Note: Transcripts may contain errors. If you wish to re-use all, or part of, a transcript, please contact CBC for permission. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting in print. Copyright © CBC 2020

The Current Transcript for October 7, 2020

Host: Matt Galloway

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

Money is a made up thing. A shared fiction. It's the social part of money is exactly what makes it money. Otherwise, it's just a chunk of metal or a piece of paper or in the case of lost money today, just a number stored on a bank's computer.

MATT GALLOWAY: Money is the root of many things, good and evil in a new book. The co-host of NPR's Planet Money, Jacob Goldstein, charts the fascinating history of money from giant coins to paper currency to our increasingly cashless society. He's here in 30 minutes. Also this morning, the former conservative MP and interim leader Rona Ambrose on her push to have the U.N. declare this Sunday the international day of the girl and what she believes governments should do to ensure that girls and women recover from what's become known as the she-cession. And later: Feeling ground down by the state of things.

SOUNDCLIP

We did her best and we realised what was most important, and that was each other. And it was the great outdoors saved us all.

MG: In an hour, the storyteller in residence at the Calgary Public Library explains why he has embraced this difficult moment and why he believes stories will help us through these tricky times. We start, though, with a story of a five year old girl orphaned in a Syrian refugee camp and brought here to Canada and those Canadians left behind. Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway. This is The Current.

[Music: Theme]

Back To Top »

Repatriating Canadians who left to join ISIS

Guests: Lawrence Greenspom. Farida Deif

SOUNDCLIP

We have to recognise that this particular situation was an exceptional case of an orphan who no longer had any close family. That was why we have worked very hard over the past months to bring her to Canada.

MG: Prime Minister Justin Trudeau speaking on Monday and explaining why the government repatriated a five year old girl, publicly known as Amira, from Syria. Her parents, believed to have been ISIS members, were killed in airstrikes along with her siblings. Dozens of Canadian citizens are still detained in the alcohol camp in northern Syria, where Ameera was held. And now there is renewed pressure from human rights groups and family members to bring them home. Lawrence Greenspon is the lawyer for Amira's uncle. He also represents other families with loved ones detained in Syrian camps. Lawrence Greenspon. Good morning.

LAWRENCE GREENSPON: Good morning.

MG: There have been months of pressure and criticism on the federal government to do what it has done in terms of bringing this five year old girl home. Tell us about the fight to get her back to Canada.

LAWRENCE GREENSPON: Well, the fight began on behalf of America's uncle. He was persistent with Global Affairs Canada over a year and a half a period of time during which he not only made phone calls and e-mails to anybody who would listen, but he actually went over there and was able to meet his niece. And at that time, they went to [unintelligible] he met with her. He met with the foreign minister of the autonomous administration of northeastern Syria. And they were not willing to turn Amira over to her uncle and then let her come home to Canada. The only thing that was missing was a formal request from the Canadian government to allow that to happen. And we got involved. I was contacted eventually by the Amira's uncle, and he was desperate to try and bring his niece home. We launched an application in the federal court basically asking that the court require the government to do three things. Number one, to issue the emergency travel documentation for a mirror or the equivalent of a passport. Number two, to make a formal request for her repatriation. And number three, to appoint other Canadian consular official or some third party or NGO to make it happen.

MG: Do you believe do you believe the government would have acted without you filing that court application?

LAWRENCE GREENSPON: I don't know. I mean, it's we have to try and understand all the various pressures that were brought to bear on the government. This federal court application was one of them. Amira, of course, is the only one who so far has brought this type of court application in. And we have the results that were communicated to me as of Sunday. So I don't know. There were a number of factors that persistence of Amira's uncle. The federal court application, there was incredible pressure and support that we received from the various human rights groups. The fact is that there were 22 other countries that repatriated hundreds of their men, women and children of their nationals. So there was a number of factors that contributed to this wonderful result.

MG: You represent other Canadian families with loved ones in camps. The prime minister, you just heard him, said that this was an exceptional case. The foreign minister, Francois Philippe Champagne, has said that's the Canadian policy has not changed. What does that mean for the other families that you represent?

LAWRENCE GREENSPON: Well, I beg to differ with the prime minister and the minister. This is not an exceptional case. There are 24 other Canadian children in detention camps in northeastern Syria. A number of those are also orphans. The idea that this is an exception is most unfortunate to characterise it that way. It's an exception because it's the only one so far that the Canadian government has seen eventually to do the right thing. The bringing home of a mirror, really in the face of the two arguments that were put before us, the two obstacles that were put before us, those obstacles were this. They said, look, we can't bring her home because it's not safe. It's not secure on the ground. And we also don't have consular relations with northeastern Syria, with the Syrian government. And those were the two reasons that they refused to do the right thing. This is lasted a year and a half.

MG: Well, in the last minute that we have heard so that there are people who are saying that the other obstacle and perhaps it's not so much for the five year old girl, though, it's with other people who are there is a political obstacle. And the political obstacle is that there are Canadians who are worried that some of these people will return and never face justice for crimes that they committed while being a member of ISIS. And that politically is very difficult for a government. What would you say briefly about that?

LAWRENCE GREENSPON: I would say that a government that buys into that is the same government that has over the last several years set up an entire legal structure, including a department in Justice, to deal with the prosecution of Canadians overseas who have been, who are suspected of committing war crimes or crimes against humanity or genocide. We have the whole legal framework that is setup to do just that. And the idea that we leave people languish in prisons, Canadian citizens that we leave them languish in prison because it may be difficult to prove criminal charges against them back here in Canada. I don't know when Canada sunk to that level of injustice. And my goodness, for the government to say that, you know, we have to- In fact the prime minister himself said not less than two years ago. He said the Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian. And he also said he also assured Canadians that we had nothing to fear by bringing back to Canada people who are believed to be ISIS sympathisers or fighters. If there is a case to be made out, bring the people home and prosecute them. And if it's difficult to do that, that's certainly not a reason to let these people languish in these prison storage.

MG: Greenspon. Good to speak with you. Thank you.

LAWRENCE GREENSPON: My pleasure. Thank you.

MG: And you, Lawrence Greenspon is a lawyer representing families of people held in detention camps in Syria, accused of having ties with ISIS in June. Human Rights Watch released a report on the other Canadians currently detained in camps in northeastern Syria. Farida Deif is Canada director at Human Rights Watch. Good morning to you.

FARIDA DEIF: Good morning.

MG: As you understand it, what are the conditions like in these camps?

FARIDA DEIF: The conditions in the camps in northeast Syria are really nothing short of appalling, often inhumane and life threatening. We're talking about open sewers, overflowing latrines, contaminated water, tents. The collapse in strong winds or flood with rain or sewage. Food is scarce. Illnesses including, you know, viral infections are rampant in these camps. Medical care is grossly inadequate. And hundreds of kids have died in these camps over the past few years, many from preventable diseases. These are the conditions that at least 13 women and 25 Canadian children find themselves in.

MG: As I say, Amira is one of 26 Canadian children believed to be living in in one of these camps. What do we know about the other Canadian children who are there?

FARIDA DEIF: We know that the other Canadian children, I mean, there's a number of them that are siblings. They have been in those camps for a year and a half now. The women and children are in those camps. They're women and children who are, you know, in camps that house families of ISIS suspects. The eight Canadian men are in a prison in a high security prison also in northeast Syria that's run by the Kurdish led authorities. Both of the conditions in both the camps and the prisons are inhumane and life threatening. And they've been there for over a year and a half. None of them, you know, very few, if any, have received any kind of consular assistance from the Canadian government. You know, are the family members that we spoke to here in Canada have tried desperately to get some assistance for their families, knowing that they have grandchildren in these camps in the winter where tents collapsed. There's, you know, very scarce food. There's malnutrition. There's viral infections that are rampant. And all of these conditions were terrible to begin with. But now one can imagine, you know, with the spread of a global pandemic, how dire and life threatening the conditions have now become.

MG: Lawrence Greenspon hinted at this. But what have other countries done when it comes to the repatriation of their citizens from camps like this?

FARIDA DEIF: Well, there are at least 20 other governments that have managed to navigate all the security, bureaucratic and other obstacles to be able to repatriate their nationals. Some have repatriated only orphans. Others have repatriated adult men and women. And so what we're calling for is for the Canadian government to do exactly the same thing, to repatriate all Canadians who have been unlawfully and arbitrarily detained in northeast Syria, bring them home for reintegration, rehabilitation and prosecution if warranted. If anyone has committed crimes, they should be brought to justice.

MG: Can I ask you about that? I mean, one of the questions would be. And again, it perhaps doesn't apply to a five year old girl. But if there are people who have gone to Syria to fight for ISIS, what does Canada owe those people?

FARIDA DEIF: Well, look, Canada owes them, you know, in a way, Canada owes them justice and accountability. And I'm just to say that this is also, Canada owes that also to the victims of ISIS. There are thousands of Yazidis here in Canada who found refuge in Canada who also deserve accountability and justice for the crimes that they've experienced. But right now, the Canadian government is basically allowing individuals to be, you know, to languish in these prisons, detention centres without ever being brought to justice. And so even for justice and accountability, this is not a solution just to leave them there arbitrarily and unlawfully detained in these conditions. And, of course, the 25 children bear no responsibility for the actions of their parents. They are first and foremost victims. But yet they're paying the collective price of this because the government does not want to spend the political capital to return individuals who are seen as unsympathetic or politically unpopular. And that's just simply unacceptable.

MG: We spoke with Louise Lovelock. She is the Baghdad bureau chief for The Washington Post, and she was at that camp last year. Have a listen to what she learnt when she interviewed many of the women in the camp.

SOUNDCLIP

One of the biggest lessons I have learnt through reporting on the Islamic State is that when you come face to face with people who have come out of the territory, you will never know, in the immediate moment whether they are victims, whether they are perpetrators. Certainly governments monitoring this will say the women who came from areas like Canada, people who had often chosen to go. Maybe they didn't know in the full extent what they were going to, but they were people who had gone. The question the intelligence agencies are now asking is, what did they do there?

MG: Farida Deif, just very briefly, we're almost out of time. But does. Are you concerned about that? That there's concern that we may not know who's innocent and who's guilty to her point?

FARIDA DEIF: Well, I mean, I trust Canada's intelligence gathering capacity, I trust that we have a robust judicial system and law enforcement that can investigate these crimes. As Lauren said earlier, we have an entire unit that's meant to investigate war crimes. We certainly have the capacity to ascertain whether or not there are individuals that have committed crimes and then prosecute those individuals here in Canada. The fact that they are being left behind is simply one of a lack of political will to do anything about it. It's not an issue of logistics, or an issue of of anything else, but really a lack, fundamentally, a lack of political will to do the right thing.

MG: Just in a word or two. Do you think that the repatriation of Amira will change that political will?

FARIDA DEIF: I mean, one would hope so. But what's very disappointing is that the government is clearly trying to frame this as an exceptional one off. And it's said that there's no plans to return others. Of course, you know, that is just, you know, an unacceptable proposition. And the fact is that you can't turn a blind eye to the plight of dozens of Canadian men, women and children who are languishing in this life threatening condition. That's just not that's a shameful proposition by this government.

MG: So great to speak with you about this this morning. Thank you.

FARIDA DEIF: Thank you so much.

MG: Farida Deifis the candidate director for Human Rights Watch. Phil Gurski is a former siss strategic analyst and the author of five books on terrorism, including Western Foreign Fighters The Threat to Homeland and International Security. Phil Gurski, good morning to you.

PHIL GURSKI: Good morning, Matt. How are you?

MG: I'm well, free to. D has called for the repatriation of all Canadians left in these camps in Syria, as you understand it. What are the security risks of that scenario?

PHIL GURSKI: What a tremendous. So I just want to state for the record that I've always believed that children should be repatriated A.S.A.P. for the reasons your previous guest gave; they are victims. They didn't join. They didn't choose to join ISIS. They were brought there by their parents. The parents is a different issue. Not only did they join a heinous terrorist group like ISIS, which, you know, raped little girls and hung people from meat hooks. You know, the guest that you sent in The Washington Post who went over there, we don't know what they did. And I'm sorry to disagree with your previous guest. Investigating these people is really, really hard in a war zone, in a place where it's hard to gather evidence and it's hard to deal with locals. If any Canadian going to recommend talking to the Syrian intelligence service about what Canadians did, we know what happened, you know, with that a couple of years ago.

MG: Can you bring the children back with without their parents? I mean, you can't separate them from the parents.

PHIL GURSKI: I think you should. I think you should for a simple reason that any parent that brought his or her child diocese is in my box, an unfair parent. And this is a very drastic move. Matt, I'm not I'm not trying to sugar coat this. But, you know, the Canadian government and provincial governments remove children from their parents where there is a danger to their lives. Emotional, psychological, whatever. And I think these parents are simply unfit parents. And the children should be put in the hands of extended family or in the worst case scenario, made wards of the state. But they should be brought home right now.

MG: If those individuals are returned to Canada, what is the likelihood that they would be charged for joining a terror organisation or be investigated for crimes that they might have committed abroad?

PHIL GURSKI: Well, they could be investigated, but then the question becomes, what resources are there? So, you know, I retired from CSIS in 2015. When I worked there, they were going flat out on a whole bunch of investigations as it was the RCMP. So it becomes a resource issue. And just last two weeks ago, the RCMP finally charged a man in Calgary for leaving to join ISIS in 2013. So it took seven years for those charges to be laid. It's a really hard road to get there. And I think and I would agree with your other guests, this is politically untenable. Canadians do not want these people to come back to our country. They made choices. And in terms of victimhood, who are we to tell the Syrians and Iraqis they can't try Canadians who killed Syrians and Iraqis?

MG: Lawrence Greenspan's point was, we have the system here, if there are crimes and have been committed, we have the system here to hold people to account. You know if he says if he just leave them there, that you've lowered the bar. If you're just going to let them languish in these camps, use the system that we have in place here. Isn't that what the system is for?

PHIL GURSKI: I suppose. But what happens if you can't gather enough evidence to meet a Canadian court standard? And, you know, can we not actually assist, maybe the Kurds, for example, in establishing courts and establishing judicial system to help them try the people on Iraqi soil or on Syrian soil? That's where the offences were committed, Matt. They weren't committed in Canada. And I think that we have to allow those people to punish Canadians who joined a terrorist group that killed their own people. That's the bottom line.

MG: The United States has managed to repatriate all of its citizens as of last week. Why can't Canada do the same?

PHIL GURSKI: I think the United States is a different kettle of fish for the simple reason that in a post 9/11 world, there's no way you're going to get a an acquittal in a terrorism case. They've had an amazing success rate because of the atmosphere down here. We in Canada have more of a mixed record. I can't speak the difference in terms of evidence and how the system is played out in Canada and United States. But I simply think that there's just the risk of these people would be acquitted based on a lack of evidence. And I think that would be, from a political perspective, would be a disaster for the Liberal government. Maybe the Americans are better at it. Maybe we can learn from that. And that's an interesting hypothesis on your point, that we should talk to them more.

MG: I just wonder, again, Lawrence mentioned this Justin Trudeau when he was running to be the prime minister, said a Canadian is a Canadian, is a Canadian. And there are two points to that. One is that if we can't meet the standard of Canadian courts, do you worry that those Canadians, Canadian citizens, would be subject to standards that aren't equal to what we have here in this country?

PHIL GURSKI: Well, I think the first thing is what you say as a candidate versus what you say once you are prime minister and you see how these things actually play out when you get advice on your security, intelligence agencies and law enforcement is completely different. I do think that we can again, as I just said, we can help the locals in Iraq and Syria and the Kurds to perhaps improve their own judicial systems to make them - maybe not more like ours because of who are we to tell the Syrian and Iraqis how to run their course system - but we can try to ensure the standards are a little higher. That is much preferable to me than trying to bring them back here. And in ways Canadian resources and Canadian taxpayer dollars for people that made really bad choices to join Islamic State back in 2013 or 2014.

MG: The other part is if we're talking about Canadians, what does this country owe them? They're Canadian citizens. You say we owe them nothing.

PHIL GURSKI: No, because they made- In the same way, Matt, where is a lobby group for people that, you know, Canadians that went to Thailand and abused children to bring those back or drug dealers in Singapore. Where is the lobby group to bring those people back. They should be tried in the countries where the offences were committed. We should certainly extend them consular representation to ensure that the process is as fair and transparent as possible. But those countries have a inherent right to try Canadians or Americans or Belgians or whomever who travel to the country, join the terrorist group and kill their own citizens.

MG: Just briefly, but 30 seconds left. We have a five year old girl who has been returned to Canada. Do you see any political will from any politician to bring the remaining Canadian men, women and children home?

PHIL GURSKI: I do not. I sincerely hope there is the will to bring the children back. And not just the orphans, all the children. The children are victims. They are not they are not terrorists. It didn't make this choice. Their parents are a different matter. But I. I've been advocating for four years now. Please bring the children back A.S.A.P., get them out of danger and place them with extended family.

MG: Phil Gurski, good to speak with you. Thank you.

PHIL GURSKI: Always a pleasure, Matt.

MG: Phil Gurski, former CSA strategic analyst and specialist in terrorism and intelligence practise at the CBC News, is up next. And then.

SOUNDCLIP

[Song]

MG: Money, it's a gas and it's many other things as well. My next guest says making a stash of cash is more of a social construct than we might think. The history of the all powerful kaching. I'm Matt Galloway. This is The Current on CBC Radio one. We're back in six minutes. Stay with us.

Back To Top »

An 18th-century gambler crashed France's economy. His story tells us something about money today, says author

Guests: Jacob Goldstein

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

[Music: Theme]

MG: Still to come, the former interim leader of the Conservative Party, Rona Ambrose, on the need for more women in politics. But first, you know what they say. Money makes the world go round.

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

[Song: We're in the Money]

MG: Listen to the lyrics of that song, and there is irony there, "we're in the money, we've got a lot of what it takes to go around". That song came out in 1933, the worst year of the worst depression in history. For centuries, money has been all consuming. How much money we have? How much money other people have? How we use it. How we save it. We count it. We move it around. We give it away. Some people even steal money. It drives much of our decision making. Why are we so crazy about chunks of metal or scraps of paper? Jacob Goldstein knows more about our money mania than most. He is the co-host of NPR's Planet Money and the author of a great new book. It's called Money The True Story of a Made Up Thing. Jacob Goldstein, good morning.

JACOB GOLDSTEIN: Good morning.

MG: Do you have a favourite money song?

JACOB GOLDSTEIN: That's a good one. Nobody's asked me that yet. I was listening in a lot lately to the Royals by Lorde with my daughters, which, you know, doesn't have money in the title. But that song is really all about money. Never seen a diamond in the flesh. I cut my teeth on wedding rings in the movies. That is great writing about money, right there.

MG: Well done. That, too. And now it's stuck in our heads for the next hour hours.

JACOB GOLDSTEIN: It's a good one that stuck in your head.

MG: You talk about money as a fiction, a made-up thing. What do you mean by that?

JACOB GOLDSTEIN: Before I started covering money for Planet Money, I didn't study economics or anything like that, I studied English. And I think like most people, I thought of money as this thing that sort of just exists in the world, like a part of nature subject to the laws of physics. I mean, not quite that, but sort of that. And what I realised once I started thinking about money, studying money, covering money is it's not that, right? It is a thing that people collectively invented, made up and have continued to reinvent, to make up in different ways to suit sort of changing needs over time.

MG: How did people get stuff before money existed? Before we dream dreamt this thing up.

JACOB GOLDSTEIN: So, you know, if you think about societies a long time ago, cultures a long time ago. They were small, right, that, you know, pre-industrial societies tended to be small based on family relationships. You might say tribes. And those kinds of cultures are built around lots of rules, it turns out, about giving and getting. Gift giving, reciprocity. Some of the classics or if you want to marry somebody, there's very often strict rules like, you know, you have to give cattle, say lots of places if you want to marry someone to their family. If you murder somebody, there's lots of rules about that. If you kill someone and somebody's family got to give them stuff. And those rituals and norms and rules, those are really the roots of money.

MG: How did coins change the way that people think about the value of goods and services? Because, you know, we're not carrying around cattle. We're not carrying around in bundles of hay or something like that. When you have a coin, what does that do to how people think about that exchange?

JACOB GOLDSTEIN: So it changes it a lot. I mean, not only are we not carrying around cattle, but more importantly, we are transacting all the time with people who we don't know. So we're not bound up in these norms and rules of gift giving and reciprocity anymore. And that's really the big shift. You know, coins come along, but not that long ago. And like the great scope of history. They come along a few hundred years B.C., they first emerge in what's now Turkey. And they really explode in in Greece, in ancient Greece. And I think that's no coincidence because, you know, the Greeks, as far as we know in many ways, were the sort of roots of a lot of Western culture. And they are developing this new kind of society that, on the one hand, is too big for those kind of norms of gift giving and reciprocity. And on the other hand, doesn't have like one ruler at the top telling everybody what they can take and what they have to give. And so coins allow for this kind of civilisation that we live in.

MG: How do you figure out what a coin is worth? I mean, if I owe you three, you know, cows, there's the cows. How do you figure it out with a coin?

JACOB GOLDSTEIN: I'd say that's kind of a skimpy cow not a bigger one. Originally, coins were worth what the underlying metal was worth. Right. And for a long time, I made a coin. Coins were made typically of silver or gold, sometimes of copper. And those metals themselves were desirable to people. You know, they were relatively scarce and they were shiny and they were pretty and you could make jewellery out of them. I was kind of the origin story of how that came to be. And so the value of a coin was just the value of a metal it contained. And people would try and like skim. You know, people would like shave a little silver off the side of a coin or put it in a bag and shake it so you can get a little dust. So, like, as long as there have been coins, people have been trying to, you know, take a little skim off the top. But it was basically the value of a metal.

MG: You could imagine that that would make for some pretty heavy coin. Jemmy, tell the story of the giant coins in Sweden.

JACOB GOLDSTEIN: Yes. So Sweden had a lot of copper. This was in the 1600s. And there was basically no paper money as we know it in Europe yet. And so other parts of Europe were using silver and gold. Sweden was using copper. But because copper was not that valuable. And because the value of a coin was based on the value of the metal it contains, they wound up with these coins that were like the size of like a desktop. They weighed like 30 pounds and people would, you know, strap them to their backs. And so it's perhaps not a coincidence that Sweden was the first place in Europe where somebody said, OK, I'll tell you what, you give me that copper tabletop and I'll give you a piece of paper. That's good. Like, you know, as a claim cheque for the copper tabletop. And you can just go use that piece of paper as money instead of the copper tabletop.

MG: That idea of paper money, as you said. Paper money wasn't in evidence in Europe, but it was being used elsewhere. Where did paper money first appear?

JACOB GOLDSTEIN: Well, it first appeared in China. A long time many hundreds of years before it first appeared in Europe. Around 1000 A.D. and at and initially for kind of a similar reason in the same way that Sweden used copper, which is very bad for money. There was a province in China, Sichuan, that used iron. A lot of China used bronze, which was not bad for money. But in Sichuan, they didn't have that much bronze. So they used iron coins. Iron is not that valuable. So you needed like a pound and a half of iron coins to buy a pound of salt. One scholar told me, it's just like, you know, go to the grocery store and shop with pennies. Did you guys even have pennies? We don't even have pennies.

MG: Not anymore now.

JACOB GOLDSTEIN: Smarts, you're ahead of us on that one. And so similar lay some merchant in Sichuan was like, give me your iron coins. I'll give you a piece of paper that's like a coat cheque ticket. And that turned into money and then it spread throughout China. Because, you know, it's really we don't think of paper money as a technological breakthrough, but it is. It was, right, especially at this time when there was no, you know, mechanised transport having to carry pounds and pounds of coins. Overland was costly and being able to have lots of value and just a piece of paper was a real gain. It went along with this great economic flourishing in China where there was more trade and cities grew and there was new technology and there was restaurant scene. It was really an incredible period in China.

MG: As you said. Initially, it's a coat cheque ticket. You give me your stuff and I'll give you this piece of paper which represents the stuff. When does that change and when does it when does the paper ticket become something that is more than just what I have given you?

JACOB GOLDSTEIN: What's interesting because in in the West, say, in Europe and North America, it won't change until the 20th century, until the 1900s. But in China, it changed in the 1200s. It changed hundreds of years earlier. You know, so the paper money was invented in China under the song Dynasty. A few hundred years later, the Mongols conquered China. Kublai Khan became the great Khan. And in the twelve hundreds and at some point he says, OK, this paper money that has been a coat cheque ticket, they called it a treasure voucher. I believe he says, you know what? It's just going to be paper. You can no longer come to the government and turn in your paper money for bronze coins, which is a wild moment. I mean, I do think it's hard for us to understand how profound that moment is and how amazing it is that it worked. It worked. You know, China's economy kept functioning. And, you know, there's a few reasons, I think, for this. One is Kublai Khan could say, use this money or I'll kill you.

MG: Because he's a tough guy.

JACOB GOLDSTEIN: He's a tough guy, is an authoritarian. And, you know, the threat of state violence is a is a thing. But the other thing I think that's important to remember is like they had been using paper money, albeit backed by metal, for hundreds of years in China at this point. And so, you know, I think they saw that it worked and understood that money is this thing that well, let's all agree on something. And if we all agree on it that, you know, it's going to stand in for value, then it works and it's useful. And they went along with.

MG: Is that the moment that money becomes you talk about it being a pure abstraction? Is that the moment when it changes into something else?

JACOB GOLDSTEIN: I mean, it's one of them. You know, there is this series of moments. I mean, in a sense, you know, coins are somewhat abstract. Paper money not backed by coins is more abstract. Today our money, you know, we think of paper when we think of money, but we shouldn't really. Most money is just in the bank, right, as bank deposits. And the bank does not have piles of paper bills for every dollar you have in the bank. Sorry, they have, you know-- so today, money is just a number stored on the bank's computers. So, you know, it's increasingly abstract over time.

MG: And in many ways then you have to have trust that your money is there and that you're going to get your money back. Right. I mean, when you say that money is around based on this idea of belief, is that what you're talking about?

JACOB GOLDSTEIN: Yes, absolutely. I mean, you have to have trust. You know, it's trust all the way down. You certainly have to have trust that your money is there when you're using paper. You have to have trust that people will take your paper. But even if you're using gold coins, I mean, you can't eat gold or live in gold. Right. You have to trust that people are going to give you something truly useful, like food or shelter in exchange for gold. So even that is fundamentally based on trust.

MG: Can you point to an episode in history when the public lost trust in money?

JACOB GOLDSTEIN: Oh, yes, that also sort of, unfortunately, has happened again and again. Just to go back to China, I mean, we were there sort of telling the story in China. Kublai Khan says, OK, paper is is just going to be money and it works for a while. And then the Mongols are driven out and there's a new dynasty. The Ming Dynasty comes to power. And I mean, a few things happened there. So one is inflation a classic problem with paper money. The paper money loses a lot of value, and that's a way that people traditionally lose trust in money. Suddenly, this piece of paper doesn't buy as much stuff as it used to. And also, the new rulers are wary of money. They themselves don't really trust paper money. They think it's some kind of hustle, you know, as leaders throughout history would think. And they take China back. China, hundreds of years, you know, before anybody else adopts paper money. Then they get rid of paper money. Paper money disappears from China. They go back to using, you know, lumps of metal in some cases because they don't trust paper anymore. And paper money essentially disappears from the world for a few hundred years.

MG: Who is John Law?

JACOB GOLDSTEIN: John Law is an amazing figure who I can't believe. I didn't know about him before I wrote the book. To be honest, I didn't know anything about him until I read this. Yeah. So John Wall was born in Scotland in the sixteen hundreds, and he grows up and his dad's a goldsmith and goldsmiths are kind of becoming bankers at this time. So his dad is doing pretty well. John Law goes off to London as a young man becomes what they called at the time, a Bo, which I think of as like a bro, you know, kind of guy about town and has lots of romances and gambles. And he winds up having a duel, killing the other guy in the duel, getting sentenced to death, escaping from prison, fleeing to Europe and then in Europe. First he gets rich as a gambler, then he gets interested in economics. And this is a moment this is now like around the year. Seventeen hundred, the turn of that century. This is a moment when sort of capitalism, as we know it, is kind of just getting going in Europe. Paper money is a new thing. This is like, you know, a few decades after its first showed up in Sweden, as we discussed, and it's starting to show up and in England and Amsterdam is doing really well. They got a stock market and they've got like a city bank that's kind of like a central bank. And so John Law sees all of these kind of economic ideas swirling, and he's like, "You know what? I'm going to create a modern economy in some country." He goes around pitching his idea to different countries, and he finds a taker in France. In France, the king is a little boy at this point, France is being run by a regent who, like John Law, is an intellectual who loves to party, basically. So they're like a perfect fit. And the regent gives John Law this power. John Law creates the first paper money in France, the first modern bank in France, this big trading company that controls half of North America, like French North America. And there is this great stock boom, economic boom really, and stock boom in France. This is like 1719 or so now. And the word millionaire is coined, people are getting rich, they're flooding into Paris to trade stocks. And then of course, you can see it coming, it all collapses. John Law is chased out of France by a mob. France abandons paper money. John Law flees and lives the rest of his life in Venice as a gambler.

MG: How does his story, what does it tell you? But of the way that the world looked at money and how that that changed?

JACOB GOLDSTEIN: Well, that's a great question. So, I mean, you know, I'll tell you. one of the interesting things to me, you can look at what France was doing, which is that story, and then you can look at England, which was kind of on a parallel track. England had created the Bank of England in the 1690s, which was like an early central bank. They had started printing paper money. England had its own stock bubble, the south east bubble at the same time. But England didn't have the total collapse that France had. And one of the differences that I think is really important and people at the time thought this, too. It's not like I made this up. People have seen this for hundreds of years. But is that England? You know, at this point, parliament had more power. Parliament had become more of a check on the king, whereas in France it was still basically an absolute monarchy. So the Regent could give John Wall all of the power to run the economy, and do anything he wanted. And I feel like that difference is really important, that balance in England where you had the interests of the bank and the interests of parliament and the interest of the king, and they were all kind of fighting with each other — I like that fighting. I think that fighting, which we have echoes of now in any open society, basically, where you have different interests who are allowed to fight it out in public. That I think is good. I think that gives you a shot at monetary and economic stability, at least relatively speaking. Whereas in France, John Law basically had too much power, so he did too much, too fast and screwed himself and France.

MG: What do you love about stories like this? I mean, this is like listening to a long episode of Planet Money where you take something that seems abstract and you bring it down in their stories and there's drama and there's tension. What do you love about the stories that are at the heart of this?

JACOB GOLDSTEIN: Oh. I mean what's not to love right? You've got a guy who kills somebody in a duel and escapes from prison and then becomes a monetary genius! I mean, look, I guess, you know, there's a few things as when. One, the stories are just delightful. Two, I find the ideas interesting, but a book that was just a series of ideas would be very dull for me to write, much less read. Three, I think it is useful specifically in the context of money to remember, to go back to the first thing you were asking about. Like money is just what we all collect actively decided is going to be. And there are these times, these moments in history like [unintelligible], like on, like with John Law, when that can change really quickly. And I think it's really important to remember that. I mean, the stories are delightful and fun and interesting, but they're useful on a kind of meta-level because we think whatever we're doing for money now is just, oh, that's the way money is. That's the way it works in nature. That is not true. And what happens every once in a while, every hundred years, a few hundred years, whatever, is somebody comes along, there's some crisis, there's some set of things, there's some story that happens and there is a big change or some set of big changes in the way money works. And it's really important to remember that, so we don't get confused and think money is just is always going to be the way it is now.

MG: How do you think you have demystified talking about money? I mean, there used to be a time when there was be the business section of the paper. And if you were in business, you read the business section. But often people would skip over it because they thought, well, I don't know what that means to me and I don't know how it relates to me and what Planet Money does and what a book like this does in many ways is make talking about money relatable. How do you think you have demystified how we talk about money?

JACOB GOLDSTEIN: Well, that's a very kind question. I mean, you know, as I said, I was an English major. You know, I came to economics from, you know, whatever modernist poetry. Like, I was not interested in making money. I didn't even think I was interested in studying money. I guess I always had some kind of a version, like I had some kind of vague notion like, oh, being interested in money, that's bad in some way. That means I'm greedy and greed, I don't know what. Something like that. Not really articulated. But what I realised when I came to study it was this is like humanities. This is studying how individuals work, how people work in groups. And I think there's a lot of people you know, it's like econ for poets, right? Like, I took physics for poets in college. They didn't have econ for poets. But that's what I'm trying to do. Like, let's think about money as this fundamentally human thing that explains and reveals all these weird, interesting things about what it is to be a person, what it is to be a society.

MG: In the last few minutes that we have. I want to talk about money now. When was the last time that you carry cash around with you?

JACOB GOLDSTEIN: You know, I still carry a little cash. I started going out again. There were several months when I didn't do anything at all with cash this year. But I finally went back to an ATM, still scared of it. You know, like other jobs are out there are not out on the street. Like, I didn't want to go into the little ATM room, you know, in New York in April, May. But I definitely use a lot less cash than I did at the beginning of the year.

MG: Are we moving to a place where there will be a cashless society? People have talked about this for a long time. I can pay for things with my watch and my phone. Are we getting to a point where cash will disappear?

JACOB GOLDSTEIN: You know, that's a really interesting question. There are two things pointing in sort of opposite directions in response to that question. One is what we just talking about, the fact that it's really easy to not use cash. You can buy a pack of gum with your phone or whatever. So that feels like yes. On the other hand, there is actually more and more cash in the world. I'm sorry I didn't look up these figures for Canada this morning. I should have. But to take the U.S. dollar. The amount of paper money in the world is increasing really fast. It's growing faster than the economy. That happened during the pandemic, but it's also been happening for years before the pandemic. And it's a little weird. Because it doesn't seem like that is like money for normal people. It's mostly hundred dollar bills, for one thing. That's one tip off in. You know, we know a lot of people outside the U.S. use U.S. dollars as as savings. If you live in a country where the banking system is unreliable, where the currency is unreliable, people will just get paper money and put it in their drawer under their mattress savings. We also know that criminals use hundreds a lot because they're very convenient way to trade anonymously.

MG: There's also there's the whole underground economy as well, where people pay for things in cash.

JACOB GOLDSTEIN: Yes. Yes. Which we don't think of as criminal. But quite often people do it to evade taxes. Right. I mean, the reason or maybe to pay someone who cannot legally work. So they thinks that we have a different maybe moral feeling about then than classic crime. But they are they are things to evade the law one way or another.

MG: Do you do you see that kind of moving into a point where we're in a crisis now and money is flying out the door, perhaps less so in your country now, but the governments are putting money out the door to address the crisis. Is that going to help accelerate how we think about the changes and how we think about money?

JACOB GOLDSTEIN: Maybe. I mean, you know, I would say yes on the kind of nerdier end of the spectrum on the left, sort of dramatic John law end of the spectrum. I mean, one thing that's been striking in general in the developed world is how much deficit spending countries have been doing without worrying about it, and how low inflation and inflation expectations have remained. Traditionally, what you expect in sort of econ one or one type thinking is if governments do a lot of deficit spending, people will expect that even if inflation doesn't creep up now, it will go up in the future. But you can look at how people are investing different kinds of bonds they're buying to see what people who are actually betting money think inflation is going to do. And people who are actually betting money think inflation is going to be really low for a really long time. I do know that Canada. Canada's government can still borrow money extraordinarily cheaply and the U.S. government can borrow money extraordinarily cheaply. So this might be a moment when people are starting to think differently about government deficits and being more open to government deficits and less afraid of inflation. So that's nerdy, but really a big deal.

MG: This is a fascinating book. And as I said, it's a bit like reading an episode of Planet Money. A pleasure to talk to Jack. Thank you.

JACOB GOLDSTEIN: Oh, thank you. You've been so kind.

MG: Jacob Goldstein is the co-host of NPR's Planet Money. His new book is Money: The True Story of a Made Up Thing by Special Request for Jacob. Here's Lorde and Royals.

SOUNDCLIP

[Song: Royals]

MG: A song about money, sort of. It's Royals by Lorde. Coming up after our regional update, Rona Ambrose is here. She is out of political life, but that has not stopped her from fighting for the rights of women and girls around the world. We'll talk about getting more women into politics and more. She's here in 90 seconds. I'm Matt Galloway. This is The Current on CBC Radio one.

Back To Top »

'Use your voice' to fight inequality, former Conservative MP Rona Ambrose tells girls

Guests: Rona Ambrose, Richard Van Camp

MG: Hi, I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current. The second wave of a pandemic in a time of economic hardship around the world may seem like a strange time for celebration, but perhaps appropriate when that celebration is about resilience and finding the power to make a change. Sunday will be the UN's International Day of the Girl. And Rona Ambrose, former conservative cabinet minister and interim leader of that party, led the charge for the day's declaration nine years ago. She's now co-authored a children's book called International Day of the Girl Celebrating Girls Around the World. It looks at gender inequality faced by girls in different countries. And Rona Ambrose joins me now. Good morning.

RONA AMBROSE: Good morning. How are you?

MG: I'm well. Thanks for joining us. This annual event came about after you met a group of girls from around the world at the UN, and they asked you to help them create a day to celebrate them and their lives. So if you were able to tell them now, nine years later, what would you tell them about what's been accomplished in that time and where that movement is now?

RONA AMBROSE: Well, it's become a global movement, which is incredible when you think of the fact that they, I always joke, and one of the girls, like, I've tried to keep in touch with Fabiola from Cameroon. And they were so full of energy and enthusiasm and they actually kind of ambushed me on the way to a meeting at the United Nations and they stole my heart. I still get emotional thinking of them because when I think back now, they could have, to be frank, they could have been ignored by so many people. It could have been dismissed. But I just saw in them this incredible passion and I thought, how can we not help them? And the irony is, I was sitting there and I looked at them and I said, "Of course I'll help you!" And the bureaucrats that I was working with at the time knew that this would be an overwhelming thing to do. And they looked at me and they were sort of saying, "No, no," from the back of the room, "Don't promise this to them because we probably can't get this done." It's a huge thing to get a resolution passed at the United Nations. And of course, we all worked together, including those wonderful people that I work with the government of Canada. And we all did it together, but it was them. And so I say to them, good for you for speaking up, using your voice. You've created a global movement. It's celebrated by dozens and dozens of countries around the world. And the great thing about it is that it's been a way, if I could say, not an innocuous way, but a more a more acceptable way to open the door at a very young age to talk about some very important issues around gender inequality. International Women's Day could be, can in some countries is is not celebrated because it's, it can be seen as political and controversial. And yet we've been able to open the door to celebrate International Day of the Girl and start to talk about those very rights that girls will grow into as women. And so it's been, it's actually been quite helpful in the whole, in the whole area of gender equality.

MG: What about here? I mean, clearly, it's had a huge impact on you and I mean still sticks with you. If you take a look at here in this country, one of the stories, for example, in the book is, is that of a young indigenous girl who's fighting for a school for her community, and she succeeds by making her voice heard. If you take a look at the reality that girls are facing here in Canada, what does this country need to do to improve the situation of girls here?

RONA AMBROSE: Well, I think we face, you know, we have a framework for rights in Canada, a legal framework, and we should all be very proud of that. And so, you know, when we're born, we're all born equal. But we face in Canada and certain girls, indigenous girls in particular, face a lot of discrimination. And so what do we do as a country to acknowledge that, recognize that and work towards fixing that? And unfortunately, we see like what happened just this last week in Quebec, that that still happens and whether it's unconscious bias or assumptions that people have, outright discrimination, outright racism that people have towards the Aboriginal population, is it continues to be a problem. It's in our justice system. It's in our society writ large. It's systemic in a lot of our organizations, in schools and universities. And so what do we do? We have to acknowledge that. We have to face it, confront it. But the story of so CNN is the real life story of Shannon Koustagin, who was a young girl from Attawapiskat First Nation, who she became, I mean, she garnered international attention, no matter national intention here in Canada, fighting the government and fighting against all the institutions that said this isn't the way to do things, And finally got a school for her community. And that's a real life story. But when you think about the bravery that took for that little girl to stand up and do that on behalf of her community — and everyone did listen in the end, but you shouldn't have to do that to get a clean, proper school for yourself, for your community.

MG: Let me ask you about justice. You talked about that. Last month the government reintroduced legislation that you championed as a private member's bill in 2017 that would make sure newly appointed provincial superior court judges get continuing education in sexual assault law. It's been three years since this was proposed. Do you think that that there is the will to make this happen?

RONA AMBROSE: There is. I mean, I've received support from premiers. There's two provinces who have now introduced this law at the provincial level. We received support from all political parties in the House of Commons. Where we hit some headwinds is some judges quietly in the judicial community pushing back from behind the scenes, saying judges just don't need this. We are responsible for our own education.

MG: What does that mean? Well, what does that tell you?

RONA AMBROSE: It tells me that they aren't willing to be part of change and we all need education. And when it comes to racism, sexism, discrimination, there is unconscious bias in our systems and particularly in systems like the judiciary, in our court system. And we have to have training. And so I don't think it's a lot to ask the people who are judges that are at the top level of our judicial system to be educated in sexual assault law. At the end of the day, what this bill actually asked them to do is to know the law. Three times the Supreme Court in the last few years has overturned sexual assault cases because judges made basic errors in the law. That cannot happen. When you walk into the courtroom as a sexual assault survivor, you should have faith that the person overseeing your case actually, at the least, knows the law, so, and applies it properly. And so it is an issue. And for Indigenous women, it's- I mean, a multitude more of problems because you have sexism and you have bias in the courtroom in terms of how they're treated. The Cindy Gladue case made that very clear.

MG: You see that and you see that as systemic racism?

RONA AMBROSE: Absolutely. Absolutely. The way the, just the assumptions that people make about Aboriginal women in the court, through the court process. And If you look at the numbers, I mean, Aboriginal women in Canada are five times more likely to experience sexual violence in their life than non-Aboriginal women. And then if you also look at the numbers in Canada writ large, one in three women will experience some form of sexual violence in their life, but only one in 10 will take it to court, and they say it's because they have no faith in the system. So we have to find ways to increase that faith.

MG: Let me ask you. We're talking in the midst of a pandemic and this economic downturn is being felt by people across the spectrum. But women in particular are feeling this. And people have called this, on this program and elsewhere, a she-cession. Do you think that what we're in right now is a she-cession?

RONA AMBROSE: Absolutely. Absolutely. I read an Economist article the other day that argued that just as many women and men have lost their jobs so the she-cession isn't real. And I would argue that is absolutely not true. If you look at where jobs are being lost — in the retail and restaurants, accommodation, all of tourism, primarily occupied by women, and in those, those are the kind of jobs that single moms end up taking. So they're hit very hard. And there's really doesn't look like much of a reprieve in those areas of the economy. And then you look at women who are in the corporate world who might have been able to hang onto a job, but now they're at home trying to continue to advance, compete, promote themselves, to work up that corporate ladder, do all the right things. And now they're at home, they're home-schooling. They're taking care of their parents that are stuck, that can't get out of the house. So, you know, the majority, a lot of men, you know, don't get me wrong, are doing a lot in their families. But the majority of caregiving still falls to women.

MG: Do you think the Trudeau government is doing enough to address that? If we're in this right now, and the crisis, as you said, doesn't show any signs of abating, is the government doing enough to address those issues?

RONA AMBROSE: Well, I think that the government, governments across the board are doing what we need to do right now, which is to get money into people's pockets and make sure that they have what they need to continue to put food on the table and keep shelter, all of those basic necessities. But there's going to be a point where we have to figure out what do we do when all of the formals and informal structures fall away that usually supported women so that they could stay in the workforce. Women are- I mean, the latest research is that one in four women are saying they're going to just remove themselves from the workforce.

MG: Would a national child-care plan prevent that?

RONA AMBROSE: Well, it depends. It depends on what it looks like. Could it. Could it be put in place fast enough? You know, we do have day-care. We do have informal day-care with day homes and grandma and, you know, people that help us. But right now, because of the pandemic, all of those things are so tenuous. At any moment school could get closed down, day-care gets closed down. So, you know, the only thing the government can do with that situation is to have very good testing and protocols in place so that we can keep schools open and keep daycares open. But again, when you think about if we finally get through this next second wave, if we want to call that, call it that, if we ever do and we start to get people back into the workspace, I would argue that women will be the last ones to get back into the workplace because they'll still be having to manage what's going on with kids at home. So I don't think governments have fully acknowledged the impact this is having on women, the amount of stress, anxiety, the notion that women are saying you're just going to quit their jobs because they've got to take care of their families. And I think we're going to see in this next six months, you know, even more of an impact on women. I don't have all the answers. I think our our formal structures have got to be supported somehow. And that is day-care and the school system. Women rely on that a lot so they can continue to work because we can't rely on grandparents and because they're too, exposed to the virus.

MG: Well, just in the last minute or so that we have, I mean, that this could be, go back to where we started, where you're talking to those young girls. This could be really difficult listening because they're wondering what the world is going to be like that they're going to be stepping into, that they're going to be inheriting. So what would you say, given all that, there's a lot of doom and gloom. But just briefly, what would you say to those girls around the world as the International Day of the Girl arrives in a really difficult year?

RONA AMBROSE: Well, I think to do the things that they do in this book. There's nine stories of nine girls who face really difficult issues: illiteracy, discrimination, I mean, early childhood marriage. And they use their voice to speak up about those inequalities and those injustices. And they make a difference. So it does matter to speak up. Absolutely it does. And we'll always have issues that we have to face and challenges that we have to overcome. But I say speak up, use your voice and look for solutions. There's always people that are willing to work with you and people that are willing to listen to you.

MG: Rona Ambrose, a pleasure to talk to you. Thank you.

RONA AMBROSE: Thank you.

MG: Rona Ambrose is the former interim leader of the Conservative Party of Canada, co-author of the children's book The International Day of the Girl Celebrating Girls Around the World. It's written with Jessica Humphries and illustrated by Simon Shin. This is The Current on CBC Radio One. My name is Matt Galloway. Picture this. Something brutal has happened to you. You dropped your wedding ring down the sink. You split your pants on the first day of school. It's a horrible, embarrassing, problematic moment. But once that moment kind of passes. You know, you've got a perfect story to tell out of it. This is what happened and this is how I survived. Shaping our bad experiences into good and perhaps even funny stories is one of the ways that we take the sting out of those bad moments. And in the future, it's pretty good chance that we'll be telling stories about the difficult days that we're all in right now. Richard Van Camp is collecting some of these stories in his role as the storyteller in residence at the Calgary Public Library. Richard's the author of 24 books that often draw on his experience as a member of the Tlicho Dene First Nation in Fort Smith Northwest Territories. Richard. Good morning.

RICHARD VAN CAMP: Good morning, Matt.

MG: These are tricky times, to say the very least. How are you doing in the midst of all of this?

RICHARD VAN CAMP: We're doing great, buddy. We're doing fantastic. We're thriving as a family. And I'm grateful for the opportunity to be the storyteller and residents for the Calgary Public Library.

MG: How are you having the island? How are you thriving as a family in the middle of all of this?

RICHARD VAN CAMP: Since this whole thing has begun, my family and I, we've been outside for hours every single day. And I think this pandemic has shown us that really so much of the solution especially and now we're lucky we only have one little boy. He's six years old, so he's in two different forest schools. We've joined an outdoor archery community and we're just outside. We're camping. We're making fires. We're feasting outside. We're visiting outside people's backyards, front yards on the street. It's great.

MG: You sound so positive in the middle of a pretty negative time. Have you taken to heart what people have been musing about, but perhaps not put into action, which is that idea that in a moment like this, you get to stand back a little bit and reset and evaluate what's important and what isn't?

RICHARD VAN CAMP: Absolutely. You know, my dear friend Katrina Chappell, who's an acupuncturist in Victoria. She's a healer. She gave me some great words early on and she said that this is not an end to anything. This is merely a pause. And we've been here before. So use this pause to really strengthen the bonds you have with your family, your friends, pick up the phone cheque on your elders, do your best share, which you have. And that really has been our approach. So our little boy is only going to be six for so long. And we're already seeing the grip that all of us, his little buddies, have up and down the street on him. So we really are focussing on the fun and good home cooking and cranking the tunes, CBC Radio, wind speaker radio, reading the books and rereading the books that really make our spirits soar and really pacing ourselves, if you will. If you know what's on for supper, it's in the crock pot. It's been simmering low and slow for hours. Things are a little easier in life. You know what I mean?

MG: Is your sense that people are taking that opportunity to do this?

RICHARD VAN CAMP: Absolutely. Our whole street in Edmonton, you know, I live in Edmonton, 26 territory with my family, my beautiful wife keeping Martin. And we know our neighbours far more now than we did for the first seven years. We lived in our home. In fact, when it closed down the street and we would do a social distance Halloween party one street over. So I'm noticing now that we go to the Bougere bakery, we're picking up an extra loaf of bread and just dropping it off at a friend's house. We're really taking the time. I was given an elk, a beautiful elk roast from the hunters one street over. So I'm noticing that there's more of a communal distance celebration.

MG: It feels like a moment to slow down. I just wonder whether people actually take advantage of that opportunity.

RICHARD VAN CAMP: I see everybody. Everyone I know is really taking the time. You know, I'm reconnecting. I'm picking up the phone. Every time I have to do a grocery run, I'm calling my buddy Garth. He's the head chef at a Bush camp way up north. I called Fort Smith Northwest Territories. I got to speak to my beautiful auntie Marley Nevin's. Her husband, Earl Evins, just got to Buffalo. It's my friend Mike Labien's birthday. I called Mike Labien yesterday in Fort Smith. Earl had already dropped off. I think the front quarter of the buffalo. So they were divvying up the meat, sharing what they have. That's what we do as northerners. You know, I was told a long time ago, Matt, by a great man Bernie Bergman. He said a true northerner always leaves each person in each place better than they found them. And I think that's what this pandemic has shown us, is that we have that responsibility to do our best. Share what you have. Share the stories, share the recipe, share the food and keep each other safe by, of course, trusting science and socially distancing and masking up and washing your hands. Everyone's doing their best in all storms pass. That's the one thing I wanted to just really share today, that all- we've been here before, whether it was TB and influenza that decimated the Northwest Territories, which my grandparents survived to think about. You know, there's a dear friend, Marvin, one street over. He remembers that he was the first kid in his community to receive the vaccine for polio. And remember, it was the pink sugar cube. But you know if you if your parents or grandparents told you that, that he just, he had no idea what this meant to the world, that they had found a cure.

MG: Changed everybody's life.

RICHARD VAN CAMP: It changed everybody's lives forever. And this storm will pass. And we're going to get through this together. And the key is taking it one day at a time and just really doing your best and really protecting yourself from negative energy. So maybe staying off social media. This is your chance to reread those old books. I've still got the libraries are open again.

MG: Talk about what you're doing at the library. I mean, you're there as a storyteller in residence. What are you doing in this moment, in that position?

RICHARD VAN CAMP: I'm the luckiest man I know because we're doing one on one workshop. So Mondays and Wednesdays, I get to spend an hour with somebody on Zoom and Microsoft teams. They're telling me about whatever they want to do. So whether it's as a storyteller working on their ancestry.com site or digitising family photos or digitising audio stories and sharing them that they had recorded on a little tiny tape maybe in the 80s, people are talking to me about writing their very first novel or their short story collection of the very first kids' book. And so I work with all the different publishers and I have two agents. So I love it when I get to read somebody whose manuscript and then send it off to somebody who I know is looking for exactly what they're working on. And at the same time, we've been doing free online workshops. So I think this week is our fourth gathering our Medicines Together workshop. And so we have a group of people that have been with us for several months and we've been checking in every, I think, six weeks or maybe it's a month. And we all put our names in the hat with dream projects, wish projects that we wanted to accomplish during the pandemic. So this is really a chance for everybody to cheque in, share what they have, share what they've been working on. There was a lady. Her name is Barbara Ann Wackerle. She did this beautiful submission. So there's a website where you can upload your photos, your artwork. There was a gentleman who uploaded a beautiful movie about what he's doing during the pandemic. And there was a lady, Barbara Ann Wackerle, who wrote that it took the pandemic for her to finally say I love you to her 87 year old dad. And I really appreciate people are sharing their routines, their schedules, things that bring them joy. There's some heartbreaking stuff from a grandmother about what it is like to be a grandmother and not to be able to visit or hug your own grandbabies. People are sharing the hope, but also people are really sharing the fatigue, too, because we're six months in and I think we've got another year to go.

MG: Why do you think these stories and that process of sharing these stories now is important? Do you think?

RICHARD VAN CAMP: I think storytellers remind the world and artists, of course, remind the world that we're all in this together. I've always said we're all children in the same glorious storm, you know, we're sharing this planet at this gorgeous planet at the same time. And I think that storytellers remind people what it means to be human. And storytellers carry that light of humanity and that hope of humanity. And they get to share beautiful stories that just inspire the heart and the spirit, the soul. And it's a joy.

MG: Can you imagine what kind of story - when we get through this - can you imagine what kind of story that you'll tell about the time that we're in right now?

RICHARD VAN CAMP: Oh, I know what it's there to tell. We did our best and we realised what was most important, and that was each other. And it was the great outdoors that saved us all.

MG: We are at a time when people are giving thanks as well with Thanksgiving. And again, it's not going to be their Thanksgiving that I think a lot of people are used to. What do you kind of hinted at this all the way through, but what are you thankful for right now?

RICHARD VAN CAMP: Well, my goodness, I'm again, Matt. I'm the luckiest man I know. I married the love of my life, Katie Martin. We are the most beautiful little boy @Zozi Van Camp. We've got a community now that we can count on. I just I'm so happy to be alive. I mean, I'm forty nine and I've never been happier. And I know we're privileged. I'm so lucky. My wife, the prophet, the university, she's got the salary, she's tenured. We have benefits, you know, and I get these wonderful cheques from my publishers and the Calgary Public Library. So I think the message for me, what I'm grateful for the most is that I think I thought I need to be busy all the time and I need to be everywhere at the same time to promote all the books and everything that we're doing. But the truth is, when do we return and everyday now, I don't ever want to be that busy again.

MG: In a time when people are really it's easy to get caught in a downward spiral and it's easy to feel like the world's kind of crashing in on you, your positivity and the energy that you have around spreading, that is really infectious.

RICHARD VAN CAMP: Thanks, man. I really appreciate it. [Unintelligible].

MG: Great to talk to you. Thank you much.

RICHARD VAN CAMP: OK. Take everybody one day at a time. [Unintelligible].

MG: Thanks, Richard. Richard Van Camp, the author of 24 books for adults and youth. His most recent short story collection is called Moccasin Square Gardens. Richard mentioned that the Calgary Public Library is taking submissions from the public for this online community history exhibition about living with the coronavirus. It's called Pieces of a Pandemic. He mentioned one of the pieces called Pandemic Postcard. Greetings from Calgary by Barbara Wackerle. It's read by the currents. Sameera Mohyeddin.

SOUNDCLIP

Dear Dan, we're healthy. I remind myself every day. But physical distancing sucks. This virus sucks. I miss hugs. I miss people. I really miss my grandkids. There's snuggles, cuddles. Now we play shadow tag and Simon says. We draw on sidewalks with chalk. I bring my own. No sharing. I chased them on their bikes. Pray they don't fall because I can't pick them up. Can't touch them to protect me. I'm apparently old. High. When did being 60 become a high risk. Isn't 60 the new 40? Sweet Wyatt wants to catch the virus in his bug catcher so he can sleep over again. He's five. Ainsley puts her hands up when I get too close to her. She turned four. I sang Happy Birthday from the end of her driveway. Nolan and Damon run to hug my legs. I remember to step back, to look in their eyes. Breaks my heart. My dad's 87. Lives alone on the farm still. Dad says God hates him so much he'll make him live through this. Too many laughs. I told him I loved him. It took a virus for me to tell him. Be steadfast, dear friend, and stay healthy. Ever. Always there. Barbara.

MG: Fantastic. Thank you very much, Samira, for reading that. And for Barbara Wackerle for writing that. That is the current for today. Coming up on CBC Radio One its Q, the actor Zachary Quinto speaks about the late playwright Mark Crawley and reimagining his seminal work and boys in the band for Zachary Quinto in Star Trek as well. We've been hearing a lot about the death yesterday of Eddie Van Halen. He died from cancer, 65 years old. Was Eddie Van Halen, the greatest rock guitarist of all time? We will leave that for you to argue about. But he's a man who launched a thousand air guitar solos and perhaps guitarists as well. We thought we would leave you today on The Current with a bit of an Heylin Thrissur van camp talked about cranking up the tunes. This is a tune in the morning you could crank up. I'm Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening to The Current. Talk to you tomorrow.

SOUNDCLIP

[Song]

Back To Top »

Provide Transcript Feedback

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

Wednesday October 7, 2020 Full Transcript

More Stories Like This