We almost get into a fistfight. [Unintelligible] Jerome didn't know the players. And I remember him asking me, you know, he said, what do you think our chances are? I've thought about it for a minute, I said 50 50. He said, I think it's more now. I said you don't know the players, Jerome Kennedy is a fine lawyer, but Jerome Kennedy is from Newfoundland. He knew nothing about McDonnell or the crown or system in Nova Scotia and propensity behaviour of wrongful convictions that come out of that same God damned courthouse that Supreme Court and Nova Scotia.

TIM BOUSQUET: How'd you find out about Glen Assoun?

JEROME: Glen, apparently, or someone on Glen's behalf had contacted the AIDWYC office in Toronto and I was the only representative of AIDWYC in Atlantic Canada, in fact, the only lawyer in Atlantic Canada who was doing any work for AIDWYC.

TIM BOUSQUET: AIDWYC is the Association in Defence of the Wrongly Convicted. That was the original name for what is now known as innocence Canada.

JEROME: So I think it was Glen's brother contacted me. He indicated that Glen had gone to trial unrepresented, which is always a disastrous. The fact that the system can allow an individual to go to trial on murder unrepresented. So right away, I knew that the case had to be looked at. And then what I understood was that Glen Assoun was going to appeal without a lawyer. And I'm going, no, this can't happen. You can't have an individual who's represented himself at trial and then he's going to do his appeal. Anyway, we settle down and we had a great conversation. And in hindsight, it just struck me. He's one of the common things we see with guys who have been wrongly convict is they maintained her innocence forever. They will not concede guilt. And Glen so well. And I went away that day thinking. He could be innocent.

TIM BOUSQUET: Jerome Kennedy eventually decides to take on Glen's case himself. The first thing Kennedy does is hire a private investigator, one who comes highly recommended, ex-RCMP officer Fred Fitzsimmons.

FRED: I'm originally from Moncton, New Brunswick. I spent roughly 30 years with the RCMP and after I retired, I became a private investigator, own my own company. One man band.

TIM BOUSQUET: When I talk to people about you, they say two things, one, that you were very successful in your career. I mean, your brass, right?

FRED: I was successful in investigations, but I wasn't in six too successful and getting promoted because my attitude.

TIM BOUSQUET: I want to get into that. What's your experience with the chain of command with those above you?

FRED: I had some commanders were good and some commanders didn't like the way I operated because I was too outspoken.

TIM BOUSQUET: Tell me about that.

FRED: Well, I find that kind of hard to explain. If people like you in the force and you're going to get promoted. And if you're not one of the boys, you're not going to get promoted. And I tended to piss people off of a bit.

TIM BOUSQUET: Well, OK, so you're working as an investigator and then you get a call from this fellow, Jerome Kennedy in Newfoundland.

FRED: Well, one day I get a call from Jerome and he says that he's working on a file and he wants to know if I would be interested in working on it. I asked what is it? So he just give me the name. Didn't mean too much to me. I knew the name, but that was [unintelligible]. And we're chatting. And during the conversation, he asked me if I'd be willing to look into this incident. And I said, yeah, no problem. And he says, well, you're not going to get paid. I said, I guess it doesn't make much difference. We'll work on it anyway. So I did.

TIM BOUSQUET: Can you tell me about me? You meeting Glen?

FRED: Drome and I went to Dorchester. And I met him up there.

TIM BOUSQUET: What do you think of Glen?

FRED: Oh. Complete arsehole. Okay. But just because an arsehole doesn't mean you convict him for murder.

TIM BOUSQUET: Kennedy and Fitzsimmons begin their investigation. The first thing they do is look at the disclosure. Disclosure is all the evidence collected by police and the crown. By law, everything must be turned over to the defence.

JEROME: I went back to my office in St. John's and I had this big room that I worked out because the cases I was working on were massive in terms of boxes and boxes of materials. I remember sitting down this day to read, start reading, Glen's disclosure.

TIM BOUSQUET: While Jerome Kennedy is going through the disclosure and the court transcripts. Fred Fitzsimmons begins his work on the ground. Fitzsimmons will reinvestigate everything the police did and also look at what they didn't investigate. He starts with the main witness, Robyn Margaret Hartwick, who Fitzsimmons calls Margaret. Remember that Robyn had been killed before the trial and therefore could not testify or be cross-examined. Robyn said she saw Glen the night of the murder. According to Fitzsimmons, Robyn's name appears in a police officer's notebook on the very day of the murder. But nothing else. Nothing more until almost a year later, when Robyn got picked up by the police when that man was found dead under the McDonald Bridge. Robyn was high on crack cocaine and took the police on tangents about dreams and psychic visions. Fitzsimmons begins by looking at that statement, including the questions police asked Robyn. He reads that statement out loud to me.

FRED: Okay. What can you tell us about the murder of Brenda Way? I left Linda Grandy's place, her own 4:15 a.m. and Glen Assoun was coming up the walkway towards the building. He said to me, well, she's finally gone now. The weight is off my shoulder. So what's interesting here is two things. First of all, in her telling, she sees Glen, Glen says, I just killed Brenda. Or she's dead. You know words to that effect. And what does she do? She doesn't say, why did you kill Brenda? Or what? What the hell? Where is she? She says, what time is it? And this murder just killed someone is shaking, so she holds his hand so that she can read the watch. It's kind of absurd on the face of it. Absolutely. Yes. When did you learn for sure that Brenda was dead? When I went to Lloyd's states that morning, he told me that she was dead. Lloyd says, oh, Brenda is dead. I saw it on the news. It wasn't on the news until that night. Mm hmm. So stuff like that, eh. And stuff like that that you have to pick up on. Stuff like that you have to check, if you're an investigator. That's, I mean, just because somebody says something doesn't necessarily mean that it's correct. You have to check it.

TIM BOUSQUET: Fitzsimmons finishes reading Robyn's statement.

FRED: Were you drinking, I was doing drugs. Are you sure these events are correct? Yes. That's the entire statement. I mean, there is a witness, okay, and you take a two page statement from them. No. No. No. When you're taking a statement, especially on a murder, you ask all kinds of questions and then you go try to verify. There's nothing in there that- there's nothing in there that she said that was actual truth. And whoever took the statement should have, in my opinion review the statement, gone and seen the witnesses and try to verify what she had to say.

TIM BOUSQUET: As you heard earlier, Fitzsimmons used other witness accounts to build a timeline for Brenda's movements the night of the murder. In Robyn's statement that she saw Glen at 4:15 a.m., supposedly just after he killed Brenda couldn't fit in with that timeline. Fitzsimmons also points out that another witness, Jason Sparkes, who we heard about in episode two, said he was with Brenda at a crack house at about five a.m. 45 minutes after the time, Robyn told police she saw Glen near the murder scene. In a sworn affidavit for the Appeal Court of Nova Scotia, Fitzsimmons lays out all the problems he encounters with the investigation. He states there is significant failure in interviewing particularly important witnesses and following up leads. He gives more examples. There was a man seen at 5:00 a.m.. One hundred and fifty feet from the murder scene. Fitzsimmons could find no indication that police tried to get a statement from him. Steve and Angel, who was delivering newspapers to one oh nine Albert Lake Road, told police he saw a black man pounding on the door at 5:05 a.m. and later driving a car that was speeding out of the back parking lot. Angel said police never followed up with him, and Fitzsimmons didn't find any police notes that said they tried to locate the man in the car. Fitzsimmons continues with the most damning criticism of all. He writes, There is no better example of the lack of thoroughness of the police investigation than the failure to follow up and investigate other suspects who were identified in the police file.

DM: We'll keep going with Episode four of Uncover: Dead Wrong. After a short break for your regional update, I'm Duncan McCue. You're listening to The Current.

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Episode four of CBC podcast Uncover: Dead Wrong

DM: I'm Duncan McCue, and you're listening to The Current. We return now to Episode four of the CBC podcast Uncover: Dead Wrong. Host Tim Bousquet is unravelling the story of a murder and the resulting wrongful conviction. We pick up the story after Glen Assoun's conviction as fresh evidence emerges that should help him get a new trial.

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JEROME: I still see the cover today. Just doc hits me. Other suspects at a five or six volumes. This is unusual in a police file that they've got a volume of other suspects. When I open it up, I start reading. This is amazing.

TIM BOUSQUET: As a criminal defence lawyer, Drew Kennedy knows the value of other suspects.

JEROME: And so I'm reading and I'm going like, wow. They had named a four or five possible other suspects. And one of the things we do at trial as lawyers, which I've done in the past, if you have a viable suspect, which the police have offered up, the more of the things you do is you make application to the court to lead evidence of other suspects because that can raise a reasonable doubt.

TIM BOUSQUET: Kennedy was surprised to find this in the disclosure because there was no mention of it in the transcript of the trial.

JEROME: And I remember getting on the phone to friends are like, what do we do with this? And telling Glen, I said to Glen, how come this wasn't raised at trial? And I remember Glen saying they wouldn't let me or I couldn't. And if you actually look at the transcript of the trial, what you'll see is that Glen's focus, when he asked questions, he was actually quite good and focussed until the prosecutor object. And then he'd lose his train of thought and then he'd go astray. And I'm saying to Glen, was any of this discussed with you, was any of this raised? This is gold in the hands of a criminal defence lawyer.

TIM BOUSQUET: When I was researching this story, one thing that very much disturbed me was that all these violent men were living in Dartmouth. Right in my neighbourhood. In the initial investigation, police noted five possible suspects. One of those was Glen. But Glen had an alibi, which seems to have been accepted by police at the time. The other four all had violent histories and were known to police. Police called them third party suspects.

FRED: I don't want to be badmouthing any investigator, but I think that there may have been tunnel vision on this one.

TIM BOUSQUET: Fitzsimmons doesn't want to publicly name the suspects, but their names are in the court records. The first is Carl Joseph Francis, a 26 year old with a lengthy and violent criminal record. There are no notes as to why he was a suspect or if he was ever eliminated as a suspect. Another suspect was Robert George Poole. Poole lived at nine Large street, the very same building where Brenda was staying. There had been a police warning about Poole in 1995 where he was described as a violent sex offender. Parole officer had told police, if you people have a case where a woman, probably a prostitute, is badly beaten and left for dead, he will be your man. The police notes don't say how or even if they investigated Poole. Next was Avery Greeno. He had a history of violence, including a 17 and a half year sentence for violent rape. The night Brenda was killed, Greeno was at the bar at the Dartmouth Inn. It was noted he was acting differently than usual. He was slurring his words at a bar tender at the end told police she had to call security around 1:30 a.m. because Greeno was getting too close. There are also notes from police at the time that Greeno was overheard talking about slitting girls throats. The Dartmouth Inn Bar was where a taxi driver dropped Brenda off at 2:00 a.m. the night of the murder. When she got out of the cab, she got into the passenger side of a vehicle, a red blazer with a silver stripe down the side of it. At around that time, Greeno drove a red blazer and an unidentified police officer noted that Greeno was a good possibility as a suspect. Greeno told police he didn't buy the red blazer until November 21st, which was nine days after the murder. But there are no indications this was checked into. During Fitzsimmons investigation, nine years after the murder. He actually tracks down that blazer and buys it for 500 dollars. He hires a forensic specialist from Ontario to cheque it out. But nothing comes up.

FRED: And then there was another fella from Newfoundland that they didn't have as one of the five.

TIM BOUSQUET: The next person Fitzsimmons is referring to is Ashley Horridge. Although there are early police notes on him, he is never included in the initial list of other suspects. But they took a hair sample from him.

FRED: So I tried to find a hair sample. Couldn't find it. OK. Tried to find a statement. Couldn't find it.

TIM BOUSQUET: Horridge was known to be in North Dartmouth that night of the murder at 4:30 a.m., he was seen picking up a woman wearing a jacket that looked like the jacket Brenda was wearing the night she was murdered. Horridge later told police he did indeed pick up a sex worker that night and he stayed with the woman at his house until 8:30 a.m.. This time was not backed up by Horridge, his roommate, who police question, but this was not followed up on.

FRED: If you're taking a hair sample from an individual, my opinion from my police work experience, if you're digging a hair sample, he's obviously a suspect. Now, sometimes when I'm speaking, if you don't know how an investigation goes, you may say, oh, that's not relevant. Well, it's pretty damn relevant. I mean, they got a, they took a hair sample from this guy, never took hairs out anybody else. OK. When I found that out, I learnt that he had a vehicle that particular night and the next day his vehicle was not seen. He took his vehicle somewhere to have some work done on it. And that was in. Well, I mean, all that should have been followed up. The big thing with that is, is that, you know, they zeroed in on Glen. And I should- [unintelligible] state law to charge me for it and [unintelligible] me with what they had on him. And that was in my opinion.

TIM BOUSQUET: Fitzsimmons's is feeling pretty good about what he's finding for Glenn's appeal. There's just one problem.

FRED: These suspects names and the police notes about them were in the boxes and boxes of disclosure given to Glen at the time of his trial. So they were technically available to Glen. But he didn't know what to do with them.

FRED: I used to go [unintelligible] . Oh, Jesus, found this out, OK? Well, that's not fresh evidence. So we went on like that for a couple of months. I said, Jerome, what did you hire me for? I said, I'm coming up with stuff that I think that is good. And you're telling me that is not fresh evidence. This doesn't make any sense. And he says, no, there's no fresh evidence, it was known at the time. Then why wasn't they brought out? Wasn't brought up because Glen was defending himself. Ok. If somebody else had been defence counsel and this stuff had had been brought to their attention, then they could handle it whatever way they wanted to.

TIM BOUSQUET: What Kennedy wants to strengthen his case is fresh or new evidence, Kennedy tells Fitzsimmons to keep looking. While Jerome Kennedy is preparing the grounds for appeal, he is also often talking to Glen in prison.

JEROME: All he talked about was his innocence. I keep getting- that get bad. I said Glen, you represent yourself. You know, I got to look at this issue of should you have had counsel? Did the judge here and not give you counsel? I've got to look at the issues of the Crown's evidence, whether or not the evidence was admissible. These are the kinds of things I explained to him. But in his mind, in the mind of an innocent person, why shouldn't I represent myself? Everyone will see I'm innocent. Unfortunately, that's a fallacy that that presumes that the other participants in the system are going to be fair and they believe you're innocent also. Well, that didn't happen. And so meeting with Glen was always somewhat torturous in that respect, trying to get to focus on the obvious, like, Glen, I need help here. Tell me about this. Tell me about this evidence. I met with Glen a number of times. Well, by this point in time, though, Glen had significantly deteriorated in terms of his mental health.

TIM BOUSQUET: Glenn was placed in the Shepherded Healing Centre, a facility inside Dorchester Penitentiary, for inmates with mental health issues. Kennedy was worried.

JEROME: And man, there were a couple of times I didn't think he was going to make it. It really added pressure to the appeal because I've got a client now who is on the verge of a significant nervous breakdown. But just think about it. You're innocent. No one is listening to you. I didn't kill that woman. I love Brenda. I remember those words. I love Brenda. And no one's listening to.

TIM BOUSQUET: Usually, Kennedy would leave all the investigating on his cases up to the investigator. But he felt at a disadvantage because he didn't know the area. So he would travel both to visit Glen at Dorchester in New Brunswick and to meet Fred Fitzsimmons and Dartmouth.

JEROME: So most often, Fred, we went to the alleged crime scene and where the alleged murder weapon was found, ever how many months later. And I can remember we were looking at all this where the crack houses were and where this bar was that Glen supposedly have hung out. And then Fred says, see that over there? What Fred? That apartment? Yes. He's said, come on. And so now we got to jump over a fence and we're jumping over fences and going to- he said, Michael McGray lived there. I said what?McGray is not named, though, in the book as suspect.

TIM BOUSQUET: The apartment building Fitzsimmons is referring to is on Jackson Road, about 150 metres from where Brenda's body was found. Fitzsimmons tells Kennedy he is possibly onto a new suspect that police did not investigate at the time of Brenda's murder.

FRED: But my job wasn't to find out who did it. And even if I had found out who did it, do you think that anybody would believe me? That's why I went to the police department, because I wanted them to come with me and know what I was doing and interview these people. I went to the chief of police. OK, Frank Beesley. Now I know Frank from working with him when I was in the force. So he's now the chief and I'm now a civilian investigator. I say, listen, Frank, I've been retained by defence counsel and looking to these matters. I don't think he's guilty. And he listen to me and say, what would you like? I said what I would like is have you supply me with a man and go out and do a thorough investigation on this and see how it turns out. So anyway, he says, Jeez, I can't do that. He's been convicted. I should, yes. He's been convicted, but he's innocent. In my opinion, he's innocent. OK. Well, they went to the crown and the crown came back and they wanted to have meeting with me. And I go in and I'm all hyped up for this meeting and they go on for about an hour. And then I started asking them some bushes and then they're sitting there, you know, with a dumb look on their face. And I said, well, you fellows know, and he will disappear. Litigation. Well, we haven't reviewed it, as you well, obviously haven't reviewed it because I said I'm sitting here trying to tell you stuff and you're looking at me as if I'm half nuts.

TIM BOUSQUET: So just to be clear about this, you get into your investigation and you're so adamant that Glen is not responsible for the murder, that you go right to the chief of police of the police force that ultimately convicted him. And you say you had the wrong man, you convicted the wrong man. And I want to show you the evidence. And they...

FRED: And just like I told you, what I wanted them to do was reinvestigate it. This really ticked me. One of them said, well, he said he was convicted. He said court's convicted him, so he must be guilty. So, you know, that was it. I don't know if they if they even admit today that they made a mistake.

TIM BOUSQUET: Fitzsimmons gets no help from the Halifax police. Michael McGray was a violent offender in and out of jail and was first on Halifax police radar as early as 1993. Two years before Brenda was killed, McGray was released and living in North Dartmouth at the time of Brenda's murder. Not only was McGray living very close to where Brenda's body was found, but a witness told Fitzsimmons that McGray and his girlfriend moved out of the apartment just a day or two after the murder. They moved out so quickly they abandoned their cat and left their furniture right on the sidewalk for all to see. Right on Jackson Road, a street where police had conducted a post crime canvass of the neighbourhood.

JEROME: We clearly isolated him. I thought he was a good suspect. Because I tried tracked him down, he lived in an apartment building very near where the murder took place. And so I wrote letters and that's the first I remember of how we tried to obtain information of McGray.

TIM BOUSQUET: By the time of Glenn's approaching appeal, more than 10 years since the murder, the Halifax police as well as the RCMP know plenty about Michael McGray because McGray is no longer just another violent offender. He is a confirmed and convicted serial killer with a long and gruesome list of murders. Kennedy makes requests for discovery from the crown. The Crown then requests information from the RCMP and the Halifax police.

JEROME: I remember studying writing letters to the crown saying, look, do you have any evidence? Is there any information I can get on this? And I also knew from my disgust with Fred, there's databases they use. You have the [unintelligible], which is the general one across the country. But if someone's been convicted in a local district, a province, then the Halifax police, for example, could have their own database. Then there is another database of violent offenders where information is kept. I don't know if I had any expectations, but I remember writing letters. Can you please provide us with world class reports?

TIM BOUSQUET: VI class is the RCMP National Database of violent offenders.

JEROME: They said I was fishing. Well, we were fishing, but we also I think one of the letters to the crown indicate, look, the guy live. He was in Halifax at the time.

TIM BOUSQUET: Kennedy and Fitzsimmons know about my grace. Other killings. They were national news splashed all over the newspapers. Kennedy and Fitzsimmons know how brutal they were. They know his modus operandi, the way he liked to kill. And those ways matched with how Brenda Way was killed.

JEROME: So we thought that we had significant enough information to make a request for those documents, but they basically shut us down, didn't give us anything, then we, if I remember correctly, file specific affidavits saying, by the way Court of Appeal, here's your killer right here. We're naming him for you.

TIM BOUSQUET: Even without the cooperation of the RCMP and Halifax police, Kennedy feels he has built a strong case and is ready to move forward with the appeal. And he wants to move quickly because of Glen's mental state.

JEROME: I've got an individual who represent himself at trial. We've got good grounds of appeal. I mean, this is one of the strongest appeals I've ever been involved in. We had hearsay evidence. We had jailhouse informants. We had everything that spoke to a wrongful conviction present in this case.

TIM BOUSQUET: Kennedy appears before the Nova Scotia Court of Appeal on January 17th, 2006. There are three judges, Joel Fish Show, Elizabeth Roscoe and Jill Hamilton. Glen has now been in prison for almost nine years.

JEROME: Glen was there that day. I had to make a special application for him to be present in court for his appeal.

TIM BOUSQUET: Jerome Kennedy cites nearly 20 grounds for appeal, including the admissibility of certain witnesses and evidence. Lack of warnings to the jury regarding witnesses with questionable credibility. Judicial and crown conduct within the context of Glen having to represent himself. And he also cites two areas of fresh evidence regarding other suspects. The initial suspects found by the Halifax police because Glen was unable to introduce them into trial and a brand new suspect that police never investigated, serial killer Michael McGray. With Glen in the courtroom, Kennedy presents his case. But before he finishes talking, he starts to get a sinking feeling.

JEROME: It was disappointing, to say the least. So I left there that day. I know I've done a lot of these appeals and when left that day, I know, man. We're done. They don't get it. We're done. I don't specifically remember telling him after, Glen, don't get your hopes up. But by this point, Glenn didn't have his hopes up. He knew the system was against. He was one small man in a giant wheel cut. So the system of criminal justice in Canada was a system of injustice in the case of Glen Assoun.

TIM BOUSQUET: Three months later, a decision comes down. It's 412 pages long and full of legalese, but every issue argued by Kennedy is met with the same response. No merit or grounds dismissed. Remember, there was no physical evidence connecting Glen to the murder. It was all hearsay and witness testimony. Each witness was highly problematic. Yet the Court of Appeal found no issue with the admissibility of any of their evidence. The court also said it wasn't an issue that strong warnings called veterano back warnings weren't given to the jury regarding the witnesses credibility. The crown even admitted that Wayne Wise, career criminal and Glen's nephew was not credible. But they said he was so obviously not credible that a warning wasn't needed. They said no clear or sharp warning about his evidence was needed against jailhouse informant David Kaveri, who received a reduced sentence for his testimony. As for the other suspects, the court ruled that there may be disposition and proximity in the neighbourhood, but there is no connexion to the circumstances of Miss Way's murder. And on serial killer Michael McGray, specifically, the decision includes a memo by a member of the Halifax Regional Police, which reads, Based on my information, Mr. McGray's method of killing involve knives, stabbing, cutting, one case of cutting victim's throat, not a prostitute, strangulation and blunt force trauma. He described how McGray kills, which is similar to how Brenda was killed. But police asked McGray if he had ever killed a prostitute. And he said no. So far as I understand it, the police and the court accepted the word of a serial killer. There is absolutely nothing the Court of Appeal found that would suggest Glen Assoun should get a new trial.

JEROME: This is the worst appellate court decision they've ever seen. This man did not have a fair trial. There's almost a presumption that an individual who represents himself is not going have a fair trial if he doesn't know what he's doing. And they were losing patience with Glen. Man, there were strong grounds for appeal. And then we offer up on a platter. By the way, there's about five or six suspects. Good suspects. You choose which one you want. But also we've got a serial killer here who we're going to put before you. And that Court of appeal failed miserably.

TIM BOUSQUET: The only avenue left for Kennedy now is to appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada. He writes the application.

JEROME: And. I remember that I was savage is the only word I can use to describe the way I wrote that, I wrote that in a way probably should have been a complaint to law society because of so disrespectful of the judges. Well, I had an innocent man in jail and three judges who didn't listen to what was going on or didn't understand what was going on. So I didn't care by that point.

TIM BOUSQUET: The application for leave to appeal is dismissed. On September 14th, 2006. Kennedy is moving on to a new career in politics. Before he does, he puts together a comprehensive file and sends it to the Innocence Canada office in Toronto. It's Glen's last hope for justice. But Glen's needs are even more immediate. He has to survive Dorchester Penitentiary.

DM: We continue with the podcast Uncover: Dead Wrong. Tomorrow in Episode five, Glen faces new horrors in prison until he meets someone who might offer a lifeline. That's our programme for today. Stay tuned to Radio One for q. Comedian Harry Shearer, known for his voices on The Simpsons, is taking on the American political landscape in his new album of comedic songs, The Many Moods of Donald Trump. And he's Tom Powers guest today on q, which is up next. Earlier in the show, we were talking about how people are exploring Canada's wilderness areas differently this summer, specifically in Banff National Park. It's just one of dozens of national parks in this country. So it seems fitting to leave you with a song that pays tribute to all of them. I'm Duncan McCue. Chi miigwetch, thanks for listening to The Current.

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