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 2021

The Current Transcript for April 6, 2021

Host: Matt Galloway

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

WANDA BLACKETT: My first few ASL classes, I was so thrilled, I took my hearing aids off, put them aside and I was like on the same level playing field as everybody else in that class. I literally broke down crying in class just because I was like, oh, my God, this is what I've been looking for, for so long.

MATT GALLOWAY: Schools across Canada offer a number of second language classes. You can learn French and Spanish and Mandarin. This fall, students in Ontario will have the opportunity to learn American and French sign language as well. In 30 minutes what this means to those who sign on a daily basis.

MG: Also this morning:

VOICE: Are you Mackenzie King?

GERALDINE SMITH: That is correct.

VOICE: Would you have any advice for Mr. Trudeau about Quebec?

GS: I would highly recommend that he speak with peaceful words. I do not see separation.

MG: As Canada's most famous psychic, Geraldine Smith was in high demand in the 1970s. From a sold out concert halls to national unity discussions right here on your CBC Radio. Now, her scientist son has written a book exploring whether his mom actually had supernatural abilities. The story of the psychic and the scientist in an hour.

MG: We begin, though, in the grips of the third wave. Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway. And this is The Current.

[Music: Theme]

Faces of COVID-19’s third wave in Canada

Guests: Dr. Laveena Munshi, Katie Ireland, Dianne Desjarlais Cardinal, Lou Molinaro

MG: Well, yes, a third wave of covid-19 has Canada firmly in its grip, and while overloaded ICU's and lockdown announcements might feel familiar by now, this time is different. Coronavirus variants are upending what we thought we knew about this virus, making symptoms more severe, hitting younger people and spreading more easily. Katie Ireland is a fitness instructor and home care physiotherapist in Ottawa.

KATIE IRELAND: My nine year old son called to tell us that we've been exposed to covid through one of his hockey players on his team. So that was on Monday, March 15th. And then on the 16th, the Tuesday, he got a fever. And from there I found out that he was positive for covid-19.

MG: And it didn't stop there. She was next to test positive and it didn't stop there either.

KI: I got a fever and got a great big headache and nasal congestion. And then we found out that my husband was now positive. So by that time, now we had three people in isolation. So we had my brave daughter started taking care of all of us and serving food. But my 14 year old son on that Sunday night started getting a headache and fever and chills and a very bad stomach ache and body aches. And so he had to be isolated from the rest of the family as well. And so that was a juggling act to put all of us in a separate bedroom and to have separate washrooms that we weren't contaminating amongst us because there was two kids that were still negative. And we found out on Saturday that my daughter did actually test positive and she was really upset by it.

MG: That's Katie Ireland on her way to recovery. Her 11 year old son has tested negative for covid-19. Doctor Laveena Munshi is a critical care doctor in the ICU at Toronto's Mount Sinai Hospital. She's also a member of Ontario's covid-19 Science Advisory Table.

MG: Doctor, good morning.

LAVEENA MUNSHI: Good morning. Thanks for having me.

MG: Thanks for being here. Five out of six members of a family getting sick. Are you seeing more of that during this third wave of the pandemic?

LAVEENA MUNSHI: Yeah, unfortunately, this story is all too common these days in wave three. It certainly has been a different wave with faster spreading variants that are more destructive. And we are no longer just seeing individuals getting infected. It's running through entire families. So that was seen occasionally in the first two waves, but certainly seems to be happening at a much higher frequency in wave three because of the variance of concern.

MG: And so one of the real concerns that comes out of that is that ICUs are being put under incredible strain and the numbers keep going up and up and up. What does that strain look like in an intensive care unit?

LAVEENA MUNSHI: So compared to wave one and two it's certainly busier on the patient level because of the variant of concern taking over and running through entire families. We are seeing younger patients present to hospital and present to the ICU. And on the patient level, we continue to see essential workers or their families ending up in ICU. On a personal level, we are burnt out. We are tired, yet we are also just entering what will likely be the most physically and psychologically taxing part of this pandemic. The third wave, which some anticipate is like the tsunami of the pandemic. And at the hospital level, we're stretched thin. And yes, we're grateful for money allocated for more ICU beds and ventilators, but we're just concerned about the human resources and who is actually going to be staffing them.

MG: Because it's not just a bed you need... An ICU if anyone has ever been in it. I mean you have a team of people that are supporting that patient. So it's not just a bed, it's the people who are also around that bed?

LAVEENA MUNSHI: Absolutely. It's our ICU trained nurses. It's our ICU trained OT's. It's our ICU trained physicians and pharmacists and dieticians. So it's a full compilation of a team that has special expertise in the critical care management of complex patients. And we can't just kind of, you know, fill a field hospital and staff a field hospital, not even just overnight, but even with months of preparation. So as we've gone through, wave two and we've prepared for wave three had to think of creative ways to try to increase our human resources in anticipation of the volume that's going to be coming.

MG: I want to ask you more about that in a moment. In the meantime, just stay with us. Doctor, I want to bring Dianne Dejarlais Cardinal into this conversation. Her 34 year old son, Matthew, has a very first identified in the United Kingdom. He was just moved from the ICU a few days ago. Dianne is in Regina. Dianne, good morning to you.

DIANNE DESJARLAIS CARDINAL: Good morning, Matt.

MG: How's Matthew doing?

DIANNE DESJARLAIS CARDINAL: Right now, I've got a good report for him. He's doing very well. They've taken him off the ventilator and the doctors are now putting him through physiotherapy to help him to walk. He's still weak yet, and he's still relying on oxygen.

MG: How sick did he get?

DIANNE DESJARLAIS CARDINAL: It was come and go, and I have to be honest with that, like we didn't know if he was going to actually pull through this, how weak he was, how sick he was.

MG: And he was put... I mean, he's in the ICU, he was put on a ventilator and was in an induced coma as well?

DIANNE DESJARLAIS CARDINAL: Yes, he was. Yes, he was.

MG: Did he have any signs before he fell ill? I mean, what was going on that would lead to this really precarious situation?

DIANNE DESJARLAIS CARDINAL: He was one of those what are they called, essential workers. You know, he would go out every day and go and do his job. He worked in the restaurant industry. He was a bartender and a waiter. He would do bartending at night on weekends and during the day he was a waiter. And March 15th, like I got a text message from him and then after that, a phone call. And he spoke with me and he says, Mom, he says, I have got a very bad headache. I'm not feeling well. I said, you know, you better come home. You better get home as soon as you can. I said, get over here. And and from there I said, well, we'll see what's happening. I said, well, we'll just monitor your symptoms, you know, and... Should I go on, Matt?

MG: Yeah, I mean, it sounds... It's just such a familiar story to a lot of people. I mean, you could imagine as you're watching this as his mom seeing the symptoms get worse and worse. What was going through your mind?

DIANNE DESJARLAIS CARDINAL: Prior to all this happening, I and Matthew, would be, you know, in the evenings we would watch the news and he was telling me, you know, he was talking about that new variant. He said, I think we better tune in to that mom. It's like we're starting to hear more and more of that. So when he got very sick, when he got sick, just with those symptoms in the back of my mind, like I kind of thought to myself, listen, there might be a possibility here, you know.

MG: How quickly did it go from? How quickly did it go from those symptoms to him needing to be in the hospital?

DIANNE DESJARLAIS CARDINAL: Yeah, well, during that time, he called Saskatchewan Health Association and he got a test, a covid test. So he got his results back and it tested positive. So within that time frame from being home from the 15th to the 21st, he was bedridden. It got so bad. I could just hear the coughing and no appetite. And I said, you know what? No, I said, we've got to do something. Now, this does not feel right. So on the 22nd, it got so bad that finally we had to phone an ambulance. He was gasping, he was gasping for air, like how much coughing he was doing. He was just gasping for air and so weak, so weak, I've never seen my son like that before.

MG: It must have been terrifying.

DIANNE DESJARLAIS CARDINAL: Yeah, it was so heart wrenching, I tell you, because he had to leave here in an ambulance, you know, and I couldn't go. And I couldn't go. I couldn't go with him, so that was very hard for me, I couldn't be beside him, I just could not go.

MG: Have you been able to visit him in the hospital?

DIANNE DESJARLAIS CARDINAL: Not yet. Right now, currently, they're in a lockdown here in Regina at the hospital here in the city. And there's been an increase also with the variant. The covid variant, there's been an increase here, and I'm like, I watch the news just to keep up on things and right now, like the hospitals are, they're just so full, they're full. They're doing whatever they can to put the patients in ICU and find room. They're full capacity.

MG: Just before I let you go. This is a really difficult moment and a really personal story. And yet you have chosen to speak out about this. Why is it important for you to be talking about what your family is going through?

DIANNE DESJARLAIS CARDINAL: Well, this is what I saw. This is what I saw. And even for myself. When I was hearing about these covid patients, and I was like, you know, just hearing about the people in the hospital, I thought to myself, that's all we're hearing. We're not seeing. All they are right now is just we're seeing numbers. So I thought to myself, you know what? I'm going to step forward if there's an opportunity that comes forward. I'm going to step up and I'm going to put a face to those numbers. And I'll do whatever I can because I'll use my story and my son's story. If it's going to help to bring awareness, if it's going to help anybody, just for them to take a look and be more cautious.

MG: I'm really glad that he's doing better. And I wish you and your family the best. Dianne, thank you so much.

DIANNE DESJARLAIS CARDINAL: Thank you, Matt.

MG: Diane Desjarlais Cardinal is in Regina. Dr. Laveena Munshi, who works in an ICU in Toronto, has been listening into this. Doctor, he's a 34 year old bartender. Do we have any sense as to why this virus, through these variants, is hitting young people harder now?

LAVEENA MUNSHI: I think the reality is that it's just much more transmissible. And when you keep people indoors with a variant that is now much more easily transmissible, we are going to be seeing a surge in the people that are in indoor settings acquiring covid. And this has really characterised the third wave, these essential workers, those that either cannot stay home or those that are too fearful of cancelling work because of symptoms. And as a consequence, we're now seeing a greater impact on this population, which is certainly very scary.

MG: Let me bring in one more guest to this conversation Doctor. Lou Molinaro is a teacher at the Harris Institute of Music in Toronto. His close friend, Gene Champagne, who is the drummer for the legendary Canadian punk rock band Teenage Head, is in hospital in Burlington.

MG: Lou, good morning to you.

LOU MOLINARO: Good morning.

MG: How's Gene doing?

LM: Much better. Similar to Dianne's son. He's off the ventilator as of yesterday. I guess a few days ago, they had him in a proning position trying to get rid of mucus. I believe yesterday they also had him sitting up for a bit. So he's improving. But we're reminded that this is a marathon, not a sprint.

MG: Gene's, 52 years old. I mean, people who have seen him on stage know that he is a larger than life figure in some ways when he's playing music. Healthy guy, what do you take from what he has gone through? I mean, do you have a sense as a friend, how he got the virus?

LM: I believe it was contracted either through someone from, you know, like someone in his social circle, work related. But Gene is a very healthy type of person. He doesn't smoke. He doesn't drink. He's you know, he's just a very responsible person. So he'd be the last person that you'd suspect that would have it because he's like a role model in terms of just doing everything right, following protocol.

MG: So given that, you must have been totally shocked when you learnt how sick he was?

LM: It was a reality check. Super scary. It's made everything a lot more extreme. You realise that we're vulnerable much more now than we ever were before. At the beginning, we were informed that it was going to hit an older population. And just our age itself kind of gave us a bit of a shield thinking that, you know, if, you know, we do contract it, we could fight it off a lot easier. And now, you know, it's reality. I think it's a lot more scarier. For me it really hit home because, yes, for as long as it's been around, we've been inundated with news stories. But now when it gets so close to home. Everything just becomes a lot more amplified because it's real.

MG: Is that why you and I know his family's been talking about his situation as well? Is that why I mean, a bit to Dianne's point, that it's important to put, you know, the face on these stories?

LM: Well, yes, but also because I think, you know, no matter how much we're mentally frustrated and tired of everything that's going on, we have to recognise that this is real, that, you know, while a lot of people may have different views towards this virus, this is real. Otherwise, my friend would not be in a hospital right now. But also to be you know, you look at things a lot more differently and sometimes a little bit more subjectively because it's so closer to home. But, you know, the government tells us on every level to follow our health officials, which we do. These officials have been telling us for a long time right now that these variants are going to hit a younger population. So you figure that that would give them enough incentive to be a little bit more proactive? I know this is a unique situation, but you figure that it would give them more of an incentive to get vaccinations to everybody, especially now that, you know, they've been telling us it's going to hit a younger age group. Had a program followed through and, you know, people in our age group would be able to get a vaccination. Perhaps Gene would not be in a hospital.

MG: What a scary situation. I'm glad that he's off the ventilator and seems to be going in the right direction. Lou, thanks so much.

LM: Thank you.

MG: Lou Molinaro, friend of the musician Gene Champagne, who is in hospital in Burlington, Ontario, with covid-19. Dr. Laveena Munshi. Again, we're hearing of these healthy people. Who are being cautious who are getting sick. What should that tell us?

LAVEENA MUNSHI: Well, first, I want to say I'm so happy to hear both Matthew and Gene are doing better. They're off the ventilator. And I definitely want to thank them and their families and friends for getting these stories out there. I hope that it's these stories that really tells those individuals who are multiple arms lengths away from actually knowing anyone with covid that the reality here is that this is like a pandemic within a pandemic and it does not discriminate against age. So we need to be very, very, very vigilant about sticking with public health measures. And unfortunately, I think there needs to be an escalation in the measures that are taken if we really want to have an impact on bending this curve and protecting all of our society against these new variants of concern.

MG: Just briefly, what would that look like? I mean, again, there are many parts of this country that are in the grips of this third wave right now. So what would that escalation look like?

LAVEENA MUNSHI: So what I feel that we need to do is really focus in on where the core outbreaks are. We need to evaluate about what we're defining as an essential worker. When we talk about essential worker and over a short term period, we need to shut down all of those services that are not absolutely essential across those services that are truly essential. We need to protect those workers. This pandemic has unmasked the major inequalities that currently exist in our society, and health care system and these front line essential workers that are operating factories, restaurant industries, they're bearing the brunt of this pandemic and they have filled out ICU's through all three waves. So we need initiatives such as paid sick leave for those that are fearful of losing their job. If they go get a test, we need to optimise their workplace environment. We need to make it safer. And then transiently in certain regions such as Ontario, we probably need a proper stay at home order where we limit mobility. This worked in December and we're very scared about the future of this third wave. And without these drastic measures, I don't think we're going to have a major impact on bending that curve.

MG: Just in the last minute or so that we have let me ask you two things. One is, will vaccinations, in addition to what you're talking about, help us get through this? I mean, this is something that Lou is talking about, that you vaccinate in a deliberate way, in some ways, perhaps not just by age, but by those who are most at risk. Is that what we need to do?

LAVEENA MUNSHI: So the thing about vaccinations, vaccinations have prevented long term care deaths in the third wave. They prevented long term health care workers from getting sick. That's definitely a huge victory. Vaccinations will not be able to get us out of this third wave. What vaccinations will do will help us prevent a fourth wave. It will help us open up over summer. But we need to focus our phase two of vaccination priorities to essential workers, higher allocation in high risk regions with lower age Cut-Off. And if we want to really enforce trying to keep schools open, we also need to prioritise our teachers.

MG: Last thing in the last 30 seconds that we have, I mean, you said earlier on, that this is going to be in some ways the hardest part of the pandemic. We're a year into this. What do you expect in the next few weeks?

LAVEENA MUNSHI: The covid-19 Ontario Science Table modelling really does lay out a pretty grim picture if we do not pivot our approach. Even pivoting further compared to what we heard on Thursday from the Ontario government, I anticipate that this wave, the numbers will continue to climb. We will have to, on a much more frequent basis, continue to move patients out of the hospitals where there are high concentrations of covid to areas that are farther and farther away. And if we don't have a drastic change in our approach, this increase in numbers will majorly disrupt other acute care services. So I am very, very, very, very hopeful that this will be the last wave given the fact that we have vaccines, but the next couple of weeks are definitely going to be extremely challenging.

MG: Dr. Munshi, I wish you the best in the ICU and appreciate you being here this morning. Thank you.

LAVEENA MUNSHI: Ok, thanks for having me.

MG: Dr. Laveena Munshi is a critical care doctor in the intensive care unit at Toronto's Mount Sinai Hospital and a member of Ontario's covid-19 Science Advisory Table.

MG: Your CBC News is next. And then we are going to talk about sign language and making sign language available in high schools in this country. That story, coming up in six minutes on The Current.

Ontario high schools to teach sign language this fall

Guests: Wanda Blackett, Renata Davies, Gloria Brifoglio

MG: Good morning, I'm Matt Galloway, and you're listening to The Current.

[Music: Theme]

MG: Still to come, a scientist is usually also a sceptic, except this scientist grew up with one of Canada's most famous psychics as his mother. He's now a biologist and a believer. But first, a sign of change in Ontario high schools.

[Music: Theme]

MG: Ontario High School students will have two new options for their second language classes this fall. American or French sign language. Ontario is the first province to offer curriculum for both. And both of my next guests say this could make a huge difference for the hearing impaired. Wanda Blackett is a resource development coordinator with Silent Voice Canada, an organisation that serves the deaf community. She is in Oshawa, Ontario. And Renata Davies has nine year old twins. One of them is deaf and is now attending a school for the deaf in Bellville, Ontario.

MG: Good morning to you both.

RENATA DAVIES: Good morning.

WANDA BLACKETT: Morning.

MATT GALLOWAY: Wanda. What do you make of this news? How significant is it that American and French sign language courses will be offered in high schools in Ontario?

WB: Oh, it's just such a huge deal in the ASL and LSQ community just to have these languages acknowledged as equivalent to spoken languages and being offered as credit courses in Ontario secondary schools. It's so significant, I think, that it'll go towards increasing public awareness and it's going to go a long way towards removing those barriers and improving access. Right now, we're seeing with covid there's a lot more ASL and LSQ being offered in news broadcasts. And we're really hoping to see this sort of trend continue and expand. So that it becomes more of a normalised thing also for kids who are deaf and hard of hearing. A lot of them, well majority of them are in mainstream schools. So it means that they're going to have access to learning sign language now. For about 95 percent of deaf kids are actually born into hearing families, most of which have no knowledge or experience using ASL or LSQ. Myself, I was actually born hard of hearing, grew up with no access to ASL to a sign language. And so I actually didn't learn until I went to university. And once I got there, you know, I had the option to take an ASL class and the impact it had on me was really profound. When I grew up, I was shy and awkward and always embarrassed because I would be afraid of misunderstanding people and, you know, just saying something that was inappropriate. So I usually, you know, isolated. But after I learnt ASL, I got to join the deaf community and I found my own home. I found my language, something that's 100 percent accessible to me. And it was so fabulous. I mean, it just made such an impact on who I am as a person and my confidence. And I think that with ASL and LSQ classes being offered at the high schools, if those deaf and hard of hearing youth get the opportunity to take an ASL class or an LSQ class, I think it's going to have a huge impact on them and their lives. And I think that makes it really worth it to have the course available.

MG: Renata, tell me from your perspective, what difference are you hoping this would make for your children?

RD: Well, I mean, the accessibility that Wanda was saying... When Mila was a young infant, we didn't know much. We were still getting her tested for her hearing. And when we did find out, she went to a mainstream school which had a deaf and hard of hearing program. It wasn't as immersive as the school she's going through now. But going back to what Wanda said, having that accessibility and that immersion really opened up her confidence. So it opened up so many doors for her.

MG: Tell me a bit more about that in terms of what that experience was like in school for her?

RD: Going to mainstream or going to the provincial deaf school?

MG: Going to mainstream school?

RD: Going to mainstream was a little harder for her just because she was the only child who was fully, profoundly deaf bilaterally. So she was different from her, not different. I use the term different very loosely. She was different from her peers who were all hard of hearing. So they did have more accessibility in terms of that. So it was a little harder for her. It did close some doors for her. It was harder academically for her. Behaviour wise, we saw a change in her, when she started going to mainstream school.

MG: And I mean, Wanda talked about that idea of finding, you know, her home and finding her community in the school that she's attending now, what is that like for her?

RD: And she's a completely different child.

MG: How so?

RD: She did a complete 360 with confidence. She became more confident. She became more outgoing. Academic wise she started doing a lot better and being in that immersive culture 100 percent of the time, she started learning more sign language so her language skills expanded exponentially.

MG: You've hinted at this a little bit, Wanda, but how would a course like this have helped you if this were being offered when you were in high school?

WB: I honestly think that if I would have had it, I think it would have made me less ashamed of being deaf. I used to always hide my hearing aids behind my hair, and I would just kind of hide away. I think that it would have made it OK to be deaf. It would have been OK to, you know, have that ownership of being deaf. That you're part of a shared culture and a shared community and a shared language. And to have that and to have that recognised by your peers, I think makes a huge difference. And to have some place that you can go where that language is 100 percent accessible. I can remember being in my first few ASL classes. I was so thrilled. I took my hearing aids off and I put them aside and I was like on the same level playing field as everyone else in that class. And it was like two or three classes in that I literally broke down crying in class just because I was like, oh my God, this is what I've been looking for, for so long. And that's a huge impact. And I really I'm so excited that Renata's child is able to have that experience now. And as she said, it's such a confidence builder.

MG: Where do you think that shame came from? Why was it a move that you would take where you would, as you said, you'd hide your hearing aids?

WB: I think it comes from the idea and the concept that deafness or being hard of hearing is something that's broken, that needs to be fixed. And when you're wearing these hearing aids and you're trying your best to fit in and trying to be like everybody else, when you're not like everybody else, you need those extra things. You have to, you know, find ways to make things accessible. And, you know, I mean, being a child, being a teenager at the best of times is challenging. But can you imagine being in a group of kids and somebody says something and you hear something else? You assume that they said something else and you say something completely off topic and everybody laughs. And, you know, it's just a passing thing for them. But for you, it's hurtful and it's scary. And so it's something that you don't necessarily want to experience. And so you hide away. And I mean, I'm not saying all deaf and hard of hearing kids do that, some go the complete opposite. Right. And will take control of a lot of conversations just because if they have more control of the conversation, they get to decide what's being said. So you'll see a broad range of how kids will react to it. But for me, it was a scary thing. And you don't want people treating you differently, treating you like you're broken, but you don't want to be in that situation at the same time.

MG: There are some schools that are already offering ASL. Betty McPhee is a teacher in Toronto who has taught ASL to hearing students for many years now. And she says that students learn a basic level of communicating, but more than that as well. And she does see an interest in this growing.

BETTY MCPHEE: I think the reasons why hearing students want to learn ASL, I think they think it's a cool language, you know, they see people moving their hands around and they think it will be different until they find out that it's hard work. And then they begin to learn that it is a true language, just like French or Spanish, that it is a language in its own right. And most importantly, they learn about deaf culture. And it's very, [pause] sobering, in a sense, to learn about the oppression that deaf students and people in the deaf community have faced and that it isn't over, deaf people still experience that. So they look at how they think about the deaf community. And I think that throughout the course, their perceptions of the deaf community change. They learn that deaf people can do anything, just like hearing people can do anything except hear.

MG: I'll ask you both about this, Wanda first. How important is it for hearing students to understand deaf culture, given what you were just talking about?

WB: I think it's going to be not just in the short term, youth are going to learn about deaf culture and the language and learn about, you know, the challenges and the barriers that are out there and get to learn that there is this culture and this language that's all intertwined. But I think long term, it's going to be really great for the kids because they're all going to grow up, they're going to have jobs, they're going to get into professions out in the community. And I think that once we have more signers out there... Now, obviously not everybody is going to be like super proficient, they're not going to be like native signers once they take a course. But you're going to see people able to have those basic conversations. If you go into a store and somebody who works there can sign. Great. You can ask them a question, some basic, basic things. If you go into the doctor's office, you might have some kids that are proficient enough that they can, you know, become a physician that's able to sign with their patients. But they will also have that knowledge that because the language is so different from English, they'll be more respectful of the deaf community as they come in, as patients and as customers. And they'll understand if an interpreter is needed and the value of those interpreters. So because right now we see so much advocacy for deaf and hard of hearing who are requesting interpreters even to go to the hospital for a surgery. Some hospitals are reluctant to provide the interpreters. So deaf patients are having to advocate for their rights at the same time that they're, you know, requiring surgery. They're going through some medical emergency. Can you imagine having to, you know, having to advocate for an interpreter while you're going through this? So I think that the more people out there that are aware of accessibility issues of what they can do to respect the community and deaf people, I think that that's going to open up a lot of doors for the community in the long term.

MG: What about for you, Renata? What do you see as the benefit of this?

RD: I think what Wanda was saying too, accessibility is a huge, huge factor. Just having everybody on kind of a level playing field with those basic conversations. Relating to my daughter, stuff like going to the library and signing, you know, where this book? Things like extracurricular activities, signing up for like a soccer club, signing up for, like karate club. If there was more people that was exposed to the language, it wouldn't be such a reluctance. Because, well, I don't know the language, so a lot of people who don't know ASL are very scared to interact with kids that do know ASL because they're afraid that something will go wrong or they'll say the wrong thing or they won't provide their needs. So I think accessibility is a huge, huge benefit.

MG: Are there opportunities that exist now for your daughter's friends and family to learn to sign?

RD: I don't think as much right now because it's something that, you know, we would have to seek out and source for ourselves. Right. But if it was introduced in the schools and there's a foundation for it there, then it's not something that they would have to seek out much later in life because they have a foundation for it.

MG: You could imagine, Wanda, that I mean, this is a conversation about what's happening in Ontario, but that there are people across the country who would like to see this spread across the country. Are there other jurisdictions that are considering this? And is something like this easy to scale up, in a way?

WB: Yes, I know that there are at least a couple other provinces that are looking to implement this, we've had some agencies contact us from Alberta, for example. They're hoping to set something up and we put them in contact with the Ministry of Education. And I think that now that we have this official curriculum set up, I mean, it won't be such a huge undertaking for another province to take that curriculum, modify it for their province. But I mean, that framework is there. And it's going to I think that implementing across Canada, it's going to be huge. I mean, not just for Ontario kids, but, you know, across Canada is going to be a great thing.

MG: Are there the teachers there, qualified to be able to teach ASL and LSQ.

WB: If that is going to be the challenge, obviously we have only so many ASL and LSQ instructors out there right now, and for those who are qualified to teach at high schools is another matter. So we are going to have to build capacity in that regard. We're really hoping to see that from the ministry and we're hoping that they will take this opportunity to build capacity by providing official training for these ASL and LSQ teachers. We need something in place so that we can get these people trained and ready and out to schools, because I believe there is going to be an explosion of demand for these classes.

MG: You said something earlier, which I think is really interesting, and that's that in the midst of this pandemic, we see news conferences happening every single day with politicians across various jurisdictions talking about the reality of the situation that we find ourselves in. And always standing next to them is somebody who is interpreting through ASL or LSQ. What has that visibility done in terms of how society understands the importance of equitable communication, if I can put it that way?

WB: Yes, that was huge, I mean, back when everything first started and we were advocating to get those interpreters on those news broadcasts because up until now it hasn't really been something that's been done or been done, you know, in mainstream in Ontario and Canada for a while now. So to see that, the deaf community was just so thrilled, because as much as we have captioning available. And especially for live broadcast captioning is far from perfect. And as we know, ASL and LSQ are very different from their spoken language counterparts, English and French. So those who rely on those as their main language, having that access to this critical information in real time, it's such an impact. And now we've got these ASL and LSQ interpreters; they're kind of becoming rock stars in their own homes. They're now plastered across television. So I think it's been a great asset for the deaf community to see their languages up on television and not just kind of pushed aside. It's brought more recognition and more appreciation and respect for the deaf community, for all the signers. So I think that we'd like to see that continue, not just for covid, but for other things as well.

MG: Renata, what's it meant for you and for your family to see that?

RD: I was going to jump in with that. The first time we were watching the news, Mila was, my daughter, was there. And when the signers and the ASL interpreters were there, she had never seen that before because it wasn't very prevalent. And the look on her face and the realisation that, wow, other people are like me and they can sign and it just... You could see the wheels turning in her head like this is accessible to me. People know my language from a child's point of view. Right.

MG: That's really powerful.

RD: Yeah. Like, if she was just amazed and she sat down the first time Justin Trudeau did a conference and the signers were there, she sat the whole time and she just, she watched it intently, whether or not she understood everything that they were saying, but the fact that accessibility information was there for her.

MG: So given that, what would you say to those high school students? I mean, they can choose between a number of different languages as they try to pick their courses. They might take French, they might take Spanish, they might take Mandarin, or they might take sign language as taught in ASL or LSQ. What would you say to those students?

RD: I would say I wish that was available to me when I was your age, because that's something that's so accessible to other people and I mean many languages. Right. But it's such a global language that you can communicate. And it's just at the end of the day, you're just communicating with people. Right.

MG: And the more people you can communicate with, the better.

RD: The better. Yeah.

MG: It's really great to talk to you both about this. This is really exciting and interesting news. Thank you both.

RD: Oh, you're welcome.

WB: Thanks so much for having me, Matt.

MG: Gloria, thank you very much for your work in this conversation as well.

MG: Take care. Bye bye.

RD: Bye.

WB: Bye.

MG: Renata Davies is the mother of a deaf child. Wanda Blackett is a resource development coordinator with Silent Voice Canada and Gloria Brifoglio interpreted my questions for Wanda.

MG: Wanda has actually helped us make a short sign language tutorial. You can find a video teaching you some key phrases on The Current's Facebook page, as well as on our Twitter feed @TheCurrentCBC and on the website, go to CBC.ca/thecurrent.

MG: This is The Current on CBC Radio one. My name is Matt Galloway. For most of us, the road ahead when it comes to the covid vaccine is pretty straightforward. When it's offered to people in your age group or risk profile, off you go to get your shot. For pregnant women, though, that decision is more complicated. The vaccines are not officially approved for people who are pregnant because there haven't been the clinical trials yet. But health care providers are still recommending that women have the choice to get vaccinated, saying pregnant people are high risk. And all of the evidence thus far shows the vaccine is safe and effective. In the days ahead on The Current, CBC producer Shannon Higgins, who is pregnant herself, takes us inside that decision and goes to the experts to find out what we already know and what we don't know about the science.

VANESSA POLIQUIN: My name is Vanessa Poliquin and I'm an obstetrician gynaecologist at Health Sciences Hospital in Winnipeg, Manitoba, and I am co-chair for the Infectious Diseases Committee of the Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of Canada. We have a history of using vaccination, certain vaccinations as part of our routine prenatal care. So there are certainly vaccines that we avoid during pregnancy and those are vaccines that contain live virus which the covid vaccines are not. But there are non live vaccines, including the whooping cough vaccine and the influenza vaccine that are not only safe to use in pregnancy, but they're actually part of our routine prenatal care. And in those cases, they provide protection for the mother and also for the infant. And so I want to just paint a picture of the fact that this is not the first vaccine that we're offering in pregnancy. There have been millions of doses of the vaccine that have been administered throughout the world, and thousands of those have likely been administered to pregnant women. And so now what we're relying on is post marketing, surveillance, which is very active, especially in Europe and in the United States. And from that vast post marketing, surveillance, we have no signals of ill effect that are emerging for pregnant women. And I think it's worthwhile stepping back and looking at a number of over-the-counter medicines that we use in pregnancy, that over time we have understood are safe in pregnancy. For the vast majority the clinical studies for those medicines also didn't include pregnant women. So, you know, when we think of Tylenol or Gravol, these are medicines that we've come to understand are safe in pregnancy, but that has all relied on post marketing, surveillance for the most part. And so well, as an obstetrician, I continue to be shocked at how pregnant women are excluded from clinical trials. I also know that post marketing surveillance is very powerful to help us to detect red flags.

MG: Shannon Higgins documentary Expecting a Shot is coming up in the days ahead on The Current.

MG: Well, coming up after your regional update:

CHRISTIAN SMITH: I witnessed hundreds of examples of her meeting strangers and their jaw would drop or people just burst out crying with some recognition because she seems to have the ability to read somebody without them even talking.

MG: He believes in the power of science and the power of extrasensory perception too. Christian Smith on his mother's life as Canada's most famous psychic. That story, coming up in 90 seconds. I'm Matt Galloway and this is The Current on CBC Radio One. Stay with us.

[Music: upbeat music]

Dr. Christian Smith on his mother, famous psychic Geraldine Smith

Guest: Christian Smith

MG: Hello, I'm Matt Galloway, you're listening to The Current.

VOICE: Are you Mackenzie King?

GERALDINE SMITH: That is correct.

MG: That was a seance held at Laurier House in 1977 by the CBC's Sunday Morning. Laurier House is where the late Canadian prime minister and spiritualist William Lyon Mackenzie King lived for decades, and it seems they managed to get a hold of him in the afterlife.

VOICE: Would you have any advice for Mr. Trudeau about Quebec?

GS: If it were me in office at this time. I would highly recommend that he speak with peaceful words. That he go to all of the officials. I do not see separation.

MG: And of course, Quebec never did separate from the rest of Canada. That was Geraldine Smith leading the seance during the 1970s and 80s. Geraldine Smith was Canada's most well-known psychic. Beyond that seance on CBC Radio, her appearances at venues like Massey Hall in Toronto drew thousands of people. Her son, Christian, watched his mother demonstrate what he believed were abilities that were supernatural. Today, Christian Smith is a molecular biologist who researches brain tumours. He also does research into psychic phenomena. And his new book is called The Scientist and the Psychic: A Son's Exploration of His Mother's Gift.

MG: Christian Smith. Good morning.

CHRISTIAN SMITH: Good morning. And thank you for having me, Matt.

MG: Thanks for being here. What was going on? And I mean, the fact that CBC sponsored it is perhaps a bit of a side note there. But in this seance, at the home of William Lyon Mackenzie King, what was going on there?

CS: Well, it was fascinating because all of the lights and cameras and microphones were all pointed at my mom, who was, you know, fairly young. She's only 27 years old but she had made a mark for herself as a medium and a psychic. And so they wanted to find out if she had any insights into what was going on with the political climate at the time. And as you heard, she predicted no separation, but there would be some battles. And it was so interesting for me to go back and look with a retrospective lens and see those battles that she was or King. If you believe that it was King speaking through her, foretold.

MG: Cue outrage within the House of Commons. I mean, this turns into a thing. Why was the opposition not happy with what was going on?

CS: I when I heard that this seance came to the floor of the House of Commons in a debate form, whether they wanted... It sounded tongue in cheek when I was listening to it after the fact. But I wonder if it actually was serious. So conservative members didn't want the first Trudeau to, who was in power at the time, to get guidance from a deceased former Liberal prime minister. So it seemed a little bit comical to listen to, but they were probably quite serious.

MG: I'm sure they were.

CS: The CBC didn't... Yeah, the CBC didn't end up having another sentence after that.

MG: At least not yet.

CS: No.

MG: Tell me about your mom. How did she learn that she had what she believed were these sort of supernatural abilities?

CS: Yeah, it started pretty close to when she was pregnant with me. At 19, she got married at 16 and she moved into a house that, you know, we would call haunted now. And she started to see apparitions. She had dreams that would come true within weeks. And it actually scared her. She had no idea what was going on. If you think back to that time, you know, E.S.P, psychic abilities weren't, you know, well known or well discussed or even well tolerated. So she was very afraid and, you know, it pushed her to the edge. She almost committed suicide. And it was that pivotal moment when she got help. And a psychiatrist said, you know what, this might be E.S.P. And from then on, that's... The rest sort of unfolded for her when she got that support.

MG: I mean, we throw these terms around ESP or somebody is a psychic. How do you define it? I mean, what are we actually speaking about?

CS: So it's the ability to see another person's, whether you're using it doesn't matter... The tools don't matter is what I've kind of learnt, whether it be a crystal ball or in my mom's case, she uses the aura, which is she sees a sort of a colour rainbow surrounding the person or psychometry. And this is where she gets the most information. So let's say you were to give her your watch or your ring that you've had for a couple of years. She can start to get precisely accurate impressions from your past, your present and your future or possible futures. And from that, she was sort of categorised between 90 and 95 percent accuracy, which was quite phenomenal. And so she was able to offer a money back guarantee. And that's where her fame sort of mushroomed, because that's unheard of even today. So can you imagine and she always said if you know, if you ever see a professional psychic, you know, they don't guarantee their work, then they're not worth your time.

MG: Do you believe your mom has psychic abilities?

CS: 100 percent. And in fact, she's always said that everybody is psychic. So I've also been pursuing that in a scientific way. But I've witnessed, you know, hundreds of examples of her meeting strangers. And basically their jaw would drop or in one case, people just burst out crying with some recognition because she seems to have the ability to read somebody without them even talking and giving details of their past and present. And you can't fool someone with their own past and present. The future, you might be able to get by, but when you are giving the private details in the past and present. You can't escape that scrutiny.

MG: Tell me more about this, why would you believe that she has these abilities? I mean, we'll talk further about the work that you've done and the details in the book and investigating this. But just as a son, why would you believe that your mother has these abilities?

CS: I think it's just witnessing it myself and not her on me, but with strangers, being there and growing up in that environment. And she had always said that we have these abilities if you nurture them. And because I grew up in that environment, I would have these intuitive flashes myself. I don't consider myself psychic in the same degree that she is. She would... I call her kind of the savant of the psychic world. She can read other people. But for your own gut impressions, if you follow them, these intuitive flashes happen more and more. And when she says everyone is psychic, that's what I register as, what she means for me.

MG: So what do you mean, those intuitive flashes? I mean, you tell the story of your dog breaking it's leg, for example.

CS: Yeah, like so it was.... I wasn't asleep. It wasn't a dream, but it was that sort of that interface where you're sort of dozing off. And I had this sudden like it was almost like I was recalling something from the past. It was like a memory, but it hadn't happened yet. And it was so real. And we were due to go on a trip to New York and we were going to let someone babysit the dog. And I said, no, we can't because I can just see someone's going to roll over and snap her leg, she's a pretty brittle dog. She's an Italian greyhound. So we went anyway, I didn't listen to that. And, you know, two days into our trip, we got the phone call that she had jumped and broken her right front leg. So if I had listened, maybe I could have altered history. But it taught me a lesson, too. Even though you vocalise it, you've got to do something about it as well.

MG: But you can imagine people are saying one was a dream and then the dog broke its leg. I mean, there's no connection between the two.

CS: No, I mean, people that's one of the valves to intuition, of people say it's just a coincidence or it's just your imagination. Those are the kinds of things as if it's something bad. And so we stop listening to that voice. So I never learnt that. My mom always said, you know, trust your inner voice. And I've, you know, found many, many people that have been doing that as well. And it works. I mean, intuition, you know, brings in the streams from all of your senses. And that's why she coin's ESP or what was called extrasensory perception as extended sensory perception. She believes it's all of our senses working together that give her that information.

MG: What was it like? And you talk about how... that's the question that you're asked the most, what it's like to grow up with a psychic mom. What was that like?

CS: It was like a double edged sword. So, I mean, when I was with her, it was great because I was like her shadow, the fly on the wall. And I felt like a celebrity son when I wasn't with her, like at school, especially when I was in a young age when she was just making her splash in the newspapers and on radio. She became a bit of a celebrity. But it was a field that was, you know, people were very critical of. So kids on the schoolyard must have heard their parents talk about it or teachers and they called her a witch. And so I had a few interactions on the playground where I'd had to run away to get out of that tormenting situation.

MG: You've done research into the paranormal and trying to answer some of the questions that you had around this. What were the questions that were lurking in your mind about this?

CS: So two main themes. It was, do I believe, absolutely everything about the paranormal or is something's true and something's not so I know for my own experience and from the research about my mother's psychic abilities. But she also believes in the afterlife, which is something from my sceptical eye I can never really believe in. So the seance like with CBC at Mackenzie House, is that her or is it King or is she channelling some psychic stream of information? So it tested me and my sceptical limits as far as the afterlife. So a lot of my research went into seeing, you know, what areas could I prove and what areas had the most evidence with related to the afterlife, but also with her psychic abilities, which was much easier because I had like a time capsule worth of information, whether it be newspaper articles, audio, video of predictions she made back in the 70s and 80s that I could now look back at and see if they were accurate or not, especially when she started doing criminal investigations.

MG: In addition to being a skeptic of general, you know, lines of thought. You're also a scientist. And so you must know how, if you're talking about psychic abilities, in particular, how high and how rigorous that the bar for proof is. Is there any research that would say that this meets that bar of proof?

CS: It wouldn't because of the way scientific studies are done. So the things you have to do is control the variables, repeat it, and then have obviously meaningful results. So what would need to happen is you'd have to have like at least ten of my mother's, ten different people with that same kind of ability, do the same kind of psychic experiment and then be able to prove it from that. And that's when you're dealing with individuals, it becomes almost impossible to set up an experiment to control for all those things. So there hasn't been anything reported in the literature, plus there's no funding for it. So the only evidence that's out there now are labs that are funded privately through philanthropic, such as the one in Charlottetown. It's called the Department of Perceptual Studies. They look into near-death experiences, psychic phenomena, reincarnation specifically from children who remember past lives. Which was quite fascinating to me because here you have a 16 to 18 month old child talking about adult things. It was almost like they were 10 years older than they actually were. To hear the recordings and to hear the reports of what they said is quite, quite interesting.

MG: But how do you square that? I mean, you're a scientist. You work in the research of paediatric brain tumours.

CS: That's true. So my mom sort of back then coined it all comes back to the mind. And so I wanted to look to see some of the science behind that. And that's what a lot of the little snippets in the book go into. So is there a way to map imaging in the brain? So when a psychic or a medium, let's say, is under a trance, can you see areas of the brain that light up consistently from one medium to the next? And so we're very limited right now with the technology. And I think the next push.... so, you have MRI, but you can also do functional MRI, which means you can image someone's brain while they're doing things, physically in the process. So this would be like say doing a reading. So I think in the future, we're right on the cusp to actually having the ability to measure images of the brain when a psychic is doing a reading or what other kind of acts that they're doing. So it's actually very exciting to me because I think we're going to start to see that proof that you alluded to just now.

MG: But right now, do you feel any dissonance between the proof that's demanded of you in your day job as a scientist and what you believe as the son of a psychic?

CS: I think the bar needs to be high. And whenever you have anything exceptionally...claims, you need to be able to back it up. So I don't think there's any problem with that level of scrutiny. It's just a matter of proving it. So if someone has the ability to prove it, let's say if I were to get some psychics together and image them and we can then prove it through data, then that moves forward. But you also have to think of it on a humanity level. So what can you do? And if you needed a psychic, maybe you could be your own best psychic and use that ability for yourself. That was sort of the mantra of my mother. And I think that's what's more important. If we don't need to go to a psychic, if these intuitive abilities exist, maybe we should start exploring how to use them in our own lives. So, you know, things would be a lot easier for us.

MG: When you speak with other scientists and you tell them that your mother was a psychic, and you're researching psychic phenomena. How do they respond?

CS: It's funny you should say that, like, I was quite shy when I was... I was very secretive. People would ask what your parents do, and I just sort of would be quiet, just because of that, you know, worry about that sceptical scrutiny that they would have. Until when I started writing the book five years ago, that's when I started sharing. And I was delightfully surprised. I mean, there were a few, maybe 30, 40 percent that would have this silent, stony face and then walk away. But then there was the other 60 percent that were just like effusive. They would start talking about their own experiences or their own family experience, whether it be from ghosts or from their own intuitive flashes as well. So it was actually kind of... I wish I had done something earlier and talked about it earlier because all of these, you know, Ph.D. and medical doctors that you would think would be sceptical automatically, that wasn't the case.

MG: One of the reasons why people might be alarmed, if I can put it that way, at this line of thought, is that I mean, this is not just amusing to some people, but it's also really dangerous. There's real concern that people aren't believing in science when it comes to things like vaccinations or climate change or the pandemic that we're in right now. And they would say that what you're talking about can undermine that belief. What would you say to people who say that what you're doing and the line of thought that you have in this, could undermine belief in science, in measurable science, in things that can be proven?

CS: Well, I don't think we should shy away from anything controversial because, I mean, if you think back through the history of time, there's always been the stand alone people that say like, for example, Alexander Fleming, when he first discovered penicillin, that was just an anecdote. So, yes, these are anecdotal evidence of psychic abilities. But you have to start somewhere and you have to ask the questions for any answers to eventually become. So I think scientists in general just need to hold on to that curiosity. And that's what's the most exciting to convey to the public, is that sense of excitement and curiosity and wonder in our natural world and where we fit into it. So I think from that perspective, it communicates to the world that we don't know all the answers. And that's the point. We're asking them one by one and ticking off the criteria. If I believe it, does someone else believe it? And can we back it up? And that's just how science works. It's through iteration. And that's why, you know, as you mentioned, in the pandemic, people were so, you know, resisting masks because we were first told that they didn't work and then they did work. And that's all because that's the natural way science works. We learn things as we go.

MG: And you see a parallel here?

CS: I do. I think these are just, you know, questions that need to be asked. And these experiences, I mean, we don't have anything to lose by asking these questions, which have to be very careful nowadays. I had the luxury of interrogating my mother's work from the 70s and 80s when she couldn't look on the Internet for answers. Right. Nowadays with psychics, you really need to be careful with who you're dealing with and the information you give up front so you don't, you know, a lot of scam artists, et cetera, out there. So that's where I think a lot of the scepticism and danger lies that you, that you just mentioned is because there are always going to be people that take advantage of others. And that's... especially when you're dealing with mediums and the afterlife, because people are hurting and they.... especially with the pandemic, more people are dying. They feel like there's these loose threads. So they want to have some sort of closure and many people will turn to psychics for that. So you just need to make sure you've got the right person.

MG: A few years ago, the late Canadian magician, The Amazing Randi, was on CBC and The Amazing Randi was asked why he believes people believe in psychics. Take a listen to what The Amazing Randi said.

THE AMAZING RANDI: I often hear this statement, even psychologists have told me and I know a great number of psychologists in many different languages around the world by now, they've often said, well, this is something that they want to believe. And I always correct them on that statement. It's something they need to believe because that fulfils their picture of how they expect the universe to actually operate. They want to believe there are supernatural powers because they're not satisfied with a mundane world that does not have anything of the supernatural in it.

MG: What do you make of what he's saying there?

CS: I believe he's right and a lot of cases. But I do believe that there are people with these legitimate gifts. And the thing the sceptics like, The Amazing Randi, they have this very narrow vision of what a psychic is. So you go in, you see someone, they're cold reading you, they're taking advantage of your body language to guide you through a reading. So you have a certain population that we don't hear about. And that's kind of what I went into this book. My mom offered a money back guarantee. She did thousands of readings on the radio and TV where that cold reading technique had no effect. And then they come to the argument that they're all about the money. But then there's people like my mom who ended up giving up her career to go and do criminal investigations with no pay. So I think you really need to think about the individuals that are doing it, especially today. And I believe 100 percent that The Amazing Randi is right in a lot of ways.

MG: But there are a lot of people, as you say, who are just about the money. And I mean, you talked about the money back guarantee. But how do you? Aside from somebody offering you the money back guarantee, how do you go and separate the scam artist, the grifter who, you know, pretends that they have some sort of psychic ability and somebody who you believe actually has those talents?

CS: It's quite easy, actually. So, first of all, make sure you don't give more than just... You can even give them a fake name if you're meeting. So they'd have no information on you ahead of time. But the most important thing is, is ask them to talk about your past and present first, because again, you can't be conned into details about your past because you only know that information. So any psychic worth their salt will start with the past, and if you just don't say anything and don't, you know, depending on most of them are now telephone interviews. So if you don't say anything, you can't give them any feedback that they can use to fraudulently find information.

MG: Even through Google and what have you?

CS: Exactly, yeah, that's what I was... I mean, in my investigations, that's what I was always worried about. When I talk because they have your email, with one email, they can figure a treasure trove of information on you.

MG: You mentioned the criminal investigations. Tell me about the work that your mom did into the investigation of the crimes of Jeffrey MacDonald. He was a murderer. And your mother was brought in, in some ways into this investigation.

CS: That's right, so she originally was here in Toronto and had a few cases here and wanted to join the police force, but they were pretty sceptical of her then. And so they said if she wanted to be in the police, she'd have to join the academy. So that didn't work for her. So she ended up going to California, which she thought would be a little bit more open minded. And she worked on two cases there. One was the freeway murders and the other was on Jeffrey MacDonald's defence team. So she has always believed he has been innocent even to this day. And everyone else, on the other hand, believes he's 100 percent guilty. So I really sort of got obsessed with that case myself, thinking I could solve it. And obviously that was the wrong approach because when I met him, I was in Terminal Island. I saw her hug him and my child brain said, oh, is this her new boyfriend? I didn't realise I was in a prison meeting a convicted murderer. So I wondered if maybe she believed him because of that objectivity being compromised. But that doesn't explain why she still believes he's innocent today. And just last fall, there was a show on Fx about the whole case again, they resurfaced with wilderness of error. And basically now he would never have been convicted with the evidence they've got. But that doesn't comment on his innocence.

MG: Has she done any other work with... I mean, you mentioned that other case, but beyond that, is there other work that she's done? You could imagine if somebody were to believe that she had these powers, that she would be in high demand?

CS: Yeah, there was at least five or six cases that I went through in the book, mainly missing persons and especially children. She really felt that psychics could have a role in that. And when I looked into the police's use of psychics, they obviously don't admit to using them. But you really need to find well-established psychics for that. And I would only prescribe using a psychic in a cold case when there's no other options to be found because you can't really figure out how to categorise that kind of evidence when it comes from a psychic.

MG: In some ways, I mean, what The Amazing Randi was talking about is that idea that we want to believe. What did you learn over the course of researching this book and that desire to believe?

CS: Well, it was interesting because I wanted to, you know, look back at all of her impressions and perceptions that she made publicly in the newspapers. So, like you said, if people want to believe, they tend to cherry pick what they present. And so if I were to go into a reading and I'd hear three things that were 100 percent right, I would say, oh, wow, that's amazing. But what about the other 50 things that were said? Were they right? So that's that cognitive dissonance where you kind of, sort of latch on to those things that were right and you just sort of explain away the things that were wrong, so you want a person and yourself to know what's right. And I think that's where the power of going through the past and present first is you're only going to hear things that you know about and then you can talk about paths to the future.

MG: And do you think in future, I mean, that her abilities, you hinted at this, but that her abilities will be not scientifically proven, but in some ways that the rigour that is applied will come true?

CS: One hundred percent, I think it's just a matter of developing the tools and obviously the machines to measure it and the conditions to be refined, but it all starts somewhere. And I'm excited that it's an exciting field to be in for a lot of people. And if the funding is there, we can, you know, start gradually proving one aspect or the other. And I think it's... the main thing that I found that was really interesting to me was the scope of human potential. Like if my mom is right and everyone has these abilities, what can we do to bring them forward? And that part of it is exciting from the point of the brain. Like we have all this potential that just needs to be unlocked. And that's a sort of field for more exploration, I think.

MG: Just finally, I mean, having interrogated your mother's life's work and legacy, what's your relationship like with her now?

CS: We were really close when I was young, but then when I got into that terrible adolescent age and teenage years, our relationship fractured. The criminal investigations had a real toll on her. And so she sort of went into some addictions and we parted ways. But it's now, you know, just working through the book together for five years. It's repaired our relationship. And I understand her and the things that happened when I was younger. So it's really drawn us closer together.

MG: Christian, it's great to talk to you about this. Thank you very much.

CS: Thank you very much, Matt.

MG: Christian Smith is a molecular biologist. His new book is The Scientist and the Psychic A Son's Exploration of his Mother's Gift.

MG: Well, that is The Current for this Tuesday. Coming up next on CBC Radio One, it's Q. William Shatner is turning 90. I find that hard to believe. His new film, I'm sure it's correct, but it's hard to believe that William Shatner is 90 years old. His new film is called Senior Moment, a romantic comedy looking at finding love in your later years. Captain Kirk's conversation with Tom Power coming up in just a few moments on CBC Radio One.

MG: I'm Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening to The Current. Take care. And we'll talk to you tomorrow.

[Music: Theme]

Back To Top »

Provide Transcript Feedback

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

Tuesday, April 6, 2021 Full Transcript

More Stories Like This