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 AIH Transcript for December 8, 2020

Hosts: Carol Off and Chris Howden

Prologue

CAROL OFF: Hello. I'm Carol Off.

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

[Music: Theme]

CH: Tonight:

CO: Sick days. An Alberta doctor says surging COVID numbers have brought her hospital to the brink and she invites the province's premier to see the human toll of the pandemic for himself.

CH: Making sure we get the point. As Brits roll up their sleeves for vaccine shots today, a scientist gives us a reality check about what we should and shouldn't expect vaccination to accomplish.

CO: Cleared to take off takeoff's. Air Canada says it's eliminating service to Sydney, Nova Scotia, leaving the CEO of the province's second largest airport, wondering what will stop his region from being grounded for good.

CH: Tunnel visionary. An Alberta high school student wins a very lucrative science prize for a video that puts the complex concept of quantum tunnelling into terms the rest of us can understand...almost.

CO: Flight club. We remember the first pilot to break the sound barrier with a trip to our archives, where we find him bonding with former host Mary Lou Finlay over their shared love of flying.

CH: And giving us our Martian orders. The former head of space security for Israel says a group of aliens called the Galactic Federation are in constant contact with various world governments, but they're not quite ready to burst out of regular people's chests just yet. As It Happens. The Tuesday Edition. Radio that spaced out there for a second.

[Music: Theme]

Part 1: 'We are getting overwhelmed': Edmonton doctor on working in the COVID ward

Alberta High COVID

Guest: Neeja Bakshi

CH: Alberta's graph of new COVID cases looks like the side of a steep mountain -- the red line keeps going up and up and no one knows where the summit will be. Yesterday, the province reported over 1,700 new cases with an alarmingly high positivity rate. This evening, the province announced a shutdown of bars, restaurants, and casinos -- but many retail spaces are staying open. Neeja Bakshi is a doctor working on the COVID ward at Royal Alexandra Hospital in Edmonton. That's where we reached her doctor.

CO: Dr. Bakshi, what is the most difficult thing about arriving at work each day?

NEEJA BAKSHI: The most difficult thing is not knowing what we're going to walk into. Every night, we have countless medical admissions and now more and more over the last couple of weeks, predominantly, they are all COVID admissions. And so when we walk onto the COVID ward, we don't know who the new patients are and we don't know how sick they are, along with how sick the rest of the patients might be from overnight.

CO: You know, we were doing a lot of interviews in the spring from Italy and New York City, the way they were describing what was going on, the near collapse of things. And does it feel like you're getting close to that level of crisis?

NB: It does. It does. I mean, we certainly may look different. We don't have the ice trucks that are sitting outside of our hospital right now. But it certainly feels like that in the hospital, that every day there's a new crisis on, where are we going to place patients or who's going to look after the patients, you know, and do we have enough physicians? Do we have enough nurses? Do we have enough respiratory therapists? It feels very chaotic, but not chaotic because of the system, but the chaotic of all the moving pieces that have to go into planning for a pandemic.

CO: And it's not, I guess, just the mechanics of doing this, just the emotions of it, because you're dealing with people as you describe, they come in, you don't know how quickly they might collapse or even if they'll recover, they can't have their families with them. They can't have support. How are you dealing with the possibility and the probability of death so often?

NB: Yeah. You know, I think all physicians, especially those that work in acute care, are used to having to deliver bad news. And you used to have to talk about palliation, but not at the level that we're talking about was COVID patients. I'm having palliative care conversations four or five, six times a day, often with family members who I've obviously never met. I'm only speaking to them on the phone. They may be provinces or countries away, and I may have only gotten to know their family member for 6 to 12 hours based on how far they may have deteriorated. And so it's very emotionally jarring for us as providers. And I think the last thing any physician wants to ever become is somebody that doesn't have empathy. And when you do these conversations over and over and over again, it becomes really hard on your psyche.

CO: And how do you do that? What can you possibly say?

NB: You know, I just try to put myself, when I'm having this conversation, I put myself in the family's shoes. What do I want to hear? What would I want to hear if I was on the other end? I think the equaliser here is that anybody who's receiving this call about a COVID patient understands that there's not much more we can do. And it's very sad to have to say that. But typically, when we get to that level where we're having that conversation, I think the vast majority of the world knows that there's not much more we can do.

CO: Now, you've seen so many cases. Can you describe what it must be like to have an acute case of COVID?

NB: You know, I have to imagine and thankfully I've not had COVID, but I have to imagine that it's scary and that you're waiting for the other shoe to drop. You know, am I going to be the next person that can't breathe, that needs to go to ICU, that needs a ventilator, that's not going to see my family? So I think there's a lot of fear and anxiety around it. I think there's a lot of fear of how long is this going to take for me to recover? Am I going to recover?

CO: And are you able to give them hope?

NB: You know, I've always practised medicine truthfully, so I always provide truth to the patient. I try to provide hope if hope is something that I can provide. But I'm always honest to a fault as well. So if I feel that things are going in a direction that is not of one that I can change or that will come with a positive outcome -- I also provide them with that truth and the time it takes to process that and the time it takes to reach out to family members.

CO: Given that they can't see their family members, what do they want from you?

NB: I think they want to know that we've done everything that we possibly can, that we're fighting for them. And a majority of patients who don't do well or who know that they're not going to do well, they often want us to talk to their families on their behalf and let them know that we have tried everything in that, you know, we're doing the best that we can.

CO: Dr. Bakshi, how often in a week do you do that where you have to have those conversations?

NB: Every single day, multiple times a day.

CO: What effect is it having on you?

NB: You know, this is something that I've never experienced before. I mentioned that this last week is probably the hardest week of my life in terms of my clinical care and my clinical practise. It's not just having the conversations with the families and the patients. It's the volume, the number of times I'm having to do it, and the number of conversations I'm having. And as I mentioned, not always having a relationship with that family because I may have just met their loved one a few hours prior. It's exhausting. And I think most health care workers are working twenty four hours at a time and living 24 hours at a time because that's all we can.

CO: If you could have five minutes with Jason Kenney and his government, what would you ask for?

NB: I would ask for them to come to the hospital, and I'd ask them to come and see what is happening in the hospital, and that I recognise that making decisions on restrictions and lockdowns have many, many repercussions -- and I don't claim for that to be an easy position to be in -- but we are getting overwhelmed. We are doing our best. We're trying to provide patients with all the same level of quality of care, but we are running out of steam and we need help.

CO: You posted on Twitter a picture of your husband and said without him you couldn't be doing this. What support do you have?

NB: My husband is my biggest support. And not only this last week, but for the last nine months, you know, every time I need to get on a conference call about some sort of planning or I need to rush in because one of my colleagues is sick on isolation and I need to go fill in, he picks up the slack, he takes care of our children, he puts up with the middle of the night pages that I get about patients in hospital. So I think every health care worker could tell you that without family, we would certainly not be here.

CO: Dr. Bakshi, I know you don't like to be called a hero, but I'm going to call you a hero and I'm going to thank you for what you're doing.

NB: Appreciate it. Thank you.

CH: We reached Dr. Neeja Bakshi in Edmonton. And you can find more on the story on our webpage: cbc.ca/aih.

[Music]

Sydney Air Canada

Guest: Mike MacKinnon

CH: Mike MacKinnon is about to be the CEO of an airport without passenger flights. Mr. MacKinnon is the head of the airport in Sydney, Nova Scotia. It's the province's second largest. But today, Air Canada announced that because of the pandemic, it will be suspending service there on January 11th. WestJet made a similar announcement earlier this year. Air Canada will also be pulling out of St. John, New Brunswick, and suspending four of its other Atlantic routes. We reached Mike MacKinnon at the Sydney airport.

CO: Mr. MacKinnon, what's an airport without airplanes and airlines?

MIKE MACKINNON: Well, it could be a shopping mall or a parking lot, but yeah, without airplanes and airlines it's very hard to run an airport. We need airlines to generate the revenue, especially a small airport like Sydney where, you know, the majority of our revenue doesn't come from non-aeronautical. We don't have shopping malls and fancy stores in our small airports. It really comes from the passenger traffic going through the terminal and getting on planes to travel.

CO: But without first WestJet and now Air Canada, what does that mean for people in Cape Breton as far as being able to fly out of there?

MM: Well, effective January 11th, you will not be able to fly from Sydney to Toronto, which is where our last flight that was operating or is operating five days a week. So you would have to drive up to Halifax, that's the closest commercial airport. And that's a four to four and a half hour drive when the weather's fine -- in the winter, it could take longer. And that's how you would be able to get an airplane and fly across Canada or somewhere else in the world.

CO: Air Canada released a statement that reads, this is a quote, "We regret the impact on our customers and community partners, but it is increasingly difficult to continue to operate in this challenging environment without specific financial support from the government with whom we continue to wait for negotiations." When you read that, do you think that Cape Bretoners are being used as a kind of bargaining chip?

MM: Well, I guess I mean, that statement is pretty telling, isn't it? It's saying that those talks that, you know, Minister Garneau made a statement on November 8th, which is exactly one month to the day today, that the government and the airlines would be engaged in talks to come up with some solutions as to how to solve some of the industry problems. And from my understanding, those talks are, you know, ongoing. And I would expect that or I'm sensing from Air Canada that they're probably getting a bit impatient and they want to see more urgency around those talks. And we know that this decision was looming over the head of many airports back on November 9th when Air Canada was going to release the third quarter results. So they delayed this decision. And, of course, with no solution imminent, I guess, you know, Air Canada has decided to pull the lever.

CO: So what does it say to you that they pulled the lever and they say that we can't we can't continue to operate without specific financial support from the government and we're not getting those negotiations. What does that mean, do you think?

MM: Well, I think they're making it clear to the government that they need help, and we know and I know as a stakeholder/partner with these airlines, you know, the airlines are hurting quite badly. I mean, Air Canada laid off more than 20,000 people. I think they reduced their fleet by 79 aircraft, the release stated. And they're bleeding cash at a tremendous rate, millions of dollars a day. So the longer, you know, it takes to come up with some solution that helps the industry, the more they're bleeding. And they have stakeholders and shareholders that want to see the airline be successful. So tough decisions have to be made. So, you know, I can't say that I fault Air Canada for making decisions like that. They're running a business and they're losing money and they've asked for help. And a commitment to give help was offered. But it seems to be taking quite some time to get there. And, you know, we're kind of on the sideline watching what happens. And we're hopeful that some solutions will come quickly, but they haven't yet.

CO: But if there has been as you say they are still bleeding, they're still hurting -- but a lot of subsidy money has gone to Air Canada. How much support have the airports got? How much support have you got at Sydney?

MM: Well, in Sydney the support for the airport would be the CEWS program that's helped us keep some staff. So, you know, it was meaningful and helpful. But when you're losing maybe four or five times that amount every month, you know, you're still going to bleed out. It's not the final solution.

CO: So come January, what is it going to be like at Sydney airport?

MM: Very quiet. We'll still be here doing lots of work to, you know, come up with strategies and ways to recover. There's still some work that needs to be done that our small team can get done while the airport is quiet. Don't forget, we've only had one flight operating a day -- well, actually, five times a week. Obviously, we'll miss that service. I know the community will miss that service. It's a very important flight for Cape Breton. We have workers who travel across the country to jobs in the west and up north. We have international students at the university who rely on that flight. And family and friends across the country who use that flight. So it's going to make it very challenging, hopefully not for too long. We're hopeful that there's a light at the end of the tunnel with vaccines and maybe with some help for the industry from the government.

CO: Mr. MacKinnon, it is great to speak with you. Thank you.

MM: Thanks very much Carol. Have a good night.

CH: Mark MacKinnon is the CEO of the airport in Sydney, Nova Scotia. We reached him in Sydney.

[Music]

Breakthrough Junior Challenge Prize

Guest: Maryam Tsegaye

CH: 17 year old Maryam Tsegaye has tunnel vision, and that vision has won a big prize for her and her science teacher and her Fort McMurray High School. Earlier this year, the Grade 12 student put together a video where she explained what's called quantum tunnelling. Now she's been chosen as the winner of a science video competition called the Breakthrough Junior Challenge. There were more than 5000 applicants for more than 100 countries, and the prize is worth over half a million dollars Canadian. Here's some of what Ms. Tsegaye's video sounded like.

MARYAM TSEGAYE: So I was watching my brother play this video game and he used a cheat code that let his character do a walk through walls hack. He pushed himself against a barrier in the game, hit some buttons, and boom, his character appeared on the other side. Imagine if you could walk through walls in real life and it turns out you can at a quantum level.

CH: We reached the Grade 12 student who made that video, Maryam Tsegaye, in Fort McMurray.

CO: Maryam, first of all, big congratulations.

MARYAM TSEGAYE: Thank you.

CO: How does it feel? You're 17 years old and you have won a major international science prize.

MT: It feels really great. It's really an honour. I'm really happy that I can give back to my community through this prize since my school will be getting a really cool science lab like everything upgraded and my teacher also gets a cash prize.

CO: The Prime Minister has given you a shout out congratulations, the premier of Alberta. What was it like to get those kinds of congrats?

MT: It was pretty cool. I didn't really believe it kind of at first. [Chuckles]I thought someone was joking when they said that and they sent me the screenshots and everything and I was like, whoa. And I started a Twitter account literally for that. [Chuckles]

CO: Can you tell us how you managed to keep this a secret for so long? You've known for a couple of weeks, right?

MT: Yeah, I've known for two weeks. It was hard. Some of my friends knew, but one of my closest friends didn't. And it was really hard, like seeing him every day at school and then, like, not being able to tell him or tell any family or anyone.

CO: What was his reaction when you finally told him?

MT: He jumped. He was like, wait, are you serious? Are you serious? He thought I was joking. And it was a special moment.

CO: Okay that was telling him. I want to know about when you got told that you had won the prize. Can you just describe how they sprung that on you?

MT: So I was told that my friends and I were coming to school to film like a promotional video. We were told to come to this room and this film crew would film us reacting to a video just for like stock footage or something. And the Sal Khan and Scott Kelly podcast came up as the video and I did not piece it together, even as they were talking about the Breakthrough Junior Challenge, it didn't even occur to me that I won. And when they finally said, like, Maryam you won the Breakthrough Junior Challenge -- I was like, oh, my God, I was in complete disbelief.

CO: This is, just to tell people, the astronaut Scott Kelly you mentioned and Sal Khan is founder of The Khan Academy. But I have to get you to explain -- remind me bit of the tape of your presentation. Just tell us what the competition asked you to do, what was required?

MT: The Breakthrough Junior Challenge asks you to create a three minute video explaining a difficult topic in science or math. And this year there was a COVID-19 category as well. And I picked quantum tunnelling.

CO: Quantum tunnelling. Okay, so can you just tell us what that is? Because I know you can do that pretty simply. I have to tell you that I spent a lot of time talking to scientists on this show and asking them to try and explain something in simple layman's terms. So I know you can do this because you won a contest. So what is quantum tunnelling?

MT: Essentially, quantum tunnelling is a phenomenon that happens at the subatomic level. So stuff that make up atoms have these special properties, I guess you could say, characteristics that allow them to cross barriers sometimes. And it's one of the reasons that we're alive, actually. Yeah, one of the reasons that we're alive. Like, that's how the sun is powered. Like nuclear fusion in the sun happens thanks to quantum tunnelling. And the technology that we use, like the chips in our phones and all that take advantage of this phenomenon.

CO: You also, though, incorporated a few things into your presentation, like rolling dice. How did that work into quantum tunnelling?

MT: Yeah, so there's a complex idea in quantum mechanics called the wavefunction or the quantum wavefunction. You know, it has its set of fancy equations and whatnot, with very exotic looking maths. I knew that I couldn't just show that like no one would get what that is. So I tried to break it down into just rolling dice because quantum mechanics has to do a lot with probability. And I thought dice was a very visual way of putting it up there on the video so that you could see the probability wave. And yeah, that's how the dice came along.

CO: What got you interested in science? Because I know your science teacher and your school get part of this prize. What got you interested in science?

MT: I think my inquisitiveness in general, my curiosity for things like I ask questions and they always lead me to science. And both my parents always encouraged me to do really whatever I wanted. So if I asked questions or anything, we'd just like go to the library, get a book about it or search it up together.

CO: Your parents came to Canada from Ethiopia before you were born. You've said elsewhere that what really mattered to you was to see people like yourself, to see a Black girl, a Black woman being able to perform in science and that you wanted to see more of that. Can you tell us a bit about what inspired you then?

MT: Yeah. So growing up, I knew I wanted to do something in science and want to be a scientist or contribute somehow. And when you search up or when you see like a scientist like on a documentary or something it's always one type of person in terms of representation. And it just kind of didn't materialise the reality of it for me or like the viability of me becoming a part of that. But regardless, I still aimed for it. And it was only until like Grade eight or Grade nine when I watched the movie Hidden Figures that I saw Black women in science. And that really changed that for me.

CO: Wow. And so do you feel you've done a bit of quantum tunnelling yourself?

MT: [Laughs] Oh, I guess so, yeah.

CO: What are you going to do from here? You got a big chunk of scholarship money. What are your plans?

MT: I will be applying to post-secondary and different universities, but I haven't made any decisions yet. I'm still looking around and applying.

CO: Maryam again, big congratulations. You sure deserve it. And I think you're going to go on to do great things.

MT: Thank you.

CH: Maryam Tsegaye is a Grade 12 student at Ecole McTavish Public High School. She's also the winner of the Breakthrough Junior Challenge, which includes a 250,000 dollar U.S. scholarship. We reached her in Fort McMurray, Alberta.

[Music]

Aliens

CH: [MUSIC: David Bowie's Starman] David Bowie with his 1972 song Starman, about an alien who wants to introduce himself but is concerned about human aneurisms. His message delivered through Mr Bowie, "Let the children lose it, let the children use it," and crucially, "let all the children boogie." We thought that was just made up by a cool rockstar. But no, we should let all the children boogie because it turns out David Bowie was divulging space intel. The star-people would still love to come and meet us, but Haim Eshed, the retired head of Israel's space security program, says humanity isn't ready. However, according to Mr. Eshed, the Galactic Federation is in frequent contact with both Israel and the U.S.. In fact, right now, Earth representatives and aliens are probably going best of three at foosball in the underground Mars base. In an interview with the Tel Aviv newspaper, Yedioth Aharonoth, Mr. Eshed revealed the existence of this secret base and the secret alien club known as the Galactic Federation. He says US President Donald Trump was on the verge of revealing all of the above himself before the federation convinced him that humankind still had to evolve and reach a stage where we will understand what space and spaceships are. Story checks out. We don't understand what spaceships are, and Donald Trump is great at not saying what he's not supposed to say. So I guess the Galactic Federation is right that we're not ready because this new information is really alienating.

[Music]

Part 2: Vaccine Questions

Vaccine Questions

Guest: A. David Paltiel

CH: The first people in Britain to get the COVID vaccine got their shots in the arm today. The Pfizer vaccine is expected to arrive in the United States and Canada shortly, but the UK has already approved the shots. And this morning, the two first people in line were 90 year old Margaret Keenan, an 81 year old William Shakespeare. Yes, his name is William Shakespeare. Here's what they told Reuters after getting the jab.

MARGARET KEENAN: I thought it was a joke, to tell you the truth. To start with I couldn't believe it, you know, but I am happy this has happened. Now I have done it and hopefully it will help other people come along and do as I did, you know, try and do the best to get rid of this terrible thing. Yes.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARER: I'm very happy. I think it made a difference to our lives from now on, didn't it?

CH: That was William Shakespeare and Margaret Keenan speaking to Reuters shortly after getting the first Pfizer COVID-19 shots in Britain today. These initial vaccinations are welcome news to many. But according to a recent study, we can't rely solely on a strong vaccine to stamp out the virus. A. David Paltiel is one of the authors. He's a professor at the Yale School of Public Health. We reached him in Stowe, Vermont.

CO: David, we just heard those people getting their COVID vaccinations or at least the first inoculation. So is it time for a sigh of relief? Do you think that people now see the end is near?

A. DAVID PALTIEL: It is certainly a time to celebrate. I'm not sure that this is so much the beginning of the end as it is the end of the beginning. It is certainly good news that we have identified vaccines that work, but we need to bear in mind that it is not vaccines that save lives, it's vaccination programs that do. And we need to recognise that infrastructure and distribution and public acceptance will contribute at least as much as the vaccine itself to the success of any vaccination program.

CO: Let's just get a few more details on that, because there is the feeling and I know it's simplistic, but this sense that we're going to get the jabs and then we're going to get rid of the masks and we're going to just carry on life as usual, and that's coming within months, certainly by the fall. And that's not the case then?

A. DAVID PALTIEL: Well, even with a highly effective vaccine, we are still going to need sustained adherence to masking and physical distancing. The analogy is this: if I have a bucket of water I can put out of a campfire, but I can't put out a forest fire with a bucket of water, I can't even put out a forest fire if I have a high pressure hose with water that is 100 percent potent. The virus is currently behaving like an out-of-control wildfire in our communities. And we need to contain it needs to be our first goal, containment, using the tools that are already at our disposal to slow its spread. And then an effective vaccine will be a powerful supplement, an adjunct, but not a replacement to those approaches as 2021 progresses in time, making extinguishment a more plausible outcome. But we're going to get out of this mess a whole lot faster if we give the vaccine a fighting chance. So don't throw away that mask any time soon.

CO: I know you're a Canadian, but you are in the United States where the infection rate is now 200,000 confirmed new infections per day. What effect does that rate of infection have on the effectiveness of the vaccine?

A. DAVID PALTIEL: It lowers it, clear and simple.

CO: So this is a study that looked at this at some point that if the infection rate in the United States was where it was in early September, even a vaccine that is less effective than the 95 percent, even if it was less effective than that. It would be more effective than a highly effective vaccine with that rate of infection. I mean, that sounds confusing, but that's the case, isn't it?

A. DAVID PALTIEL: That is indeed the case. We would have been better off in September at the lower rate of epidemic severity with a 50 percent effective vaccine than we are today with the 95 percent effective vaccines. And it gives me no joy to say that, it's heartbreaking, but it does, again, make it clear that we need to be investing and adhering to all those other, you know, distancing and medication practises that will give this vaccine a fighting chance.

CO: And does it matter how fast the roll out is? I mean, can it be dragged out over a year? Or the concentration of people getting vaccinated will that help us as well?

A. DAVID PALTIEL: Speed is of the essence. Vaccines don't do any good until they find their ways into people's arms. Speed is absolutely of the essence. And in fact, it is much more important than efficacy. Again, if I could roll out a 50 percent effective vaccine over the course of a couple of months, as opposed to a 95 or even 100 percent effective vaccine over the course of the year, I would choose the former.

CO: And what you're seeing in the United States, do you see that country prepared for a rapid and wide rollout of vaccines?

A. DAVID PALTIEL: Look, responsibility for on-the-ground vaccine distribution in the United States has largely been delegated to state and local health departments. These organisations are underfunded and understaffed in the very best of times, let alone nine months into a once in a century pandemic that has strained their resources beyond limits. You know, the complexity of a mass vaccination effort is staggering, and the states have been warning for months that they lacked the billions of dollars required to carry out the work that was expected of them. And time is running out. You know, the vaccine development effort in the United States went by the silly name Operation Warp Speed. But we now need an analogous operation warp speed for infrastructure.

CO: So the finishing line for Operation Warp Speed was to get the vaccines made. But there's no race to get the vaccinations done.

A. DAVID PALTIEL: Well, federal funding has been there, but the funding for distribution has been a small fraction of the amount that was committed by the Trump administration to vaccine development and manufacturing. Now, fortunately, President elect Biden has pledged to invest 25-billion dollars for vaccine distribution, which is an amount that is commensurate with the challenges ahead. But we also need to be investing in comprehensive, culturally sensitive strategies for communicating about the vaccine. That needs to be a central component of the strategy as well.

CO: And of course, there is the issue also just as there was an anti-masking campaign, there are anti-vaccine campaigns. There's vaccine hesitancy, scepticism. What effect do you think that's going to have in the United States?

A. DAVID PALTIEL: Oh, you know, you need to think about a successful vaccination program as being a pathway of interdependent, sequential steps. You need to identify the vaccine that works. You need to scale up the manufacturing. You need state of the art, distribution and logistics. And you need a communications program that promotes acceptance. Failure of any one process in that pathway means overall system failure. So how important is the communication and acceptance? It is every bit as important as the vaccine development process.

CO: David, thank you for speaking with us.

A. DAVID PALTIEL: It's been a delight. Hello to everyone in Canada.

CH: A. David Paltiel is a professor at the Yale School of Public Health. He was in Stowe, Vermont.

[Music]

Chuck Yeager

CH: For General Chuck Yeager, it was boom or bust. And his boom was the beginning of a boom in booms. You may have seen the 1983 movie The Right Stuff, which follows the true story of the American test pilot who became the first to break the sound barrier. Back in 1947 when he was just 24 years old. Mr. Yeager climbed out of a B29 bomber over the California desert and into the cockpit of an experimental plane then he zoomed off, reaching a speed of more than a thousand kilometres an hour and creating history's first sonic boom. The American test pilot died on Monday. He was 97. In October of 2002 at the end of his career, Chuck Yeager decided to hit those speeds one last time. A few days after the flight, he spoke with former As It Happens host Mary Lou Finlay about why that time was different.

CHUCK YEAGER: Basically, all fighters today, especially high performance fighters, fly at roughly Mach two. And it's very easy because you got computer flight control systems and everything. And basically it's different now than it was 55 years ago because we didn't know actually if we could get above the speed of sound. There's a lot of unknowns. And the big thing that came out of it actually, once we got up close to the speed of sound was that we needed a flying tail, a slabbed tail to control the airplane to make one that's redon. You see on every high performance fighter today, including your F/A-18 in Canada -- it has a slab tail with no elevator. I know you're not a pilot.

MARY LOU FINLAY: I am a pilot, actually.

CHUCK YEAGER: You are?

MARY LOU FINLAY: Yes. But I haven't flown anything that fancy.

CHUCK YEAGER: Well, naturally not.

MARY LOU FINLAY: No, I just fly the little ones around. But I've followed your career with great interest. I mean, not only the breaking the sound barrier, but even more thrilling ride into space, I guess it was.

CHUCK YEAGER: No, no, no, no, no, no, no. I have never been to space. I'm not a NASA weenie. I'm an Air Force test pilot. [chuckles]

MARY LOU FINLAY: How high did the X1-A go?

CHUCK YEAGER: 80,000 feet, but that's not the highest I have ever in F-104 for about 118,000.

MARY LOU FINLAY: Yeah, pretty high. Do you have your own P-51?

CHUCK YEAGER: No. No I don't. Number one, you can't afford it because it cost about 800,000 bucks. But I got a couple of friends that own a couple and they let me fly it. It's painted up like mine was in World War Two. I flew them against the Germans in 43, 44 and 45.

MARY LOU FINLAY: Yeah. So would you like to be starting out your career all over again then on these new...

CHUCK YEAGER: No. I don't live in the past that, you know, I was involved in research flying, you know, in probably the golden age of aviation. I started out in jets in 1945 and into rockets and into computer flight control systems and stealth technology and things like that. And probably no one will be involved in milestone flights like I was with the X1 and other airplanes.

MARY LOU FINLAY: Well, it sure is fun to talk to you just for a few minutes.

CHUCK YEAGER: Well, good. I'll give you a piece of advice: fly safe. [Chuckles]

MARY LOU FINLAY: We all try to do that.

CHUCK YEAGER: Okay. [Laughs]

CH: That was the pioneering American test pilot, Chuck Yeager, speaking with Mary Lou Finlay on this program in 2002. Mr. Yeager died on Monday. He was 97.

[Music]

Rohingya Refugees Relocation

Guest: Voice

CH: Since the mass exodus of Rohingya Muslim refugees from Myanmar in 2017, refugee camps in Bangladesh have become home to more than one million people. But last week, the Bangladeshi government started relocating hundreds of refugees to a remote island in the Bay of Bengal as part of a controversial plan to move 100,000 refugees out of the crowded camps. Many say they don't want to go, but they're not being given a choice. You're about to hear from a Rohingya refugee. We've agreed to protect his identity because he fears retribution from the Bangladeshi government. We reached him in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh.

CO: Can you tell us, first of all, how are people in the refugee camps in Cox's Bazar, how do they feel about this relocation as it started?

VO: People are reading about that and people say that in our community, they are taking people separately from us. It is not better for us, but the reason they don't want to go there.

CO: So you're saying that the people are not happy to go, they are being separated from their families, people are being split up, the families are being split up.

VO: Right. Some of them have been taken away from their relatives to Bhashan Char.

CO: And you mentioned this Bhashan Char, is where they're being taken. What do you know about Bhashan Char? What is there? What is on this island for anyone to go to?

VO: Bhashan Char is a place where at any time anything can happen -- any type of natural disaster. Okay. It is risky place, and people don't want to go there because of the risk of natural disasters.

CO: So a lot of disasters there. We know that this place, Bhashan Char, didn't even exist 20 years ago. That it is actually a build up of silt in the Bay of Bengal that now has extreme weather and is quite a ways from the mainland. Do you know if there's anything even there for people? They say that they have housing and mosques and markets. Has anyone told you that that's true?

VO: Yeah, there has been built different types of mosques, community centres, medical care, I know. But people says that it is one kind of open jail.

CO: So you're saying it's an open jail. And so now the authorities in Bangladesh say that anyone who goes to Bhashan Char, it's entirely voluntary, no one is being forced to go there, it's up to them. Is that true?

VO: No, no. It is completely forcefully. Some have been shown benefit of 5000 money. If anyone go to Bhashan Char willingly we will pay 5000 money -- if you and your family have five persons, you will get 25,000. And some who don't want to go there, they are treated seriously. It is not voluntary. It is completely false.

CO: Can you describe where you live? What is it like? Tell us what it looks like right now where you are.

VO: I am living with my family. Somehow I manage my family.

CO: And how much space do you have?

VO: A very small, very tiny room. Ten by ten feet.

CO: Do you have any heat? Do you any water?

VO: Yeah. Yeah. We have supplied safe drinking water. We get some support from Bangladesh government.

CO: But they say that Bhashan Char, it's better -- that's what the government says. It says that the conditions in Cox's Bazar where you are is overcrowded, that it's a better place to go to Bhashan Char. And it's very difficult where you are now.

VO: Yeah, it is difficult. But we don't come here to be in luxury life. We have to be patient because we come here to save our life, okay? We did not come here for a luxury life. We come here only to save our life. For that reason, we want to generally stay together because amongst us all our brothers, all our sisters, all our relatives. So we don't want to go separately to keep some relatives in other districts.

CO: You want everyone to stay where you are and stay together because you want to go home, you want to go back to Myanmar, and that's the best way you can do it. Is that what you're saying?

VO: Yeah. Yeah, right. When our country will be safe, it will be democratic, and we will be given full citizenship then we will go back to our country -- homeland. Right. We don't come here to get luxury life.

CO: Is it possible to leave the island after you're taken there? Can you leave Bhashan Char after you go there?c

VO: No, ma'am. No, ma'am, that is not possible.

CO: You've said elsewhere that your neighbours have said they'd rather die than go to Bhashan Char.

VO: Yeah.

CO: Why is that? What are your neighbours saying about the possibility that they may have to go there?

VO: I would like to say that if any of our relatives separated from us, if they stay in Cox's Bazar district, if we stay in Bhashan Char if anything happened in the Cox's Bazar district to our relatives, how we can come to see them, it is not possible to come easily at any time. That is the main issue.

CO: How will you avoid going? Do you think that they are going to try and take you to Bhashan Char? Is that what you suspect?

VO: Yeah, we always suspect any decision of the government, but it is beyond our opinion. It is completely against our opinion. But if they take us, we should go because we are very vulnerable people. We have to obey any rules, any decision, but we don't want to go there willingly. They may take us forcefully because we have no intention to go there.

CO: We will leave the interview there. And I really appreciate you telling us what's going on and I hope you and your family stay safe. Thank you.

VO: Thank you ma'am.

CH: That was a Rohingya refugee in Bangladesh. We're not revealing his identity to protect his safety. We reached him in Cox's Bazar.

[Music]

Joe Arvay

CH: A friend and fellow lawyer are celebrating Joe Arvay as Canada's Clarence Darrow. Mr. Arvay preferred to think of himself as a "plumber with words." The B.C. litigator didn't just believe Canada's legal system could be used to advance civil liberties, he had the plumbing skills to turn that belief into fact. Joe Arvay convinced courts to recognise same sex marriages, to protect safe injection sites, and to stop the censorship of LGBTQ books. And those are just three from a long list of cases we've covered on this show. Joe Arvay died of a heart attack on Monday. He was 71. In 2012, Mr. Arvay spoke with Carol after taking one of the first big steps towards what we now call medical assistance in dying. He convinced a B.C. judge to recognise the right of his client, Gloria Taylor, to seek a doctor's help if her suffering became so great that she chose to end her life. Carol asked how Ms. Taylor had responded.

JOE ARVAY: She was overwhelmed with emotion. As you can appreciate, this is a decision that has profound implications for Gloria. And she was very very grateful and relieved that the court has now cleared the way to give her the choice for physician assisted dying if it comes to pass, that that's what she wants and needs.

CO: We just heard a bit of a conversation that we had with Gloria Taylor last year. How much has her health changed since then?

JOE ARVAY: It's deteriorated and she's actually holding on much longer than any of her doctors predicted. So she's doing okay. She's not at that stage yet, I don't think, where she's contemplating physician assisted death. And, you know, I need to emphasise that I don't think Gloria has made any decision about whether she's going to take advantage of this ruling. She's always wanted the choice, the peace of mind, that if her situation became intolerable, her suffering became intolerable, that she wanted to have this option. So she now has the option.

CO: And what does that mean? Because you say, that the option is that the court granted Gloria Taylor a constitutional exemption for the next year. So how does that work?

JOE ARVAY: Well, what the court did is it declared that the laws that prohibit any kind of physician assisted dying could be unconstitutional. But the court appreciated that if the court had just struck down that law, then there would be no limitations, no restrictions, no qualifications on the ability to take advantage of physician assisted dying. So the court today struck down the law that prohibits physician assisted dying, but then suspended the declaration for one year to allow parliament to pass the appropriate law that respects the court's decision. But in the meantime, Gloria Taylor can't wait one year. And so the court essentially gave Gloria an exemption from that suspension. So long as Gloria meets the very strict requirements that the court has set out, she can within this year avail herself of physician assisted dying.

CH: That was the civil liberties lawyer, Joe Arvay, speaking with Carol in 2012, Mr. Arvay died on Monday. He was 71.

[Music]

Part 3: From Our Archives: Philip Norman on John Lennon

From Our Archives: Philip Norman on John Lennon

CH: 40 years ago today, John Lennon had just returned to music after a half decade hiatus spent raising his son Sean. His latest collaboration with Yoko Ono was called Double Fantasy, and it was the fulfilment of his fans fantasies, music lovers who'd waited five long years for the coolest Beatle to record a new album. But that would be his last new recording. On the evening of December 8th, 1980, 40 years ago tonight, John Lennon was shot and killed by a fan while returning to his Manhattan apartment with Ms. Ono. Here's some of what our show sounded like the following day. [MUSIC: People singing John Lennon's "Imagine"].

VOICE 1: We can't believe it -- none of us.

VOICE 2: We can't believe it.

VOICE 3: We can't believe it.

VOICE 4: I can't believe anybody could be that insane to kill somebody so beautiful. It's insanity. I just feel very sorry, very sad, and I love John a lot. I grew up with John and he changed my mind. You know, he opened it up by his music, by the things that he did, the things that he believed in, and he believed in the good things. And he was a beautiful, good person.

VOICE 5: He was killed because the person who killed him was jealous of his position. That's why there are killers in the world and there's important people. He was killed in jealousy because he was the most influential person of our times. He changed the 60s. None of us would be wearing our hair, our clothes or our songs would all be different if it wasn't for John Lennon? I mean, he was with The Beatles, he was the front runner of The Beatles. He had his own group, his own ideas, took his five year absence and they had to get him on his rebound. But Led Zeppelin was going to come back too and their drummer died. And any time someone wants to rebound, something happens. But we'll never forget John.

VOICE 6: Never forget John.

VOICE 7: Long live Lennon.

CH: Fans outside John Lennon's Manhattan apartment singing and mourning his death 40 years ago today. As you heard, fans felt like they knew John Lennon and like he knew them, like he'd made them who they were even. But as we learnt in 2008, he's also someone about whom there was always more to know. Even after writing an entire book about The Beatles in the 1980s. Biographer Philip Norman shared another 800 pages worth of information about Mr. Lennon in a 2008 biography called John Lennon: The Life. And in December of 2008, Mr. Norman spoke with Carol on As It Happens about some of what he learnt.

CO: Philip Norman, welcome to the As it Happens studio.

PHILIP NORMAN: Thank you.

CO: Now, just describe this book because physically it's 800 pages, is that right?

PHILIP NORMAN: Yes. Actually, it is not as big as it is in the U.K. and in Holland. The Dutch language has added at another 10 percent to the body weight.

CO: And is it fair to say a labour of love? I mean, what an amazing amount of research you must have put into this.

PHILIP NORMAN: It was a labour. Yes, because I had to look at John's life whole, not just find out new information that there wasn't new information. I had to look at very very well known John Lennon songs afresh. I felt I had to give a fresh perspective to everything, even the iconic moments with The Beatles that we think we know so well. I had to find something new to say about those as well.

CO: Why did you feel you had to do that?

PHILIP NORMAN: Because I wanted to make every page of this book new. I certainly didn't want people to say that I had recycled my own Beatles biography. I wanted to give a tremendous sense of novelty that you are seeing this person for the first time really.

CO: And so you had to see him for the first time again.

PHILIP NORMAN: I did. And of course, there is a lot about John that is unexpected. It was unexpected to me. There is a side of John that really he kept very well hidden. We remember him as someone who seemed to be very tough and cynical and very funny and rather ruthless and could be rather cruel. There's another side of John, which is a very soft, romantic, vulnerable and very insecure side of him. He was insecure about his own talent, never really believed that he did anything as well as he had wanted to do..

CO: You paint a very complete picture of him, but it is not a sympathetic picture. I mean, the man is a very difficult person.

PHILIP NORMAN: Yes. Everything about John is really a contradiction. So he is tough and he is ruthless and he can be cruel, but he is also sort of very easy to hurt himself, tremendously jealous, and sort of unhappy. Even when you think this is the most enviable young man on the face of the Earth, he wasn't happy. He was writing a song called Help. He was calling out for help. He was singing a song and writing a song called I'm a Loser. But the Beatles joie de vivre just made that a happy song, but it wasn't.

CO: The relationships are the most interesting of a very interesting book altogether. But I think just learning about his early childhood relationships, relations with men and women are so fascinating. And I want to begin with some of the early ones. And maybe you can explain to us how John Lennon came to be living with his Aunt Mimi.

PHILIP NORMAN: His famous Aunt Mimi took him over and brought him up in suburban middle class gentility, really, this was not the working class hero background that we came to hear from John about. He lived his early life, both without his father and his mother. His father had wanted to keep the family together after the war when his mother had a child by another man during the war while John's father, was away. But eventually his father, who was called Freddie Lennon gave John to his mother, Julia. She was a rather feckless character. She was a very attractive, very magnetic character, very loving in lots of ways. She was more or less sort of bullied into giving John to her older sister, Aunt Mimi. But Julia, John's mother, was always in his life. He later said she kind of went out of his life, but she didn't. She was always around during his childhood, but she lived with another man, had two children with another man on his own. John never really felt that she belonged to him. And she wasn't like a maternal figure. She was more like a sort of flirtatious older cousin. So then this complex feeling came within John that there was an element of sexual attraction to his mother. His mother encouraged him to play music. She was a musician. She could play the banjo. And so Julia was the one who bought John his first guitar and encouraged him to play some.

CO: In some instances, you describe it as a kind of friendship and a mentorship. But the scene that stays in my mind is this description that he gives, I guess, later to Yoko that he she was having an afternoon nap and he lay down beside her. And maybe you can describe what you learnt.

PHILIP NORMAN: He remembered every detail of this moment. He was in his early teens full of testosterone, and he remembered everything that she was wearing, she probably lay down on the coverlet for us for a nap. He accidentally touched her breast and he thought and thought about this for the rest of his life this moment. Would she have responded if he had made an advance to her? Because only a couple of years later, she was knocked down and killed by a speeding car and he was absolutely bereft. He said it was the worst thing that ever happened to him when his mother was killed so suddenly and he was thinking about that moment for the rest of his life and talking about it to Yoko over and over, not just once. And there was a sort of aching sort of void, which he tried to, to some extent, feel by writing songs. There was a song called Julia. Then there was a song called Mother, which is like an almost a sort of shriek of agony, which to this day is rather hard to listen to.

CO: Mother is almost an anti-lullaby, isn't it?

PHILIP NORMAN: It is. It's a shriek of sort of despair. "Why did you leave me?" And it includes his father as well. This was someone who wrote about himself in music, not in the way that Bob Dylan -- Bob Dylan took on the world and usually won. John was always insecure and examining himself and not liking what he saw.

CO: When you described the song Mother, what he said about his lyrics, "mother, you know, you left me, I didn't leave you.' And then he talks about the father figure in that song as well. Father being Freddie or Alf, I guess.

PHILIP NORMAN: And yes, originally Alf, then he sort of later on he made it slightly more glamorous as Freddie.

CO: How did Freddie come to leave his life then?

PHILIP NORMAN: Well, Freddie was away at sea. This is always sort of held against him, really. But in fact, in the Second World War, this was a pretty heroic thing to be doing in the Merchant Navy. But Freddie didn't like the way John was being looked after. So Freddie decided to abduct John and take him to New Zealand. But Julia came after them and took John back. And in fact, this really had a terrible psychological effect on Freddie Lennon. And he sort of virtually gave up. He never had a proper job after that. He was almost an itinerant and didn't come back into John's life until John was famous as a Beatle. But it wasn't really to cash in on John being wealthy. What really his father wanted to do was to put the record straight that he hadn't abandoned him, that he thought he was doing the best thing for John.

CO: Is your sense that John Lennon actually ever believed that his father did it for him?

PHILIP NORMAN: I think towards the end, because one of the things I was able to quote from was an unpublished autobiography by John's father. And every chapter ended with a kind of personal PS to John saying, well, this happened to me and something very similar has happened to you. And indeed, John's life and his father's ran in a strange parallel, of course, in lots of ways. And right at the end in the 1970s when John's father was diagnosed with cancer, and John finally did make a telephone call. And I think there was a sort of reconciliation.

CO: And as you point out, his relationships with his two sons from different relationships that John Lennon had also he conflicted him as to how he could relate to them. And then his father points out, well, how different am I from you?

PHILIP NORMAN: Exactly. John grew up thinking that he, you know, he needed a father. And John was always looking for father figures. And Brian Epstein was a father figure. The Maharishi Mahesh Yogi was a sort of father figure for about six months. But yes, the real sadness about this is that having lacked a father himself when John had his first son, Julian, he was not really a father to Julian in Julian's early years. And you'd think that his own experience would have had some sort of bearing on the situation, but it didn't. John was in The Beatles and was travelling. His wife, Cynthia, was left at home with the baby. John really didn't want to be married. He'd married Cynthia only because she was pregnant. And so John was an absent father to his first son, but he made up for that with the son he had with Yoko, Sean. He looked after Sean. He parented Sean at a time when men did not do that very much. And that had the effect of turning his thoughts again to his first son. And so there was a certain amount of reconciliation in John's last few years with Julian as well.

CO: You talk about the father figures, his quest for that kind of father that he didn't have. But there were other relationships with men. And the most interesting is that the collaborations and of course, we have to talk about his most important, which was with Paul McCartney.

PHILIP NORMAN: Yes, this amazing one off, this sort of completely unique character couldn't operate alone. John had to have a sidekick who was a kind of audience, but also sort of egging him on to do things. So there were people through his life who were John's mate. The most important one was Paul McCartney. Creatively, they were very different, but they had this absolute commitment to music. But it was never a very intimate relationship. And in fact, they never really had a terrible row together. It was pragmatic. It was a collaboration. They were able to switch personalities in a way that songwriting teams don't do this. Songwriting teams don't consist usually of two people, both of whom write words and music. John was a right handed guitarist and Paul was a left handed guitar player. But each one could play the other's guitar, they could switch guitars, they could switch personalities. But it was never tremendously close emotional relationship. John did get angry with Paul after the break up, but in a sort of rather unreasonable way. But while the Beatles were breaking up, there was never any sort of terrible stand up row with John and Paul. Some of this book has been wilfully misinterpreted as John's gay lust for Paul.

CO: You make a suggestion, make an allusion to that -- you want to explain it because it is going to be the most controversial thing, the headlines of this.

PHILIP NORMAN: I guess so. But there was no John gay lust for Paul. Paul was very pretty, but Paul was not someone that gay men liked. John was somewhat that gay men liked. John's real ambition, particularly after The Beatles had become world famous, was to be what he thought of as a "real" artist, real in quotes -- someone who not only made music but did sculpture and painting and conceptual art, which, of course, Yoko allowed him to do. He thought that to be bohemian, as he put it to himself, he had to try every experience there was. And if that included a homosexual relationship, he would try it. And the person, the closest male person to him around that time was Paul McCartney. There was never any question of him suggesting this because McCartney has always been 100 percent heterosexual.

CO: Maybe you just describe how you came to know or understand that there was even a moment when he thought, well, maybe if I was going to have a sexual relationship with a man, it might be with Paul.

PHILIP NORMAN: He did say this on a couple of other occasions. And there was another person later when he was living with Yoko and they were discussing how John might extend his sexual horizon because he felt, you know, rather restricted in the relationship with Yoko. And there was another guitarist around and John said, okay, he's so beautiful, yes. I mean, I'd have sex with him. You know, John would say that kind of thing. But then John said, I couldn't because I would have to have some emotion for him as well and I couldn't.

CO: There is also suggestion that or more than suggestion, that there was a flirtation, at least on the part of Brian Epstein's part, the manager of The Beatles, who was a gay man.

PHILIP NORMAN: That's right. At a time when it was impossible to be openly gay, it was illegal in Britain.

CO: Was he attracted to John Lennon?

PHILIP NORMAN: Absolutely adored him. Yes. Because Brian had a very, very troubled emotional life because he was a refined and a sensitive young man who was older than his years and from a very respectable family, Jewish family in Liverpool. But he was drawn to what was called the rough trade. He would go and try and pick up dockworkers on the waterfront of Liverpool. And a lot of these people deliberately lured gay men into trying to make an advance and then would beat them up or blackmail them. And John, who was not really that tough and was more of oppose with John -- that was a less dangerous kind of rough trade to Brian Epstein. John was not above using that power over Brian. And Yoko told me that John told her that he had said to Brian right at the beginning, look, if it's going to encourage you to manage The Beatles and that's what you want from me, you can have it. You know, John, was that sort of cold-blooded about it. But Brian was too nice a person to take advantage of that. Later on, when they went on their famous so-called Spanish honeymoon, then Brian was ready to make an advance and John said, no, sorry, you've missed your chance.

CO: The songwriting collaboration has been described, and you quote in the book as being that Paul McCartney was the olive oil and John Lennon was the lemon juice, it was the astringent for that. How did they complement each other musically?

PHILIP NORMAN: They absolutely could exchange personalities. We think of John as being the tough one, the hardcore rock and roller. But he had a core of immense sentimentality. He loved the 1950s crooners, the pre rock and roll crooners, the Bing Crosby and the Guy Mitchell's. John could write a sentimental song just as well as Paul could. When John came back in that brief period of return from retirement before his death in 1980 with the Double Fantasy album, that's a very Paul McCartney sounding album, that whole album. And they each could finish off a song by the other, although they would be writing separately later in their careers. One could say, well, I just need something else with this song and the other one which just provide it off the top of his head.

CO: Can you give me some examples?

PHILIP NORMAN: Well, if you think of John Lennon's masterpiece, I think we would say is "A Day in the Life." Now, this is John Lennon being Oscar Wilde -- this is De Profundis from John Lennon. This is John's Heartbreak Hotel. It's almost dehumanised. The misery is so intense, the feeling of frustration. It's surreal. It's strange. It makes the hairs on your neck prickled when you listen to this cold, lonely, remote voice of John. Then right in the middle, there's this chatty bit by Paul 'Woke up, got out a bed, you know, dragged a comb across my head.' It's totally sort of every day housewives choice stuff. You know, it absolutely gives that last little twist of genius to the song. And John, of course, realised that. John didn't say no, that bit doesn't fit. John said yes, love it, leave it in. You know, that was a great example of Paul's absolute opposite-ness, just giving the last little sort of twist of the ratchet to John's genius.

CO: And there were just even tiny phrases, as you point out, you know, when they're singing, you know, got to admit it's getting better. And then there's this, you can't get any worse.

PHILIP NORMAN: That's right. And Paul, you know, would pick up on this sort of this terrible pessimism, you know, that John, like help, you know, which is John saying, help me, help me, help me. Paul does this little countermelody, which is like putting you on the head and saying, don't worry, it's okay. So this song is, again, is full of joie de vivre.

CO: So if Paul McCartney is all sort of optimism and the edge is coming from John Lennon, let's talk a bit about what happens to John Lennon's music and his songs after they The Beatles break up. How would you characterise the songs?

PHILIP NORMAN: I think that one of the great things I learnt actually in writing this book is how brilliant John's post Beatle albums were. He created the transition himself with Yoko by inventing a band that was the opposite of The Beatles. That is that wasn't just four sacred individuals. There could be as many or as few in this band as they liked at any given moment. The basic components of the band were plastic robots with record players, and they called them the Plastic Ono Band. And John made a record under the title of the Plastic Ono Band, which was the transition from being a Beatle to being John Lenno. And that album stands as absolutely brilliant, the Plastic Ono Band. Then John made a record which was considered to be artistic suicide at the time, called Sometime in New York City with Yoko. I think a couple of those tracks with Yoko are as brilliant as anything he ever did.

CO: An example?

PHILIP NORMAN: There's one about Angela Davis, the black radical. His voice gets very fragile. It's suddenly sort of like Delft China. It's got this incredible fragility with Yoko's voice. Yoko was a trained musician. She didn't just get into sax and scream. You know, she knew about counterpoint and Italian opera. And of course, John's original plan, perhaps foolhardy plan, was that Yoko should join the Beatles. Yoko didn't break up the Beatles. John thought Yoko was going to be one of The Beatles. And he was quite surprised when this didn't work out. He thought the other ones, the other three would wear it, which, of course, in the end they didn't.

CO: So the relationship I mean, what you do in the book, which is fascinating, is to discuss the wife, Cynthia Powell, who is the mother of Julian, and that relationship and how it breaks down as Yoko enters the picture. They both have a totally different take on the effect they had on John or how did the marriage break up. What did Yoko tell you?

PHILIP NORMAN: Well, Yoko told me and I believe because I mean, I think I knew this to some extent, is that it wasn't a question of Yoko coming along and poaching a Beatle out of The Beatles. She came along and she met John. They were both married. Yoko on her second husband. She had two husbands before John. And they knew there was an awful lot of trouble in store if they did sort of get together and it took about two years for them to get together. After first meeting, they were circling around each other. Yoko said, and again, we have to remember that Yoko, in the world of conceptual art in the mid 60s was a star. The world of conceptual art was a very small world, and the mainstream culture didn't really know much about it and thought it was mad, lunatic, most of what she was doing. But she was a star in her own sort of exclusive little artistic enclave. And she felt, and I absolutely see this, that if she hooked up with a one of The Beatles, she would lose her own career, which indeed she did. Yoko wasn't dominating John. You see, that wasn't part of the culture she came from and it wasn't really part of her. John was telling Yoko what he wanted and what he wanted to do and what she should do.

CO: But Cynthia Powell describes it as that she kind of insinuated herself into John's life, that she subverted her role as the wife, that she was manipulative and...

PHILIP NORMAN: Well, there was yes -- in the end, the fascination did increase between John and Yoko. It took a long long time. Cynthia was in this position of not being a particularly wronged wife. John was not sort of habitually horrible to Cynthia. He was just kind of apathetic. They were livin, Cynthia told me this, like brother and sister, you know, the physical relationship had gone. But John would come home. He liked being at home. He would lie around and not say much, you know, be a rather an absentee sort of person, even though he was there. But it was never a marriage that was fated to last because John had to marry Cynthia under duress. And then the world opened up and he saw what was possible for him in the world. And Cynthia was no part of this, unfortunately.

CO: John, obviously, John Lennon still had to work out a lot of demons. And you describe that as times the lost weekend and his relationship with the crazy producer Phil Spector. And he worked out and his involvement with hard drugs, a lot of alcohol.

PHILIP NORMAN: He was always looking for -- he thought there was an answer, you see, to what ailed him. What ailed him was being John Lennon. You know how you feel inside makes no difference how rich or famous you are. You always feel that way inside. And he was insecure. He felt this awful pain from his childhood. Nothing seemed to be able to cure that. But different things offered a sort of short term solution. First of all, it was pot, then it was LSD. Then it was meditation. Then it was therapy.

CO: Scream therapy.

PHILIP NORMAN: Primal scream therapy. And the therapist, Arthur Yanov, said John was in a state of the most dreadful pain when Yanov went to start to treat him. Later on, there was a flirtation with heroin, or about the same time as the primal scream therapy. Then he thought if he went off and behaved like a bachelor in L.A., that would kind of cure this ailment. But nothing did. You see, in the end, it has to be how you feel inside. And also he looked after his son, Sean. And of course, if you spend your life thinking someone has to look after you, the best cure is to look after someone else.

CO: And that's what is just beautiful. The interview you actually have with Sean, who also describes what his father was like, which is unique. I think it's a beautiful portrait of his dad, but also how important, obviously, Sean was to John Lennon. He became a house husband.

PHILIP NORMAN: He did at a time when we didn't know this term. Really, the first example that I can remember is John Lennon being a househusband. But you see, if you make a child's life secure, then your life feels more secure as well. You know, there's no doubt that did an awful lot for John and he did everything for sure. And really, I mean, he had a lot of help, of course, around their apartment. And they were nannies and people. But John just did the things with that little boy that he hadn't done with his first son. And a measure of contentment came from that. And it's interesting with Sean Lennon's memoir Reminiscence, that in general, people say that unhappy memories are the ones that stick, not happy memories. But Sean has so many positive memories of happiness, he can actually describe this moment of happiness with John.

CO: You set out to write a book as though approaching John Lennon for the first time, to see him with fresh eyes. And you went through his entire life, warts and all. Do you like him?

PHILIP NORMAN: More than liking. I mean, I have personal memories of meeting and talking to him and how nice he was to me when I was a local journalist. And on The Beatles last tour, I was thrown out of their dressing room. But I'd already said to John, could I stay? And he said, Oh yeah, you can stay. And then the roadie threw me out of the dressing room. That was the start, that's what happened. I have only the best memories, personal memories of John. And of course, his music. I mean, how could you not love this man?

CO: Philip Norman, it's a pleasure to talk to you and congratulations on this enormous effort to get this book out. It's really quite extraordinary. And thank you for speaking with us.

CH: Philip Norman is the author of John Lennon: The Life. He spoke with Carol on As It Happens in December 2008. John Lennon was killed 40 years ago today.

Back To Top »

Provide Transcript Feedback

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

December 8, 2020 Episode Transcript

More Stories Like This