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The AIH Transcript for November 13, 2020

Hosts: Carol Off and Talia Schlanger

Prologue

CAROL OFF: Hello. I'm Carol Off.

TALIA SCHLANGER: Good evening, I'm Talia Schlanger, sitting in for Chris Howden. This is “As It Happens”.

[Music: Theme]

CH: Tonight:

CO: Breaking point. A COVID surge has Quebec saying schools might have to take a longer-than-usual winter break. But the province's education critic warns us that by then it might be too late.

TS: Masking for help. A North Dakota nurse says she's overwhelmed and exhausted as the state's COVID numbers soar. And a new rule letting her COVID-positive colleagues stay at work isn't helping.

CO: Watery save. A vast stretch of ocean around the most remote inhabited island on the planet will become a marine protected zone, news that one conservationist calls “totally unreal” — in a good way.

TS: The sweet smell of success. Filmmaker and artist John Waters donates hundreds of works from his art collection to the Baltimore Museum of Art. In return, they're naming two bathrooms after him.

CO: Blast from the past. It was 50 years ago this week that an inventive plan to dispose of a rotting whale carcass on an Oregon beach blew up in the plan-maker's faces — and all over everyone else, too.

TS: And eep in wolf's clothing! A town in Japan installs two mechanical wolves in an effort to keep bears at bay. And while they do look scary, they sound downright bizarre.

TS: “As It Happens”, the Friday edition. Radio that asks howl they pull it off.

Part one: School breaks extended, Atlantic marine protected area, John Waters donation

School breaks extended

Guest: Marwah Rizqy

TS: It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas breaks could be extended in some provinces. With COVID cases surging nearly everywhere in the country, Quebec has been the first to acknowledge that it's considering the idea. This is a reversal for François Legault. The Quebec Premier had pooh-poohed the idea in the past. At a news conference yesterday he was asked what changed his mind?

MARWAH RIZQY: Well, the parents are very exhausted. And the teacher are so exhausted because it's very demanding to teach during a pandemic. And we don't have the feeling that we have leadership for the education system right now. Mr. Roberge, the Quebec education minister, is always behind, even though the public health published studies after studies that we should reduce the number of students inside of the classroom, and we should have more air-purifying system in school to provide a better air quality. We always fall too short and always behind. And this is why today we have to hear the premier, Mr. Leqault, saying that he wants to shut down the school. I think if we get more prepared, we can keep the school open in a safety manner.

CO: Right. So what are the rates that you're seeing? Because I'm looking at a chart, it looks pretty extraordinary how since September, how quickly the numbers have gone up as far as school-related cases in Quebec. What can you tell us about that?

MR: Well, for weeks during summer, I've been asking, are we going to put masks mandatory inside school? And Mr. Legault, Mr. Roberge, never were able to provide a clear answer. So we were behind the mask, as opposed to the other provinces who decided to go ahead and to ask the students to wear the mask inside of the classroom. And the numbers of COVID-19 outbreaks since September is always going up, never going down. And right now I think we should not wait to see what's going to happen for the holidays. We should definitely go ahead and reduce the numbers of students inside the classroom. We should definitely go ahead and buy air-purifying system to provide a very safety classroom for the kids and for the teacher. And when it comes down for the holidays, what's going to happen after that? I truly believe that instead of shutting down the school, we should have a progressive return that will be like having half of the class, either one day, yes, another day, no, or a half a day for the half of the class. But we cannot just simply ask the parents to keep their kids for another month at home, especially with all the setbacks that we have at the education.

CO: OK, lots of complicated possibilities there. If they did just half the kids came back, the other half didn't, there's still parents who are stuck with not knowing how to take care of their kids because they got to get back to work, right? That has been a big issue for them.

MR: Yes, but it's better to have them one day out of two than have them for two weeks at home doing nothing. I'd rather have 50 per cent of the kids at school than have none of them at school at all.

CO: And what about for the teachers? Because again, not enough teachers --

MR: Oh, the option is very simple. What we should do is to put a camera inside of the class so the teacher will be in his class with half of the students and with a camera and the other student will be at home. And the next day, you switching the group.

CO: But this is a temporary measure.

MR: Yes.

CO: You're not proposing this --

MR: No, this is only for the first two weeks when we return after the holidays. And I think it's better than to simply shut down the school for another two weeks or for another month. And also, if I can have something we've been asking for months to give the online learning options to the parents, many Quebecers are asking the government to have this option. I know that the Ontario government give that option to the parents. I don't understand why in Quebec, we just say no to the parents who wants to provide online teaching to the kids.

CO: You mentioned Quebec's education minister, Jean-Francois Roberge, he says that before they can reduce class sizes, as you would like, they need to ask if schools have the technology and the training. And so far, he says, the answer is no. So what do you say to Minister Roberge?

MR: Yes, of course, we are not trained. But we should have been prepared since July. We have studies telling us that we should definitely reduce the numbers of kids inside of the classroom. So he should be the one in charge. And because of the lack of leadership, this is why today we're not ready. But we can be ready if right now we're taking the steps to be ready for January. So we have two months to prepare and to get ready.

CO: The reports are that in Quebec schools, 20 per cent of the new covid cases are from your schools. And so that's quite high, isn't it?

MR: Well, the very last reports for overall in Quebec is 27 per cent. But for Montreal, it's the number one driving force of COVID-19.

CO: Doesn't that kind of call for something more dramatic than just to try and find a way to reduce class sizes or whatever, doesn't it kind of scream for what people are saying is a shutdown, and so you can do a circuit breaker and stop those infections from spreading?

MR: A shutdown will be very, very bad for the kids. That will create even more like setbacks. And we already have health issues also and mental issues to deal with. What I ask also today, I very appreciate Dr. Arruda as the national director of health public care for Quebec, but I think right now, we should have someone devoted only and only for the education minister, and helping us to make sure that we can have classes that are COVID-19 free. And this is why I ask we have some online doctor, she's an expert, she is very well-known. Can we ask her to just give us, like, some help for the education system?

CO: Do you have any sense that the government in Quebec is listening to you?

MR: [chuckling] Yes, they are listening to us, but always three weeks behind. And we don't have time to waste. I don't have time to argue. My number one priority is the safety of the kids and the teachers.

CO: We will leave it there. And, Marwah, thank you.

MR: Thank you.

CO: Bye.

TS: Marwah Rizqy is Quebec's Liberal Education Critic. We reached her in Montreal.

[Music: Ambient]

Atlantic marine protected area

Guest: Jonathan Hall

TS: It describes itself as "the most remote inhabited island" on the planet — a place, quote, "far from the maddening crowd in the south Atlantic ocean." Unquote. The island is called Tristan da Cunha. It's part of an archipelago of the same name. And today, the British territory is adding another distinction to the list: Tristan da Cunha has announced that nearly 700-thousand square kilometres of its waters will become a marine protected area. The government says it’s the fourth largest in the world. Jonathan Hall has been working with the island for years to make this happen. He works for the UK charity Royal Society for the Protection of Birds as its head of UK overseas territories. We reached him in Oxford.

CO: Jonathan, you have been to Tristan da Cunha, and the majority of us have not been. It’s very difficult to get to. What's it like to be there?

JONATHAN HALL: So after seven days at sea from South Africa, you get to these ginormous volcanoes rising out of the South Atlantic with 250 of the friendliest people on the planet. And then the sheer abundance of life is unbelievable. The sky is dark at dawn and dusk with the millions of seabirds going to and from the island. The beaches sort of move in the springtime when you walk along them with all of the seals and seal pups just getting out of your way. There's these vast penguin colonies that ring the islands. And then offshore in these golden kelp forests, you've just got incredible amounts of lobsters and other life. So it's just this incredibly pristine marine ecosystem, and one of the very few in the temperate places on our planet.

CO: How extraordinary! What's it like, just maybe what does it sound like? What's the sort of volume of that?

JH: So the sound is cacophonous with all of the cries and the whistles and the squawks of the various seabirds. So there's 25 different seabird species that all breed here as one of the few sets of islands in a vast and otherwise pretty empty ocean. And the smell is also pretty famous at times there with all the guano that they create.

CO: [laughing] Of course! Now so making it a marine protection zone, what does that mean for you when knowing what you know about Tristan da Cunha?

JH: So the community have just, you know, thrust themselves to the forefront of global leadership with the fourth largest fully-protected marine reserve on the planet and the largest anywhere in the Atlantic. And this is going to safeguard these really rich seas and help ensure that the UK government continues to do satellite surveillance and monitoring to enforce them and prevent illegal fishing. The community do report that they've seen the likes of illegal fishing vessels offshore at night. And this is going to be able to help protect these waters with the full weight of the UK government behind this small island community. And even just the simple fact of announcing that this regime is in place. We've seen evidence from elsewhere that there's a real deterrence effect here with boats both legal and potentially illegal, going out of their way to avoid being in these protected waters just so that there is no pool of suspicion cast upon them.

CO: OK, so you say some of the observation — the policing — can be done by satellite. But you're saying there are absolutely obligations that the UK is taking on in order to protect this. This isn't just window dressing here as far as declaring this a marine protection zone?

JH: No, there's been a really long-standing four-year program to assess and understand the potential threats and work out mitigation with a comprehensive, centralized compliance and enforcement strategy that is used to support the territory government, but run out of the UK's National Maritime Information Centre and suchlike. And this pertains across the so-called “Blue Belt”. So the Tristan da Cunha joins a number of other UK overseas territories which have now created large scale marine reserves. So there is now four million square kilometres across these territories in marine protection. And so a centralized enforcement surveillance and intelligence hub can reach out to flag states’ ports, identify illegal vessels and provide that deterrence effect.

CO: Do you believe that there will be tangible results from this in terms of protecting marine life?

JH: Yes, and there had been intermittent tuna licensing, and also of the critically endangered Southern bluefin tuna in the south of the zone. So that will cease, and there will be a ban on bottom trawling throughout the entire marine zone of Tristan da Cunha. And then the centrepiece, this gold standard of protection, and there's clear scientific evidence from around the world that these fully protected marine reserves are just fish farms from which life overspills into the wider ocean.

CO: There are people who live there. So what effect is this going to have on them? Does this restrict their ability to use the area?

JH: Not at all. This is Tristan's leadership and Tristan's decision first foremost. So, there is a sustainable Marine Stewardship Council certified lobster fishery in the in-shoal waters, which provides the majority of the island's income, and that will continue entirely unaffected by this zone, but now surrounded by effectively a gigantic protective halo around in all their offshore waters.

CO: So Boris Johnson is celebrating this announcement, and the success of his Blue Belt initiative, which aims to protect these marine environments. But many people are criticizing the UK for not doing enough at home in its own waters. Do you think there's a disconnect there?

JH: There is a stark contrast. We have these small communities really dependent upon the ocean for their livelihoods. But recognizing the importance and the role of marine protection alongside sustainable harvest of marine resources and the contrast to the UK, where there are very, very few areas of full protection, is stark. And we will need to see greater protections in UK waters if we're going to achieve a sustainable ocean and a sustainable planet.

CO: Just finally, I know you have been working with the people on the island for half a decade really to get this to happen. So what does it feel like for you to see your hard work pay off today?

JH: It's brilliant and unreal. It's just been fantastic working with all the Tristanians. They’ve become friends over these many years. And to sort of support them to this announcement has been a magical moment. But I think it's going to take a few days to sink in.

CO: It's really good to have some good news from the environment files. So thank you for that.

JH: Thank you for having me.

CO: Bye, Jonathan.

TS: Jonathan Hall works with the UK charity Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. We reached him in Oxford, England.

[Music: Elevator music]

John Waters donation

Guest: John Waters

TS: John Waters' artistic awakening began as a boy after a visit to the Baltimore Museum of Art. He bought a Miro poster and hung it on his wall. It disgusted other kids who saw it. And he liked that. Now, after decades as an actor, director and artist, the self-proclaimed "Pope of Trash" is giving back to the museum. He's donating hundreds of artworks from his personal collection to the Baltimore Museum of Art. And in return, they're naming two bathrooms after him. We reached Mr. Waters in Baltimore, Maryland.

CO: Mr. Waters, how big an honour is it to have not one, but two washrooms named after you?

JOHN WATERS: And I think there might be a third if they ever have, one, a trans bathroom that they don't have yet? But I think that might be coming, which will be even more of an honour. It was my idea. They did also name a rotunda after me in their gallery, but I said that's fine, but I really want the bathrooms. And they kept thinking I was kidding, but I wasn't because I don't want to be too pretentious, you know? I want to keep my gift down to earth. And maybe people can meet there?!

CO: [laughing] But of course, it’s a mockery of those who do give great gifts and then have halls named after them, buildings named after them because they've given a donation. So you wanted to avoid that then?

JW: Well, I wanted to comment on it and not be too grand. And I know that my collection is a good one. And it's and they would have given me other stuff. But I just thought this was more with my sense of humour and the kind of art and my career and everything, it just seemed more fitting to me.

CO: When you were just a kid and you started going to the museum in Baltimore, did you ever imagine that you would one day be one of their bigwig patrons?

JW: I didn't even know there was such a thing as that. I didn't know that people collected art really, or that they later gave it to museums, something that it's rare these days because rich people now build their own museums to themself.

CO: And you didn't consider doing that, I guess?

JW: No, I didn't. And I've never sold anything either. I sold one piece only because it was light-restrictive. I had to cover it all year except one day a year at my Christmas party. And I thought, this is ridiculous! But I've never sold anything. I certainly could have because I bought a lot of artists really early that went on to be big. And I never bought anything I didn't hang up. I have nothing in storage, so I have to buy little art lately because I don't have any more room.

CO: What drove you to do the collecting? And I guess the point of view of your collection, how would you describe it?

JW: Well, all art that lasted in history made people insane when they first came out. Andy Warhol put the abstract expressionists out of business in one night with that soup can. People were furious. Then minimalism made people furious. Graffiti art made people furious. Performance art made people furious. So I love art that makes you furious because I'm in on it. You finally learn to see differently if you like art. It's a secret club. It's like a biker gang where you learn a special language. You have to dress a certain way. I love all the ridiculous elitism about the art world. I think it's hilarious.

CO: And this collection you're donating, 372 pieces. We're talking Andy Warhol, Diane Arbus, Cindy Sherman, so many others. What are some of your favourites?

JW: Well, my favourite I'm a big fan of Mike Kelly, the artist that's no longer with us, unfortunately. But he was great because his art was all about being a bad boy and Catholic guilt and pitifulness. And I think he did that very well. I have one piece he did that says “They love Thatan” with a “th” in the beginning of both those words. So actually, it was like the Satanists had a lisp, basically. And so he wrote it that way. But it would really be hard to be taken too seriously as a Satanist if you had a lisp, I guess. But that's the kind of pitiful thing that Mike Kelly celebrates.

CO: There's another installation piece, Gregory Green's “Work Table Number Seven”, that's bound to make people a bit jumpy. Can you describe that one?

JW: It's an installation. He lived here for a week, and I gave him a room, and he built the room of a mad bomber. And it looked like the cops came in one minute before he ran out the door. He's making three different bombs. It's like all the things you can buy legally in a hardware store. The only thing missing is the gunpowder. And it is quite creepy. It's actually like the person lived there and was discovered, and it's in a hidden room, but it is an installation. It is going to the museum, and there are like 200 pictures of it, so it can be built exactly again just like this.

CO: When you say that that you like art, and art should be something that just outrages people and makes them think of things they've not thought of before --

JW: Well, it does that. But it also makes them think of things in a different way. Once you learn about art, every time you can take a walk, you can see a piece of garbage in the street and that can remind you of one particular art picture. You can see everything through the eyes of art. Now it starts to fade away. But then if you keep going to a whole day of galleries, it comes back. So you got to keep reinforcing it. But it makes you see the world in a different way. It's a magic trick.

CO: Now, is there going to be an exhibit of your collection? Is there going to be one show so people in Baltimore and elsewhere can come?

JW: Yes, but it's not every piece. But I mean, it'll be a curated show of it, and that will be before I die because they don't really get the collection until I die.

CO: Will it be interesting to go when people are visiting your collection and watch them? Is that something that would appeal to you?

JW: I don't know? I guess I'll go to the opening, so I'll see people react, yeah. But I'm not going to hide behind... I'm not going to stand there in a guard uniform [CO laughs] and try to pass so I can eavesdrop like Borat.

CO: But it’ll be fun to actually see how people respond to things that you have been collecting over all these years.

JW: Oh, I know they'll hate some of them. I mean, my father used to say, you bought that! Oh, my God! He used to go crazy. Many people will not like what I have, definitely. And that's the kind of art I buy on purpose.

CO: You have said that you have to know good taste to have good bad taste. So what is good bad taste?

JW: Well, good bad taste, I would say, is all my movies. I think good bad taste, you're in on it, but you don't make fun of it, you make fun with it. I think that's the thing. You're not condescending. You're not looking down. You're marvelling at that this is a taste that someone actually has.

CO: And that certainly would be what “Hairspray” would show, it's probably the movie they best know of yours.

JW: Well, I guess. “Hairspray” was a Trojan horse that snuck in America. You know, it's being done in high schools all over America. And it's a show that sings about two men getting married and interracial dating, even racists like “Hairspray”. They don't notice. [both chuckling] So it's a Trojan horse that’s not gay. And it's the only subversive thing I ever did.

CO: Are there subversive works that are in this collection?

JW: Sure, I think they are. Some of them, yeah. One is made out of mold that really could kill you if I hadn't had it treated. One of them just looks like a mirror, but it's filthy that somebody you could write your name on the dust, but it's an art piece. You can't wipe it off. A lot of it looks like rubble on the floor. They did stuff that looks like somebody just left some rubble on the floor. I always have to put that one away. I like floor art a lot, but you have to be careful because people step on it.

CO: Are there any works from the collection that you're donating that you would like to have hung in the John Waters restrooms?

JW: Well, no, because, you know, technically, I don't think you can hang any art in the restaurant because people could steal it or deface it or it would have light restrictions. But I don't know. We'll come to see. I can think of things that would be fitting in there. There's one piece, but it's too large by Tony Tasset, who's a well-known artist, called “I Peed in my Pants”. And it's just a picture of him that after he just did that.

CO: [laughing] That sounds perfect. Mr. Waters, it's great to talk to you. Thank you.

JW: All right. Thank you.

CO: Bye.

JW: Bye-bye.

TS: John Waters is an actor, director and artist. We reached him in Baltimore. You can see some of the art he's donating to the Baltimore Museum of Art, on our website, at: www.cbc.ca/aih.

[Music: Hip-hop]

SOD: Mecha wolves

TS: Their eyes are red. And, glowing. Their fur is matted. Mouths pretty full of fangs. And they move with the grace of ... actually, they don't really move, but they do jerkily rotate their heads back and forth like a B movie monster. And everyone knows these things can strike fear in the hearts of very young children ... and maybe some high-strung dogs. Scary stuff on its own but add this soundtrack. Very young children and high-strong dogs, cover your ears!

[Sound: These cries don’t really sound like a wolf. It sounds like Godzilla! Run, it’s Godzilla!]

TS: That's the scary sound from two mechanical wolf-monsters in a town in Japan. In an effort to keep encroaching bears from their town, they've welcomed the mechanized beasts, equipping them with motion sensors and that, that sound. Problem solved, right? It seems like a great plan, really. What could go wrong? Other than that the town has now got an invasion of mechanical wolves. But I'm sure it'll be fine. Let's just hear that one more time.

TS: From one I-don't-want-to-be-attacked-by-a-bear human to another, take my advice: It's not the who, the what, or the where(wolf) that matters — it's the howl. And that's our Sound of the Day.

Part two: North Dakota COVID cases, Archives: mice taxidermy

CO: You have record-high caseloads of COVID-19 in North Dakota right now. What's it like to, as you do, work on a COVID ward?

J: It's definitely eye-opening. It honestly kind of makes me upset that there's people out there who think that this is a hoax, that they think that this isn't real, that these people would have been in the hospital anyways with other illnesses.

CO: Are you trying to help a lot of very sick people at this point?

J: Yes. We've seen sicker people now than we did at the beginning of this.

CO: And so how do you feel when you hear President Trump and others who have downplayed the significance of it, that said, you should go get on with your life, enjoy it, that this is perhaps nothing more than the flu? What emotions do you have when you hear those kinds of statements, given what you're faced with at the hospital?

J: Anger, sadness, I want to slap him across the side of the face [laughing] and say, like, hey, come see these people. Like, yeah, I know Trump had it. He tested positive for it. And he obviously came out of it just fine. But, you know, that's my thing, too, is you, yeah, OK, So you were able to survive it. You were able to get over it, but, you know, Bob over here is on the verge of being intubated, which is a last-ditch effort for people.

CO: So what kind of a toll is this taking on you?

J: I can usually bounce back pretty quick after a stretch of days worked. But I almost have to take a whole day off just to recoup, just because it is exhausting. And I think I can speak for the majority of the nurses working at my hospital that we're just we're overwhelmed. We're we're exhausted. We're just maxed out to our limit.

CO: What's the hardest part, what's the thing that really does bring you to the edge?

J: Oh, OK! Having those conversations with patients about like, do they want to be resuscitated? [voice breaking] Do they want to be intubated? And, you know, just watching patients really struggle to breathe, you know? I don't know, I got into nursing to help people, and it breaks my heart when you're literally trying to calm a person down or tell them, like, it's going to be OK, but you don't know if it's going to be OK for them. You don't know if they're going to walk out of the hospital again. I mean, that's the toughest part for me.

CO: You know, there are some nurses who are welcoming the governor's statement that people, nurses, health care workers who are asymptomatic should go to work, they want to go. Do you understand where they're coming from?

J: No. [laughing]Maybe I'll change my answer a little bit. To some extent, yes. But I just don't understand how somebody who has this virus that could potentially make somebody else sick, how they can go to work? I've had friends who are also very close, like, coworkers to me, who have gotten it, and in fact, one of my really good friends is out right now because of it. And she's still waiting for her test results. I know last week when her husband called her to say, hey, I've got a 103 temp, and I've been exposed to somebody who's tested positive, I'm pretty sure I have it, she just started crying because she's like, I feel bad because I'm going to short you guys. Like, we're already working short as it is. And here I'm just going to add to the agony, basically. And it's like, I mean, in that sense, yes. I was like, no, you need to stay home. Like, you don't feel well. But, like, I guess I don't personally get it if somebody if you're positive, but you're asymptomatic, why would you want to put your coworkers at risk?

CO: Jennifer, thank you for your strength and for your courage, and thank you for speaking with us.

J: Yeah, not a problem.

CO: All right. Take care.

J: Thanks, you too.

TS: Jennifer is a nurse in North Dakota. We are withholding her name to protect her identity.

[Music: Sombre instrumental]

Oregon whale explosion anniversary

TS: It may not be the most important story Paul Linnman ever covered, but it was certainly the biggest.

PAUL LINNMAN: It had to be said the Oregon State Highway Division not only had a whale of a problem on its hands, it had a stinking whale of a problem: what to do with one 45-foot, eight-ton whale, dead on arrival on the beach near Florence?

TS: Mr. Linnman was just 23, when that whale beached itself in Oregon. And its arrival made quite the stink. But it was the whale's removal fifty years ago this week that became a career-defining moment for the young reporter. The rescue involved a half-ton of dynamite and has led to a half-century of reminiscing — and pondering precisely how things went so monumentally belly up. In the decades since the botched removal of that whale from that beach, Mr. Linnman says he has sometimes resented how his career came to defined by this single story. But he said this week, quote, "I ended up having an okay feeling about it." Unquote. Here's Paul Linnman again, reporting for KATU News in 1970.

PL: It had been so long since a whale had washed up in Lane County, Nobody could remember how to get rid of one. In selecting its battle plan, the Highway Division decided the carcass couldn't be buried because it might soon be uncovered. It couldn't be cut up and then buried because nobody wanted to cut it up. And it couldn't be burned, so dynamite it was — some 20 cases or a half-ton of it. The hope was that the long-dead Pacific gray whale will be almost disintegrated by the blast and that any small piece is still around after the explosion will be taken care of by seagulls and other scavengers. Indeed, the seagulls have been standing nearby all day. As everything was being made ready. We asked George Thornton, the highway engineer in charge of the project, for his final observation.

GEORGE THORNTON: Well, I'm confident that it'll work. The only thing is we're not sure just exactly how much explosives it'll take to disintegrate this thing, so the scavengers, seagulls and crabs and whatnot can clean it up.

PL: Is there any chance it might be more than a one-day job?

GT: If there is any large chunks left and we may have to do some other cleanup, possibly set another charge.

PL: The dynamite was buried primarily on the leeward side of the big mammal, so as most of the remains would be blown toward the sea. About 75 bystanders, most of them residents, who had first found the whale to be an object of curiosity before they tired of it smell were moved back a quarter of a mile away. The sand dunes there were covered with spectators and landlubber newsmen, shortly to become a landblubber newsmen, where the blast blasted blubber beyond all believable bounds.

[Sound: A very ruffled explosion and people making statements of awe]

All right.

PL: Our cameras stopped rolling immediately after the blast, the humour of the entire situation suddenly gave way to a run for survival as huge chunks of whale blubber fell everywhere.

TS: That blubbery blast happened fifty years ago this week. It remains one of the most talked-about events in Oregon's history — and certainly in Paul Linnman's career.

[Music: A carnival-like tune]

FOA: Mice taxidermy

TS: The sourdough starter at the back of your fridge is lonely. The thrill of receiving an invite to Zoom trivia night is long gone. And the "Watercolour Painting for Dummies" book you ordered weeks ago is still in its shrink-wrap. At this point in the pandemic, it might feel like you're running out of new hobbies to try. But Cheryl Johnson thinks taxidermy might be the ticket. Last weekend, Ms. Johnson taught her first taxidermy workshop. It sold out in less than an hour and the next class is filling up fast. Today, Ms. Johnson explained why she thinks so many people are keen to give taxidermy a try.

CHERYL JOHNSON: People started asking me, they're like, oh, could you teach me? And I'm like, yeah, I think I could like if you want to learn. I hope it's not too much! And it wasn't too much. And classes have been going great. I am a trained elementary and middle school teacher, but I found working, I know this might surprise you, but sometimes I don't really fit in. [loud laughter] I'm more of a work outside the box type of person, [laughing] so I've been kind of making my own way with areas that work for me.

CJ: So I was teaching piano lessons, private piano lessons for many years. So I do have quite a bit of teaching experience. So it's just really a matter of bringing that teaching experience and taxidermy experience and it's been really great. One of the best things about teaching the classes has been meeting different people who also enjoy taxidermy and death. [loud laughter] And basically, just finding that building that like-minded community of folks has been the best thing for me. One of my favourite things was in one of the past classes, the one that we just had since COVID happened, one of the participants said, this is the first normal thing I've done [laughing] since COVID happened.

TS: Cheryl Johnson speaking with CBC New Brunswick about her taxidermy classes. Taxidermy might be in vogue now — but Mackenzie McCarty was stuffing dead animals long before the pandemic made it a hot hobby. In 2015, Carol spoke with 12-year-old Mackenzie about her passion. And a quick heads up — if it's dinner hour where you're listening — Mackenzie is about to explain in great detail the process of turning dead rodents into taxidermy.

CO: Mackenzie, what is it that you like about taxidermy?

MACKENZIE MCCARTY: I love that you can take any kind of animal that is dead and preserve them for ever and ever, and they will never rot away. And they're kind of like pets, but they're dead.

CO: How did you get involved in this?

MM: Well, my mom had like four squirrels, so she took me to her taxidermist because she couldn't bury them because she was too attached to them. And I went up there and I love seeing all the animals. And when I was nine years old, for Christmas, she took me to a taxidermy class. And I've been doing it ever since.

CO: You learned how to do it, you went to a class to study how to be a taxidermist when you were nine.

MM: Yeah, they showed me how to taxidermy mice. So I mostly do mice, but I do do bigger animals.

CO: And you say that you do mice. What do you mean?

MM: I'm mostly taxidermy mice so I can dress them up more and do more with them.

CO: What do you mean dress them up?

MM: I dress them up in different ways. Like, for my fourth-grade teacher, her favourite movie was “Grease”. So I did like a Sandy and Danny mouse dancing at like a little diner. And I did a Daryl Dixon squirrel, and a leprechaun mouse, and a bunch of other things.

CO: OK, so let me get this straight. You take mice, dead mice, you stuff them, you turn them into stuffed animals and then you dress them up and put them in little scenarios, little scenes?

MM: Yes.

CO: Where do you get the mice?

MM: You can buy them already dead at pet stores, so I mostly get them there because it's really hard to find roadkill. So that's why I mostly do mice.

CO: And roadkill, I guess, is kind of squished?

MM: A little bit. But some of it you can find in pretty good shape. It might be a little bloody or something, so I'll clean that up and then I'll taxidermy that.

CO: You have stuffed roadkill then?

MM: Yeah, I’ve stuffed a squirrel, and that was roadkill. That was my Daryl Dixon squirrel.

CO: And now how exactly is this done? I guess I'm going to have to get the details from you.

MM: So the night before I go to do them, I let them defrost. And then I'll spread out their arms and legs and tail, so they're like in a frog position almost, like a dead squirrel position or something like that, where it's all its arms and legs are spread out. And then I'll cut its back open from the base of the neck to the base of the tail, and I'll start removing the guts from the skin. And then I'll start pulling out legs and I'll clip them. And I'll snap the neck and cut the tail. And then I will take my little brain scooper, and I'll put it in a little hole in the back of the head to get the brain out.

CO: You have a brain scooper?

MM: Mm hmmm.

CO: OK, sorry.

MM: And then I'll push on its head so its eyes pop out.

CO: OK, and so after you've done all of this, then you fill it back up again?

MM: Yeah, I stuff it with cotton and I sew it back up.

CO: And what do you do for eyes?

MM: I cut pins and I stick them in.

CO: Right. You're 11 years old, right?

MM: I'm 12. I turned 12 on March 13th.

CO: OK, you know, it's unusual for 12 year-old-girls to be doing this?

MM: Yeah. A lot of my friends get, like, grossed out and stuff. So I only have like one or two friends, and they're OK with it. They're like, all right, it's disturbing, but it's not like I have to do it or see it. That’s how they are about it. But a lot more people, it’s like eww! But I love doing it.

CO: Uh huh. And so does your mom think eww?!

MM: My mom gets grossed out by it, but she's OK with it once it’s taxidermied. And she helps me sew the clothes and paint the props and stuff. That part she's OK with. But what really gets her is when I snap the neck.

CO: Aha. So she just stays clear of you doing your neck snapping?

MM: Yeah.

CO: Uh huh. And now, so how often do you do this? How many days of the week are you doing your taxidermy?

MM: I’ll usually do it one or two times a week. It depends if there’s any mice or roadkill when I get home from school because like sewing the clothes and making props and painting things takes like really long time.

CO: And are you going to stick with mice and squirrels or will you graduate to larger creatures?

MM: I'll graduate to larger animals as I go along.

CO: What's your dream?

MM: My dream animal would probably to do a giraffe.

CO: You want to stuff a giraffe?

MM: Yeah, I want to do taxidermy professionally. I want to go to school for it. And I want to do it professionally. And my dream animal is to do a giraffe.

CO: OK, so you're going to make a career out of this then?

MM: Yes.

CO: All right. Well, I wish you best of luck, McKenzie.

MM: OK, thank you.

CO: Nice speaking with you.

MM: OK, bye. Thank you.

TS: From 2015, that was Carol speaking with 12-year-old Mackenzie McCarty about her taxidermy hobby. And if you'd like to revisit that story, you can find it on our webpage, at: www.cbc.ca/aih.

Part three: COVID risk tool, World record burpees

Vancouver comedy stand

TS: I think it's fair to say that everyone can use a laugh these days. Tanya Horne is doing her darnedest to provide one... or two. For a few hours on Tuesdays and Thursday, the amateur comedian has been operating a comedy stand on the street in east Vancouver. She has a speaker, a microphone, a booth decorated with colourful handprints, and a sign that reads: "sit-down comedy stand." The CBC met up with Ms. Horne on a busy Vancouver street recently.

TANYA HORNE: So back in March, they said that we were going to be in lockdown. I took a look at Italy and went, oh my God, we're never going to be able to leave our houses again. How are we going to connect as human beings? Because my greatest belief is that human beings are wired for connection. And I got really worried and really scared. I have suffered from mental health challenges for about 20 years. And out of that 20 years, I spent like five years of that as a recluse in my house, never leaving the house. And so when the pandemic hit, I'm like, OK, Tanya, how are you going to keep your mental health in check and how can you be in service to others at this time of need? And so was born the comedy stand. It came to me in a dream one night.

MATT HUMPHREY: No, it didn’t!

TH: It did! It did. Absolutely. Lucy from “Peanuts” came to visit me and said, build the stand. They will come. [chuckling] She had a psychiatry stand on the “Peanuts” cartoon. And my son-in-law crossed the stand up out and put sit down because truthfully, standing out here for two hours, two times a week was just going to be too much. So I decided that sitting down would be my schtick, if you will. So I'm at the comedy stand, giving away comedy, hopefully, making people smile and bringing joy and, hopefully, ripple affecting that through our community and, hopefully, out there into the bigger, larger world.

MH: Well, you're making me smile. So Lucy said, build it and they will come.

TH: Build it and they will come.

MH: Have they come?

TH: They have, they have in droves, as a matter of fact.

MH: OK, so you've been having conversations. What have those sounded like, if you could take a sample of what you've heard?

TH: Well, you know what? A lot of people say, thank you for what you're doing. Thank you for adding joy and levity to a really heavy and convoluted situation that the whole entire world is in right now. A lot of them say, wow, thank you for being available for people that don't have anybody. Connection is one of those things, particularly right now. There's a disconnection that's happening. So this makes that available in real life, intimate connection, where we can have eye contact, where we're physically distanced enough so that we can both laugh together without fear of infecting each other, other than with laughter.

TS: That was Tanya Horne speaking with CBC Vancouver's Matt Humphrey about her comedy stand. Ms. Horne is part of a group called Hilarapy, that — as that name suggests — combines comedy and therapy.

[Music: Glassy guitar riff]

Montrealers stay home!

CH: It's a nice boost for their tourism industry — but not when that boost comes with the risk of getting COVID-19. The Mayor of a small town in the Quebec Laurentians is asking Montrealers to please stay home. But asking isn't enough — he wants enforcement. Tim Watchorn is the mayor of Morin-Heights and he spoke to CBC Montreal's "Daybreak" today.

TIM WATCHORN: We're seeing a spike in cases in the last couple of weeks, and what we're afraid of is that those coming to the Laurentians are going to make it go to red. And that would pretty much ruin Christmas for all the businesses that are here.

MIKE FINNERTY And do you think that at this point, you might be able to stop that from happening, that if people stop coming into the Laurentians, you might be able to keep restaurants and bars open?

TW: Well, what we were seeing over the summer when cases were low, there were no spikes. And in April, at the beginning of the pandemic, or cases up here because I think because of the discipline of our citizens, were very, very low. I can give you an example, in Morin-Heights, in the first six months of the pandemic, we had 11 cases total. In the last three or four weeks, we've doubled that. And it's I think it's all because people are coming up for the day. We don't want to stop people coming from their chalets and visiting, but people coming up to for the day, it's just overwhelming. Last weekend, there was so much traffic, it was worse than the worst ski weekend even before the pandemic. So we know people from red zones are coming up, and coming to our restaurants. We want them to come up eventually. But now is not the time.

MF: So it's the logistics that could be particularly tricky. How do you think it could work?

TW: Well, in April, they did it quite well. They posted SQ cars at the exits, 60, 64 and 67. And what they were doing is they were checking people and saying, OK, do you have a property here? Yes or no? If you have a property, that's fine. If you’re coming up just for the day. Well, unfortunately, you have to go back, because it's not allowed. And what's happening now is the government has just recommended people not going from zone to zone, but they're not enforcing it. So I think the difference has to be between recommendation and enforcement.

MF: So the premier was asked about this at his news conference on Thursday. He doesn't believe that you need roadblocks right now and that businesses and schools are open. That's the difference between the fall in the spring. And with businesses and schools open, it becomes a lot more difficult for, I guess, the police to figure out and to control the people going through. It could lead to really long backlogs and a lot of work.

TW: Well, I understand what he's saying, but invite him to come up and sit in the main street and see how many people are walking around without masks and no social distancing, when all our population for the last eight months have been doing their utmost to keep safe. And our populations are afraid. People that live here want to be able to go to the boutiques, but now they're afraid to go there because they know there's 40,000 people. It makes no sense.

MF: Do you think you can get him to listen?

TW: We're trying our best. [chuckling] So I think the best way to do it is for them to come. So I think what we’re going to try and do next is get them to come with us, walk down Main Street on a Saturday afternoon in our big cities and see what’s going on. They have to see what's going on, because I think, unfortunately, we're seeing a spike because of Halloween. Halloween, they made the decision to take that risk. I think that was a bad risk. And I think letting people from red zones come and eat in restaurants in orange zones, because you were right at the limit, and that's a problem. And I think that's what we have to control until the pandemic gets a little cooler.

TS: Tim Watchorn is the mayor of Morin-Heights, a small town in the Laurentians. He was speaking to CBC Montreal host Mike Finnerty this morning.

[Music: Indie rock]

COVID risk tool

Guest: Clio Andris

TS: Get together with ten people in New York City this weekend and there's a six per cent chance one of them has Covid-19. Do the same in Cavalier, North Dakota ... and you're looking at an 84 per cent chance of exposure. Up your group size to 15 and up your risk... to 93 per cent. This is the kind of modelling made possible by an interactive map created by data scientists at Georgia Tech University along with collaborators around the world. And they're hoping it will help steer people in the right direction. Clio Andris is one of the researchers behind the project. We reached her in Atlanta.

CO: Clio, can you just describe for us, for a radio audience, how does this risk assessment tool actually work? How does a person use it?

CLIO ANDRIS: They go to this site and they enter in an event size, like maybe ten people if you're going to have a small dinner party. And then you can click on the county where this will be located, and you can get the probability that someone at the event will have COVID.

CO: So this is for anything? This is for an event, something in someone's home, for Thanksgiving dinner, it could be a wedding, could be something even larger. Is that the case?

CA: Yeah, that's exactly right.

CO: And so why do you think this is helpful? Why did you think that this is something people should use?

CA: We think it's something people should use because it really helps them evaluate how to change their behaviour or evaluate how to plan their activities. When we see cases, like the number of cases, or the number of deaths, or even cases per capita, we don't necessarily know what to do with that information. For example, if I saw 800 cases in my county, I wouldn't necessarily know where those cases were if I was likely to interact with them and what would happen if I went to somebody's house? So this put it in the perspective of the user, and it really gives me a probability of running into COVID.

CO: And what you're describing is absolutely accurate, that people feel it's almost paralyzing to see these numbers. We just don't know. We're just seeing staggering numbers here as you are there. But how reliable is the data that you're using in order to determine where the risk is higher?

CA: The data that we're using is from The New York Times API, so it's the most reliable source that we know of at this time. And then, we apply what we call the ascertainment bias. So the ascertainment bias would be how many cases are asymptomatic or untested that there are in a locale. And so what we do is we know the number of actual cases, and then we add the cases that are probably undiagnosed, and we divide that over the population to get a rate, a rate of cases. And then by taking in the event size, what we do is we actually calculate the probability that no one at that event will have COVID, and then we take one and minus that probability from it.

CO: So possibly you do see events where there would be zero possibility, but you still have to factor other things in?

CA: We see events that there would be we don't ever say zero probability because that is just something that we wouldn't… that's a very absolute number. But we would say that it would be less than one percent, and we consider those to be pretty safe.

CO: Okay, so now I'm just thinking through just in a practical way, how people go about their lives. I mean, and I just wonder if there's a cumulative risk that you can speak to. So say if you're dropping in on going to the grocery store and then you're going to go to the drugstore and you go to the dry cleaners and then you're going to have coffee with somebody, any one of those might show a low risk. But the cumulative effect after you've dropped off.. can you actually find out what it does in the course of a day when you've stopped in a number of places?

CA: So this isn't necessarily well-built for the grocery store, CVS, et cetera, because those types of places have not been linked to high transmission rates. It's the events where people are talking with each other for more than 15 minutes in close proximity, often seated nearby. And there may be few masks being worn. Those are the places that we're most worried about transmission.

CO: I wonder also if you factor in, or one can factor in more subjective things? And this would be something some would add to your numbers. And that's that when you know, you're going to an event where you know all the people who will be there, and you know how responsible they are, should you treat these numbers differently than you would if you're going to someplace where they're strangers you've never met?

CA: Yes, so that's a great question, it's how trustworthy are the people that you are being with. And I know that there has been some concepts like a pod, like two households come together to form a pod or a couple of friends come together to form a pod. That works as long as everyone is very honest and very, very vigilant about their behaviour. You shouldn't get together with multiple pods or multiple households.

CO: Have you actually used this device yourself? Have you tried it out?

CA: Sure, yes, I used it a couple weeks ago when I was watching the election with some friends. I had to decide whether to go and be with three other people indoors to watch the election. And it turned out that the rate was about three per cent in Fulton County. And I found that that would be an OK rate, especially because I knew that my friends lived alone. They teach online, they work from home and their families are overseas.

CO: Huh. Do you think having this tool can actually... if people use it, you can actually make a difference. You can actually bring down the rates?

CA: I really hope so. I know that the rates have been skyrocketing recently. And it doesn't seem like behaviour is changing, even though it's getting more and more catastrophic out there. And I don't really know when it's going to stop. I hope that people using this tool will realize that they're undertaking a lot of risk for something that seems so innocent. And you can't see COVID. And people are oftentimes infected asymptomatically. So this could be considered a method of seeing whether you're going to have the virus at your party or not, whether you're inviting coronavirus.

CO: All right. Our listeners in Canada are getting very excited about this possibility. But you don't… this risk assessment tool you capture the United States and Western Europe. When will you have us in it?

CA: We need to see what kind of data we can get at what kind of level for Canada. So we don't want to necessarily do it at the province level because they're so large. But if we could find more granular data for Canada, we'd love to work it in as soon as possible.

CO: All right. We'll look forward to that. Clio, thank you so much.

CA: Thank you. I really appreciate it.

TS: Clio Andris is an Assistant Professor of City & Regional Planning and Interactive Computing at Georgia Tech University. We reached her in Atlanta.

[Music: Instrumental]

snowstorm truck guy

TS: It's better to know someone with a truck than to be the person with a truck. A truism from the Prairies. Shaun Bunko owns a truck and he actually enjoys lending a hand... with his truck. Just last weekend, when a massive snowstorm hit Saskatoon, he was one of the good samaritans who drove around, helping people haul their cars out of the snow.

SHAUN BUNKO: I ended up getting six total vehicles out, plus like pushing a whole bunch of people along my way. There were a couple of situations where I couldn't pull over to help people because I’d get stuck myself. But whenever I could, like, I was just driving around, pulling out anybody that I could. At one point, I was driving down 8th Street, and I saw this woman pushing a grocery cart full of groceries. And I was like, you've got to be kidding me. So I whipped around and I pulled up to her, and I was like hop in. So I helped her load up her groceries. She was a medicine student at the university. And I drove down Cumberland to her place, and, yeah, almost got stuck pulling into her area there. But I managed to get out. And, yeah, she seemed really appreciative. So it was just really awesome to help in that way.

HEATHER MORRISON: Question for you. Do you try to push first or do you just go straight to the tow?

SB: Straight to the tow. You can usually tell how bad they're struggling if they need to pull out or not.

HM: All right. So, Shaun, I do understand that there was some damage done to your truck. Can you take me back to that moment?

SB: Yeah. So all along my way, at some point, I had hit a little bit of a snowbank and snapped my front drive line. So I don't have power to my front wheels right now. And yeah, it's looking to be about 800 dollars worth of damage to fix. So I was on my way to actually rescue a friend who had texted me that was across the city. And I went to go help them and didn't quite make it. But I still have no regrets about helping, like something about our province when things like this happen, we band together. You know, it's not just like snow. We do it with Tell a Miracle. We do it around Christmas time with our homeless and less fortunate. You know, it's it's in our blood.

TS: Wow! Eight hundred dollars of damage to his truck and Shaun Bunko is still happy to have helped people during a snowstorm in Saskatoon. He was speaking with guest host Heather Morrison yesterday on the CBC's “Saskatoon Morning”.

[Music: Upbeat pop]

World record burpees

Guest: Tony Smith

TS: It’s an exercise you can do almost anywhere, but that doesn't mean you'll want to. Burpees. That exercise where you’re expected to go from standing in one place, to dropping the ground, and then you leap back up again. And it’s harder than I just made it sound. Burpees are loathed, even by people who love to work out. But that hasn't stopped Tony Smith from trying to get hundreds of people to do that move this weekend, all at the same time, and for a good cause. We reached Mr. Smith in Amherstburg, in southwestern Ontario.

CO: Tony, what record are you attempting to set this weekend?

TONY SMITH: We're attempting to break the world record for the most amount of people doing burpees, like at one time. So simultaneously, which is, I believe is 1455 in Dubai.

CO: In Dubai?! Who in Dubai did these 1450?

TS: Coincidentally, I'm an ex-police officer, and it was a police department there.

CO: [chuckling] In Dubai?! OK.

TS: Yes.

CO: So that's the limit. So how do you do this? How many people you have to get in order to actually challenge this record?

TS: But we need to get, I guess, one more. So 1456 people would give us the record.

CO: And how will you do it?

TS: What we're doing is we've got people from all over Windsor-Essex County that are going to be joining in trough Zoom. And a lot of us small partnering businesses are going to be helping us by hosting small pods of people like in groups of ten or 15, depending on what the rules for their establishment are. And then a lot of people are going to be tuning in from home and just doing it from their living rooms.

CO: OK, because you can't all be in the same room, right?

TS: Exactly, yeah. Last year, we ran a massive event where the Windsor Cancer Clinic, and we were able to raise 125 thousand dollars doing a rolling competition. But we were all in one arena, so we had to think outside the box this year how we could get this done.

CO: How did you do a rolling competition?

TS: We just had everybody on rowing machines.

CO: Rowing! I thought you said rolling, OK, rowing!

TS: Oh yeah, rowing!

CO: OK, I pictured you rolling around in the gym, OK, that didn't happen.

TS: [both laughing] Right. No, that didn’t happen that would be really fun! Maybe next year.

CO: That would actually be really interesting to see. All right, so this is the one you've chosen for your fundraiser. This is an exercise, right? Because people might not know what a burpee is. Maybe just describe what you do?

TS: So a burpee is, essentially, if you imagine yourself standing up straight up, right? And then going down, touching your chest to the floor, like laying prone and then standing back up again and clapping your hands overhead.

CO: OK, so you go down, you squat?

TS: Yeah squat down and go down to your knees, or you can go right down like a push-up position and touch your chest to the floor and then come on back up.

CO: OK, so you're allowed to just do that once you go down and put your knees to the ground and come back up?

TS: Yep. You can do your knees. You could just kick your feet back and kind of fall to the ground and catch yourself. Just depends on everybody's athletic ability.

CO: Well, this is good to know because we just tested our own athletic ability here in the office. And it was challenging to do a full burpee. [TS laughs] we did one each and we thought that was pretty good. But you're talking about how many would they have to do?

TS: We're going to be doing it for 20 minutes. But you could do just one or you could do as many as you can. The idea is we just want to all do one together as a unified message to everybody in the Windsor-Essex County area and everywhere else that, you know, we're standing up for cancer and doing what we can to help them.

CO: We were doing ours with masks on. So well, some of the people in the Zoom calls are in these groups going to be having to wear masks while they do their burpees?

TS: I very much hope that they don't. But some places might have to, depending if they can get far enough away from each other.

CO: It's hard to do with the mask on. [laughing] Well, it’s hard to do anyways.

TS: Yeah, it definitely adds another dynamic if you've got to wear the mask.

CO: Now, why did you decide burpee’s? Why was that your weapon of choice?

TS: Well, we wanted to do something anybody can do anywhere. So a burpee is something you could do in your living room. You could do it really in a four-by-four cell if you had to. But it's something anybody could do from anywhere, because at the end of the day, as hard as it is, we're comparing it to cancer or the twenty-for-twenty. When you get knocked down, you just need to stand back up, and that's really what a burpee is, throw yourself on the floor and then stand back up.

CO: All right. OK, we can maybe manage that here. [laughing]

TS: Awesome!

CO: And where’s all the money going? Can you tell us about that?

TS: Yeah, it's going to the Windsor Cancer Centre Foundation, which helps men and women in the Windsor-Essex County area with getting equipment that they need to have at our hospitals. A lot of people I don't know if you know how to leave Windsor and drive up to Hamilton and London and Toronto to be treated. And, you know, that's just an added expense and added stress on their lives. So we want people to be able to stay here and get the treatment they need. And it also goes towards helping families that might not be able to pay their mortgage or do things like that because of the impact that the disease is having on their health.

CO: Why is this so important to you?

TS: My mother had cancer and beat it, and my mother-in-law had cancer and beat it. And the co-founder of this event, Greg Grundon, who's with GL Heritage Brewing Company, that's how this all started. We both of our business kind of grew from a little garage next to each other. We kept growing and growing. And then his father was struck with cancer. And we decided to do the fundraiser to try to raise some awareness and some funds. And right before the first event three years ago, he passed away. So it's become very important for us to just kind of live his memory on it to help more people.

CO: Oh, that's lovely. And this will happen on Sunday. And one question of logistics. How do you time all is this out? How do you get everybody in all these different venues and on Zoom and everything else to start at the same time?

TS: That was a challenge. We're going to run it almost just like a telethon. So we're going to have here at the garage unit in Amherstburg, we're going to have opening ceremonies and we're going to walk everybody through it. And then a timer will come on the screen and we're going to say go. And, hopefully, we're going to have people from all over the place. I know we've got him as far as Ottawa and New York City right now, signed up with us that will be doing these burpees and we'll be able to see them on the screen.

CO: [laughing] They might be a bit amusing at times.

TS: It could be, yeah.

CO: Tony, thanks for speaking with us.

TS: Thank you so much.

CO: Bye.

TS: Bye.

TS: Tony Smith is the owner of The Garage Gym near Windsor, Ontario. This Sunday, he has organized an unofficial world record attempt — the most people simultaneously doing burpees for 20 minutes.

[Music: Jazzy pop]

Q/U: Throwing kids sign

TS: And now, Quote/Unquote.

[Music: The Quote/Unquote theme]

TS: Consider it a sign of the times. As the pandemic drags on, and on, cracks are starting to show. Take parents with young kids. A casual observation shows those parents are growing a bit wilder about the eyes. Get too close, you can almost taste the desperation. So maybe it was only a matter of time before endless exhortations to "be creative" in the face of conflicting daily demands took a turn. Or, rather, a toss. A primary school in France has found it necessary to install signs imploring parents not to throw their children over the 1.8 metre-high fence. That's because parents have been throwing their children over the 1.8 metre-high fence when they are running late. The sign reads, quote,: "ATTENTION! DANGER! I do not throw my children over the gate. Instead, I return at 10 am or 3 pm when the gate reopens." Unquote. (Affirmation as well as warning, perhaps?) And while, yes, it is alarming that parents are launching their offspring over large obstacles to avoid spending any more time taking care of them, in another way, it's just another pandemic lesson in how to overcome.

PEI big beet farmer

TS: We've covered big veggies on our show before. We've got a big pumpkin, a big squash, an extremely large zuccini. But Sumner Matheson of Bonshaw, P.E.I. brought something new to the table. A very big beet. About ten meals-worth, by his calculations. Or four pounds. Either way, it's enough to make a bunch of borscht. Here he is telling CBC PEI about it.

SUMNER MATHESON: I harvested some of my garden yesterday, and the beets are usually larger than the carrots. But anyway, I run into something pretty interesting, just the last few beets I was picking. Noticed one pretty large.

TONY DAVIS: How long have you been gardening?

SM: Thirty years.

TD: Have you ever had a beet this big?

SM: No.

TD: Do you grow them every year?

SM: Yep.

TD: Have you ever experienced this before with any other vegetables?

SM: Carrots, some pretty big carrots. I had one this year with five... looks like your hand. I should have taken that too, but it’s gone, in the belly. [both laughing]

TD: Now, when you found this beet, what was your reaction?

SM: Eh, maybe I shouldn't have pulled it. I could have saved it for seed next year.

TD: Where did you get the seeds of this beet? Any special place?

SM: Home Hardware, Sherwood? had it over there, and they got quite a kick out of it. And they took a picture of it, too.

TD: Oh, so you took it down to Home Hardware?

SM: Yeah. I wanted to show it to them, yeah.

TD: Are you showing it to anybody else. What do they say about it?

SM: Just my niece. They were going to put it on Facebook.

TD: OK.

SM: So he's a good gardners too, her husband. So we're kind of on a little competition there.

TD: I guess what's the plan for the beet?

SM: I don't know. I'm going to keep it around for a while, see what happens, see if anybody comes up with another big one.

TD: Do you think it'd be good to eat or what?

SM: Eh, the eating will tell, wont it? It might be tough. [laughing]

TD: How much bigger is it compared to other beets you've grown in the past?

SM: Oh, it'll be probably ten times or more. It probably weighs probably about four pounds.

TD: How do you eat your beets anyway? Do you can them?

SM: Microwave them.

TD: Oh yeah?!

SM: Yeah. There’s probably about ten meals in that. [laughing]

TD: Tell me how you grew this beet? Did you use any pesticides, any things like that.

SM: No, it's organic. Only thing I used was some lime, a bit of fertilizer and compost — and all mixed together.

TD: Are you going to try to, you know, going forward, grow beets this big?

SM: Well, I doubt it. But like I say, it's interesting to see if it couldn’t develop, eh? If somebody else could do the giant pumpkin thing only in beets.

TS: That was Sumner Matheson speaking with the CBC's Tony Davis about his very large beet.

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November 13, 2020 Episode Transcript

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