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The Current Transcript for April 22, 2021

Host: Matt Galloway

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

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They shoot every day and tomorrow you always have to be serious. It doesn't matter if you're expecting for escalation or you do not, no matter what will happen [unintelligible]. We will stand here to the end.

MATT GALLOWAY: Tension is mounting in Ukraine, where Russian forces are gathered on the border. The Ukrainian leader is promising to stand his ground. And Vladimir Putin is warning the West not to cross a red line in 30 minutes. We head there to hear what it would take to avert a conflict and whether the Russian leader is serious or just calling Joe Biden's bluff. Also this morning.

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You know, to me, grief is a very private thing and you carry on within you. And so rightly or wrongly, that's what I've done. And it has not been good for me to do that.

MG: Bob Wells is not an actor, but he finds himself one of the stars of a film nominated for several of this weekend's Academy Awards. Nomadland follows real life American nomads like Bob who live on the road travelling constantly. He's here in an hour to talk about living in a van, working with the brilliant actor Frances McDormand and what he does not miss about a fixed address. We'll start, though, with our own road trip and the final stop in our cross-country tour. Hello, beautiful British Columbia. And good morning. I'm Matt Galloway. And this is The Current.

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B.C. orchards, wineries 'just hoping for the best' as another COVID summer approaches

Guests: Sukhdeep Brar, Christine Coletta

MG: Well, this week, it's the last stop in what has been an epic virtual road trip across this country. Our series, Canada's Road Ahead. And to cap it off, we are driving through the rolling hills of the Okanogan Valley in British Columbia. If we were actually driving along the road to our left, we would see the sparkling water of Okanogan Lake, which runs from Vernin in the north, down through Kelowna, and then right to a place called Summerland, which is where we will make our first stop at the Okanogan Crush Pad Winery. The co-owner of the winery, Christine Coletta, here to show us around.

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CHRISTINE COLETTA: Here we are in the vineyard, this is Switchback Vineyard. It was planted in 2006 and we're overlooking Okanogan Lake and across from us is the amount of bench and you can see all the way along that bench, vineyards planted. The wine industry has really sort of taken over. When my husband and I bought this piece of property, it was an old orchard and we just thought it was so beautiful, what we came to learn quite quickly that it had the worst apples, the worst apricots, the worst of everything on it. So we actually pulled out everything and planted it all with pinot gris. And the reason for that was that I liked pinot gris and that was about as intelligent as the decision was. We've done a lot of work in this vineyard since and in 2011 we started organic farming. And so now this vineyard is fully certified and producing really beautiful fruit.

She heads just south of the winery on the south side of Summerland, but 10 minutes away, you will find Sukhdeep Brar tending to his fruit orchards.

Speaker 2: So we're going to come in here and there is some of this growth and hear and see all these flowers that are here. We don't want that much fruit, so we're going to take that up there. So my name's Sukhdeep Brar. We're in Summerland, B.C. here on our our own orchard, which is mostly cherries and peaches. We have about 135 acres now in Summerland consisting of cherries, peaches, apples, pears. So right now, it's spring to spring start up, basically like we're getting our irrigation going where planting more trees. So right now, we're basically doing. Start at 6:00 in the morning, come home at eight kind of deal. Yeah, the reason we brought the bees in for pollination, though, so they help get our fruit set on the trees, need some extra help because there's so many blossoms out there. And so we use them just for extra pollination, extra help, perfect pollination. The bees are buzzing, the flowers are out. And it's the magic of life, I guess.

MG: We head up from the orchards. A few minutes down the road, we pull into a big gravel parking lot, big roadside store, blue painted building and inside pine shelves lined with all sorts of jams and sauces. And this is where the fruits of the Okanagan end up being turned into something else.

SOUNDCLIP

I'm the general manager at Summerlands Suites and sleeping giant Fruit Winry, our company was started by my wife's grandfather in 1962. We're almost 60 years. When I started here, we had seven varieties of jam. We now make 25 different combinations. When we're producing it, we we cook it, we fill it. We have an 11 filling machine goes through a capping machine. Because is inverted to sterilise the inside of the lid, goes through a cooling line and then comes back in and is automatically labelled. Over the past year, we've experienced a lot of things that we thought we would never experience at a workplace here in the Okanogan. Before covid, we would see upwards of 50000 people coming through our store at our production facility for customers turned out to be very loyal. If they couldn't come in our shop to get the product they were doing, mail orders or online orders are asking, phoning, where can we get it? So it turned out that although the first three months were really tough because we didn't know which direction we were going. It turned out that we had a fairly good year, found new markets and new places to distribute our products thanks to the loyal customers that we had requesting our products in those areas.

MG: Many of the businesses here like Summerlands Suites might have hoped that by this spring, the pandemic would have eased up and things could be getting back to normal for the summer. But of course, Canada's third wave is changing all of that. Just this week, the B.C. government announced new restrictions on travel inside British Columbia, meaning people are supposed to stay close to home at least until the May long weekend. And there are still delays in getting temporary foreign workers to the region. Workers who are essentially the engine behind many of the farms in the Okanagan to talk about what the road ahead looks like now, I'm joined by two of the voices you heard just earlier. Sukhdeep Brar is with me from his fruit orchard. And Christine Coletta, the co-owner of the Orchid Okanogan Crush Pad Winery, is here as well. Good morning to you both.

CHRISTINE COLETTA: Good morning.

SUKHDEEP BRAR: Good morning.

MG: Christine. Go back, I mean, time seems to be moving either quickly or slowly, depending on where you happen to be, but go back to a year ago this time, you know, this spring or so and the initial impact of the pandemic on your winery, when you think what was happening a year ago, what stands out to you.

CHRISTINE COLETTA: A year ago, I think all of us were under the impression that if we just stayed home for two or three weeks, everything would be fine. So I think we quickly came to learn that that wasn't going to be the case and that this was going to be a really long process immediately for us. The restaurants that by 25 percent of all [unintellgilbe] wine were closed down and that had a major impact to all of the wineries in British Columbia. So we really had to work quickly to pivot and change, as Len said, and go to a direct to consumer model. And we also delayed opening until the third week of June.

MG: And so people would normally, when you say opening, people would normally be coming to the winery for tastings and for meals and all of that gets scrapped as well?

CHRISTINE COLETTA: Yes, typically we would most of us open in the beginning of April. And in most cases, we we stopped production and we stopped accepting visitors until the third week of June. We worked with our trade association, the wine growers, BC, and collectively all of the wineries came up with protocols for safety and health. We changed from a customer service model that had people standing in a tasting bar to actually have seated tastings. And that that proved to be a really amazing benefit for all of us, because people were more relaxed, they felt safe and just they really, really enjoyed the experience. So I think at the end of the day, collectively, I think our industry understands that that's the way forward for us.

MG: Sukhdeep in the orchards, what was the biggest impact for you of this pandemic?

SUKHDEEP BRAR: When it first came along last year, we were really worried, we were uncertain on where would we be selling our fruit? Would we be able to export fruit? Would we be able to truck it anywhere? And then slowly the realisation came is that we'd all sort itself out. But we had massive labour issues last year and it's actually continued right into this year already. Bringing in temporary foreign workers was halted for a month or so last year, and then it slowly started back up with big delays. It was hard to find local workers for us. We pleaded, we tried on Facebook. We put out ads. We had a few people come out and help us out for a few weeks. But it just we just couldn't ever really gain momentum and catch up again.

MG: How short-handed were you in terms of employment?

SUKHDEEP BRAR: We were about down half of what we normally have, local and temporary foreign workers.

MG: I mean, what did that mean for you? You were talking earlier, but, you know, the long day starting at 6:00 and you stagger home at eight. I mean, at harvest time when you need people there, what did that mean?

SUKHDEEP BRAR: It takes a toll on you. The the side of this whole pandemic that I don't think is talked enough about is the mental health stress. Me personally, as have two young children. Actually my second boy was born during the pandemic last year in May. And, you know, you want to be at home to help, but you're just so shorthanded that I have to put in those long hours.

MG: What about for you, Christine, in terms of the growing season at the Vineyard, how was that impacted by covid?

CHRISTINE COLETTA: We have the same labour issues are temporary. Foreign workers were delayed by two months and we had a similar situation where we were never really caught up. And that impacts you at harvest time, which for us is in the fall. The industry had a fairly decent grape harvest this year. Mother Nature can be quite relentless and she was pretty cooperative this past year. So we were very lucky. But even with that, because there was some early spring damage, I think the crop was down about 20 percent. But people collectively were looking for. So we had the same issues and we also had labour issues in the winery with people not wanting to to work in the guest experience centre or in in the winery cellar itself.

MG: Those labour issues are likely to continue this year, given the fact that the pandemic continues to roar across many parts of this country. Amy Cohen is a volunteer with a group called Ramah Okanogan advocates for the rights of those temporary foreign workers. Take a listen to what she was thinking about when it comes to the worries that she has as we head into a second growing season under this pandemic,

SOUNDCLIP

Migrant agricultural workers and their allies are very worried about this coming season. There's still definitely fear of contracting covid. There's also fear that folks might not have the ability to take days off if they are feeling sick because they don't have access to. These were also incredibly worried that the isolation that this population faces in a normal year is going to just be more exacerbated because of covid. We worry that they'll be restricted onto farms like we saw last year without access to communities.

MG: So what do you make of those concerns, particularly around the health of the workers, but also the isolation that they might feel if if they are stuck on the farm and unable to get off the the workspace and go and interact with other members of the community?

SUKHDEEP BRAR: So for the health and safety aspect, we have strict covid protocols, our housing is all inspected before our workers arrive by public health to make sure that social distancing can occur in the workplace and in the housing, also with sanitiser and masks and gloves and all types of PPE, which was a lot harder to find last year. But this year it's it's much easier to get a hold of everything we need.

MG: Is your sense that you'll have enough workers for this season?

SUKHDEEP BRAR: Well, I'm already so far behind and short, because I think I calculated it's probably a six week delay of workers this year since the Caribbean and Mexico flights were cancelled. That means there's no commercial flights coming. So it's basically deja vu of last year where associations are getting together and chartering flights in for workers.

MG: What about for you, Christine? I mean, what are you doing on your vineyard to ensure that if the workers are able to get here, then they're safe?

CHRISTINE COLETTA: Yes, our workers have arrived. They arrived and they were quarantined in Vancouver for two weeks. They received their first vaccine there this year. What we did is over the winter, we built another house for them. And we have a house now in Summerland and a house in Oliver. What was happening last year was that they were commuting back and forth between the two properties and now when they move up to another property, they can stay there for three weeks and work. Everybody has their own bedroom and they're pretty excited. They're moving in today, as a matter of fact, for the first time,

MG: I mention those travel rules that have changed. And there are a lot of people who are wondering, I mean, they say that it's the May long weekend that they will go to. But whether they will be out of this even by then. Christine, what sort of wrench do those rules throw into your plans for the spring? And how do you- I mean, the word of the day, it seems like, is pivot. How do you pivot, given those concerns?

CHRISTINE COLETTA: Well, we were very cautious about setting an opening date, and we set one for May 8th. And we've now pushed that back to the May long weekend. And I'm hoping that we'll be able to open. But again, in the interim, we're pushing our direct to consumer business. The one piece that we haven't talked about yet is that the private retailers in British Columbia, the wine and liquor retailers, have had a boom year. It started last spring with people stockpiling concern that they were going to close liquor outlets. So what we did in our case was we've put a lot of the wine that we had earmarked for restaurants into private labels that were selling to private retail chains.

MG: What do you think the big lesson is that you've learnt over the course of this, Christine?

CHRISTINE COLETTA: To be calm.

MG: Easier said than done.

CHRISTINE COLETTA: I think the other thing is that I always looked at my employees and kind of assess their physical well-being and their physical, you know, health. And I've really learnt this past year that the mental health component of being an employer and supporting that is equally as important, if not more important.

MG: What about for you, Sukhdeep? You were talking about stress earlier. I mean, how are you how are you learning to perhaps work and live differently, given the stress of the moment?

SUKHDEEP BRAR: I think being a year into this now and not really knowing what's going to be coming up, we just have to take it day by day and that's how we're approaching it now. I know with Ontario closing their borders. That worries us a bit because during the summer, we use quite a lot of French Canadian backpackers that come to the valley for a vacation and also harvest cherries. And with those provinces closing their borders, we don't know how long, but I'm hoping that it's lifted before the summer harvest starts,

MG: you've had to press your dad into service, is this correct?

SUKHDEEP BRAR: Yeah, my dad, my uncle, all his little buddies came back and helped us get some pruning done. I think it was kind of enjoyable for them because the weather was nice.

MG: Let me just ask you both finally. I mean, we've been calling this series as we've been going across the country, candidates road ahead. What is the road ahead look like for fruit farming in the Okanagan, Sukhdeep?

SUKHDEEP BRAR: For us the road ahead is we have to realise and think that even if the pandemic is here, the trees don't understand the pandemic. They're going to keep growing. They're going to keep producing. We have to do the best we can to help them survive and get the fruit off and into the hand of the consumer. And that's what we do, is just push forward.

MG: And do you see I mean, farmers like yourself are facing the crush. I mean, you're right in it right now. Do you see a change in fruit farming because of what you're going through and what other farmers might be going through?

SUKHDEEP BRAR: There is more of a change of lots of replanting happening. There's lots of wine grapes going into the ground as well. A lot of apples are coming up because there's been some depressed prices for a few years. And on top of that, you covid and it just compounds the issues that Apple producers are having a little bit of it.

MG: You, Christine, I mean, what does that road ahead look like?

CHRISTINE COLETTA: The road ahead for the wine industry, I think looks very positive. I believe we're going to have a good summer, probably have tourists coming from Alberta and British Columbia and will deeply miss the rest of Canada. I think also people are beginning to understand that they have to support local products. And when they go into a liquor store or if they're in a restaurant, that they should be looking for a B.C. or Ontario or Quebec or Nova Scotia wine, I mean, look for the ground and B.C. label when you're when you're buying fruit. So rather than buying something from Chile or Washington, buy it locally. And I think that's something that all Canadians can do. And it will help our food manufacturing growers and the wineries sector as well.

MG: A glass of that pinot gris out in the sunshine sounds like a great idea, and I hope these conditions is such that people can get to your winery and and partake. Christine, thank you very much.

CHRISTINE COLETTA: Thank you for having me.

MG: Sukhdeep, it's great to talk to you. Good luck with the trees.

SUKHDEEP BRAR: Thank you.

MG: Sukdeep Brar is the owner of Brassed Our Orchards. Christine Coletta is the co-owner of the Okanogan Krush Pad Winery and Summerland, British Columbia. Our thanks to Dana Kelly from CBC Kelowna for her help with this edition of Canada's Road Ahead. And thanks to producers Ben Jamieson, Allison Maseman and Liz Hoath for helping us get on the road. Virtually, if you want to hear and see all 13 stops from our coast to coast to coast road trip that those three producers helped pull together, head to the website cbc.ca/thecurrent and click on the Canada's Road Ahead tab. Your CBC News is next. And then tensions between Russia and Ukraine are once again mounting, with leaders on both sides benefiting politically from the ongoing conflict in six minutes. How this ends and how each side stands to win political points. I'm Matt Galloway you're listening to The Current on CBC Radio One.

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Mounting tensions at the Russia-Ukraine border

Guests: Nina Khrushcheva, Michael Bociurkiw

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

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MG: Still to come, the film Nomad Land is a favourite for this weekend's Oscars, in 30 minutes, I'll speak with one of the real life nomads who inspired and stars in this film. But first, tensions once again mounting between Russia and Ukraine.

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MG: Seven years after the annexation of Crimea, there is again growing unrest between Russia and Ukraine. Right now, over 100000 Russian troops are gathering along the border between the two countries. Nightly shelling has gone on for weeks now. Mark MacKinnon is a senior international correspondent for the Globe and Mail. He's just back from the Ukrainian border and he is in London. Mark, good morning.

MARK MACKINNON: Good morning.

MG: You were on the border between Russia and Ukraine just last week. Tell me what you saw there.

MARK MACKINNON: Well, the part of the border that I was in is is relatively calm at the moment. I was with the Ukrainian Border Guard Service. But what was interesting, first of all, was that the trench works that they've dug in there. The border between Russia and Ukraine, of course, was was there was no border there during the Soviet era. And and for the last over the 1990s and the early 2000s, it was really just a very casual place. There was some official customs post, a few signs. Nowadays it's First World War trench work, wood walled ditches, places for tanks to be pulled into in a hurry. And the troops that I met there were obviously quite nervous. They know that just a few hours drive from the border, there's a, you know, a very large Russian army. They don't know what it's for yet.

MG: What does that tell you? I mean, given the fact that they're building these trenches with 100000 troops on the Russian side of things, what's the mood amongst those soldiers?

MARK MACKINNON: Well, I mean, one of the things that the Ukrainian Border Guard Service was very clear to point out to me is they feel like they are already at war. Hence the trench works. I mean, since 2014, we've had a Russian backed insurgency in the Donbass region and they feel like they're fighting the Russian army there. They don't believe that they are. These are separatists that they're battling. They think it's a camouflaged Russian military operation that they're dealing with. And so the part of the border that I was at near Kiev is bracing for more of a full on invasion if that comes to pass. And that's that's the big debate. I mean, is this just flexing by Vladimir Putin? Has he brought all these troops up at a great cost for some other reason? The Ukrainian side obviously has to assume that there's a possibility of war.

MG: What is life like for people who live in and around that region?

MARK MACKINNON: It was really interesting to be in eastern Ukraine because I you know, I'm based in London. And here there's been that covered lockdown has been the overriding thing in our lives. You know, everything is closed. You know, you don't see friends. You don't go to restaurants. In Kharkiv. I mean, it was there was officially a lockdown, but it was people were carrying on with life as normal, basically ignoring the rules. And when you chatted with folks, I mean, the number one worry they have is the economic damage that's already hit them over the last seven years. Number two is the possibility of war and covid. Boy, that just sounds theoretical. So, you know, it's a very nervous part of the world. They've got a lot of things going on. And it was it was, you know, put things in perspective. They just were we're dealing with whatever was right in front of them.

MG: Is your sense that people who are there feel supported by the Ukrainian government and the president, Zelensky,

MARK MACKINNON: in eastern Ukraine? More so than you know, I've been to Kharkiv repeatedly over the last 20 years. And it was once a city that, you know, there was a deep sort of feeling that they felt a cultural affiliation with Russia more than they did with with the government in Kiev. When I first visited way back in 2002. And I've been going back to that city over the years, and it was always a city where there was strong, strong pro-Russian feeling in the city. I'd say that has fallen off substantially over the last seven years because they see of what's happened into Crimea and in the Donbass region. You know, they're angry at Russia at the same time. It's not a place that feels and it feels a bit separate from Kiev as well. I mean, one of the folks that I had had a meal with there, it was telling me that he thought, you know, this is the city is pro. Kharkiv is not pro-Russian anymore, but it's not necessarily a place that feels aligned with with what they see as sort of Ukrainian nationalism in the west of the country.

MG: What is the sense from people about the possibility that things could could tip off that there is, as you said, for the last seven years, there has been this conflict. But with troops massing, the concern from people there, perhaps, and around the world certainly is that this could turn into something else. Are people there genuinely concerned about that?

MARK MACKINNON: I met with the commander in chief of Ukraine's armed forces and he said he doesn't see, despite all these preparations, he doesn't see an invasion force large enough to occupy larger chunks of Ukraine. He sees an army that's there for for something at the same time. And this costs a lot of money for for Russia to bring forward all this fuel, ammunition, set up field hospitals. And so there's a worry something's going to happen. There's a couple of possible flashpoints, one being Donbass, as we've talked about, where there's, you know, would serve Russia's interest to advance there, you know, sort of put Ukraine more on the defensive there to try and achieve. Their aims, which are, frankly, to get Ukraine to rewrite its constitution. Also the Crimea issue. Russia sees that, of course, seven years ago, but they have a water shortage there. And there's a canal about 200 kilometres north of Crimea that they would have an obvious, obvious strategic interest in seising. I mean, there's a lot of speculation, a lot of anxiety. Ordinary folks in Ukraine are nervous about it, but they're just trying to carry on.

MG: What is your sense, just finally as to what happens next? I mean, it's changing kind of minute by minute in some ways.

MARK MACKINNON: I watched Vladimir Putin's State of the Nation speech yesterday, and there's a lot of expectation that he was going to say something about Ukraine and he actually spent more time talking about Belarus. That's, you know, a separate but related issue, another former Soviet area that Putin does not want to see tumbling out of Russia's orbit. You know, there's today the president of Belarus has flown to Moscow. There's a lot of concern that there can be some sort of announcement of a new Russian troops stationed on Russian soil or some sort of political union between Russia and Belarus. Ukraine, this may all be tied into that sort of a way of snarling at the West to back off whatever happens in Belarus or this may be about some sort of escalation over overall. I don't think you move these troops forward, spend all this much time and money for no reason at all.

MG: Mark, thank you very much for this.

MARK MACKINNON: Thank you.

MG: Mark MacKinnon, senior international correspondent for the Globe and Mail. He was in London for more on what might be driving Russian President Vladimir Putin's decision to increase his country's military presence by the thousands. I'm joined by Nina Khrushchev. She's a professor of international affairs at the New School in New York City. She's currently in Moscow. Nina, hello to you. Hi, good morning. We know that Ukrainians are concerned about this escalation. How concerned are Russians about escalation of this conflict?

NINA KHRUSHCHEV: Russians are concerned they don't want war. They've been very vocal about it. But just sort of really literally five minutes ago, the Russian defence minister Shoygu, just announced that they are withdrawing the troops back to their barracks wherever they are from the southern border. So all this build-Up is now going to go back to where? Well, maybe not all, but most of the troops are going to go back where they came from.

MG: Help me understand what's going on. What would have motivated Vladimir Putin to increase the military presence?

NINA KHRUSHCHEV: Well, president, Zelensky Ukrainian president has been testing President Biden quite, quite openly on how willing indeed Biden is going to help Ukraine as much as he promised to do that. And President Zelensky has been really turning towards a kind of patriotic nationalism crowd more than the crowd that he was originally elected by or by many people. The Russian speaking community that won the war finished, the war finished. And the kind of your previous guest said, the rewriting of the Constitution for Ukraine to make sure that [unintelligible] and Luhansk are going to be independent, independent entities. It's very difficult for any Ukrainian president to do because it really amounts to treason from from many Ukrainian point of view. So she turned to to the patriotic crowd. And so she started ratcheting up his rhetoric on NATO becoming Ukrainian partner and so on. So Vladimir Putin, a KGB man, a man with great military military affinity. The sense affinity here is that, of course, he's going to break the troops in. And I think that's what originally drove Putin, the Kremlin, to bring the troops close to the border.

MG: I want to go back to Zelensky in a moment, but the other issue for Vladimir Putin, perhaps, is that tens of thousands of people yesterday were out on the streets in Russia supporting the jailed opposition leader, Alexei Navalny, who is in dire health right now. How much of that is a factor in terms of how Vladimir Putin would react to what the Ukrainian leader has been doing?

NINA KHRUSHCHEV: I don't think it's connected, frankly, because this is an entirely different story, because for Putin, Navalny and he already I mean, he himself doesn't mention Navalny's name, but the Kremlin made it known that they think that the fact that the West supports Navalny so much, he must be he is an agent of the West who wants to take Putin down. And so he is an opposition leader who deserves essentially very little consideration. They were great protests, but actually not as great as they were in January when Navalny came back from Germany after being treated there for alleged Kremlin poisoning earlier in the summer. They were not tens of thousands. I went to Moscow and so they were probably, if I'm generous, I'd say it was 10000 in other cities, they were less. What was interesting is that in Moscow, only 33 people were arrested and one would say so many people were arrested before and so many people were already scared, didn't come out. But there was quite a big crowd, as I said, about probably from 6000 to 10000. And I think the Kremlin decided to see whether how many people actually do come out and decided not to, at least in Moscow, not to to be that brutal sort of use a little bit of a carrot and stick on some in St. Petersburg. On the other hand, about seven or eight hundred was arrested and rather brutally. I think these are too many kinds of things that Putin is dealing with. And I don't think Navalny and Ukraine are connected. But all of it all his responses are aimed to say the West don't interfere in our lives. And that's what he said yesterday in his address to the Federal Assembly, is that we are going to respond and he's responding.

MG: What is as you mentioned, troops have been are apparently going to be pulled back to where they came from. But what is the end game here? Just finally, I mean, if you have both sides that believe they can benefit in some way from ratcheting up the tension, what's the end game?

NINA KHRUSHCHEV: Well, and I think it's also so Zelensky, you know, some few days ago, he said that he willing to meet with Putin and in Davos and of course, the Russians dismissed it as a PR stunt because Putin really doesn't open up about his foreign policy goals or thinks that he's going to do today, tomorrow, 10 days from now. But there is a conversation and they may be meeting in. Exactly kind of deciding because there's a Minsk agreement that still needs to be somehow amended, followed, not followed, and so on and so forth. So I think for both that kind of sabre rattling was exactly to bring each other. And I hope I'm right to bring each other to the conversation table and start from there.

MG: Is there just finally, we're just about out of time, but is there the real possibility that this could become a full blown military conflict, not just political posturing?

NINA KHRUSHCHEV: There is always a possibility I mean, there was a way when the tanks standing, aiming at each other and soldiers can be shooting at each other, there's always a possibility. And that's why it's so incredibly dangerous. And I think that's why diplomacy on all sides really should not be resting now at all.

MG: Nina, good to speak with you. Thank you very much.

NINA KHRUSHCHEV: Thank you.

MG: Nina Krushchev is a professor of international affairs at the New School in New York City. We reached her this morning in Moscow. Michael Bociurkiw, who is a global affairs analyst, formerly with the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe. He has done extensive work in the region since the invasion of Crimea. Michael, good morning to you.

MICHAEL BOCIURKIW: Good morning. Good to be with you.

MG: Great to have you. What do you make of what's going on in Russia? Increasing. And now we're hearing, you know, some suggestion that soldiers are being withdrawn, but that that increase of military presence along the eastern Ukrainian border. What's going on there?

MICHAEL BOCIURKIW: Well, it's very difficult to get into Mr. Putin's mind, but that Build-Up is quite serious. And I do really challenge that so-called breaking news from your previous speaker, that troops are being pulled back, because even if they are, don't forget, there are sizeable, sizeable numbers of Russian troops permanently or some permanently stationed along the Russian border. If even those that were recently deployed pull back, you still have about almost 20 percent of total Russian ground forces on the ground there. What I think is happening is this is the Build-Up of the forces is a bit of a distraction that was sparked by President Putin and by the way, not by Mr. Zelensky, as your previous speaker said. But I think what they're going to do is perhaps get more control over the Donbass suddenly and that the most likely scenario, I think, is deployment of so-called peacekeepers. So you send in little green men, kind of camouflaged as peacekeepers, put them into Donbass, possibly push out the OSCE observers, and then you have more control over that area. And I think just quickly, what Mark McKinnon said, he mentioned the resource shortages in Crimea, especially water, that that could also be another goal of the Putin administration to get more water for Crimea, because he did promise folks over there that life would be better under Russia. And for that to happen, you need lots of water.

MG: Is this analogous at all to the moves that Russia made in the annexation of Crimea in 2014?

MICHAEL BOCIURKIW: Oh, absolutely. And to the Donbass I was there on the ground with the OSCE when these so-called little green men basically waltzed in. And we were in, for example, municipal building, where on the one side of the building you had Ukrainian officials, Ukrainian law enforcement, and then on the other side, you had these Russian backed rebels coming in and getting more and more control. And we were also there when Donbass Airport was slowly being taken over. So they're able to do this very subtly. And I think that is part of the Russian playbook, is that when the West, especially now, especially now, is distracted by covid, Putin knows that the European Union is very divided right now. The West is also distracted by what may happen in China and Taiwan, that it's the perfect, perfect time to move forward.

MG: What about Ukraine? I mean, again, and that suggestion that that this is, you know, move by the Ukrainian president, Vladimir Zelensky, to to drum up nationalist support.

MICHAEL BOCIURKIW: Respectfully to the previous speaker, I think that's nonsense. That's a Kremlin narrative, is that look, for any Ukrainian president coming into office, popularity was already low. Ukrainians had very little trust in them. I think where Ukrainians want right now is for them to deal with corruption and to settle the covid problem, which is very, very bad in Ukraine. I will say this, though, is the other problems the Zelesky is facing. And this happened wvery early on and his administration was Putin tested him. And how did he do that? By issuing almost immediately over two years 650000 Russian passports to residents of the Donbass. So now the Russians can call the Donbass a kind of passport protectorate and they can say that these people are in danger of being, you know, abused or whatever or manipulated by the Ukrainian administration. So that is the pretext for us to come in. So it's a very, very delicate situation for an office like Zolensky to navigate.

MG: What about NATO? Ukraine has asked NATO member states to admitted into that military alliance. Is that in the realm of possibility?

MICHAEL BOCIURKIW: No, absolutely not. And I think that is a example of Ukraine kind of playing with fire because that is the nuclear option. When you think about it. What was it in 2014 that prompted that invasion of Crimea and the Donbass? It was Ukraine potentially signing a EU trade pact. You know, I think in terms of deterrence right now, if the West really wanted to kind of try to push Russia back the way to strike where it really hurts and I think they're very afraid of is more targeted financial sanctions. And I don't mean sanctioning just the people around Putin, but also, for example, making it very difficult for people to buy Russian sovereign debt and using the West nuclear option that would be removing into. At least temporarily, Russia from the international banking system, the so-called swift payment system, but also preventing Putin's close oligarchs from, for example, investing in property in the United Kingdom, UK has basically become a laundromat, if I can put it that way, for Russian money. So blocking them there would set a lot of phones ringing in the Kremlin.

MG: Where does Joe Biden fit into this as a new president who's trying to figure out where his positioning would be on a country like Russia and, you know, trying to perhaps take a different trajectory than the previous occupant of the Oval Office. How much of this is a test of Joe Biden?

MICHAEL BOCIURKIW: I think very much so. I recently wrote a CNN iPad, and that was kind of the headline that this is a test of Biden. And I think the Russians are calculating that we're seeing a Obama 2.0 is that there's a lot of tough talk coming out of the White House. But when there is a red line, for example, like we had in Syria, don't forget, they will not cross it. Having said that, there is a very strong bipartisan support on Capitol Hill for Ukraine. In fact, I understand they just passed another multi-million dollar appropriation bill for military supplies to Ukraine. So that that is the good side of it. You know, Biden had support on Capitol Hill for strengthening Ukraine's defences, but they really have to show more resolve. And like I said, if they can use that kind of battery of tools left, because the diplomatic toolbox at the moment, frankly, is quite empty to use financial systems for in particular sovereign debt. That is an area I think the Russians are very terrified of.

MG: How would that be a threat to Vladimir Putin if that were to happen? And as you say, the phones would start ringing, what would that mean for the Russian leadership?

MICHAEL BOCIURKIW: Yeah, because if the oligarchs do have more difficulty laundering their money, investing their money overseas, that could potentially be a threat to Putin. And then as for the Russian people, I mean, they're I think a lot of them are at would send so much money has gone towards the military, especially towards this deployment of troops that is basically robbed. For example, the Russian medical system of the last two years of subsidies. The Russian medical system in the midst of covid right now is basically resembles, excuse my language, a badly dismembered corpse. That's how bad things are right there. Having said that, I think Putin has manipulated things internally where, for example, a lot of Russian military contracts are going to the oligarchs to kind of protect them from sanctions in the West. So it's a very delicate game that the West has to navigate. But I do think that if it does make those very painful targeted sanctions and especially the swift one, removing them from the swift payment system, that would really hurt

MG: what is I mean, again, to your point, it's difficult to read into his mind, but what is Putin's endgame?

MICHAEL BOCIURKIW: The end game, I think, is kind of a dual strategy. One is to appear very tough to the West, I think, to show that as we listen to the speeches today, Putin wants to portray Russia as a very strong federation, but also to show people at home that, you know, he is ready to stand up for their rights of the Russian people. And as I mentioned earlier, a Russian passport holders. But, you know, when you look at the situation in Russia, what's happening to Navalny, what's happened to pensions, the really creaky medical system to deal with covid, I don't think this will do it any more for Putin. He does face Duma elections later on this year. But I think this this type of military action doesn't give them the PR boost that at one point

MG: I was just going to say, I mean, people have heard that story before and they heard that line before. You wonder whether the Russian people, given everything that they are facing, are growing tired of that narrative.

MICHAEL BOCIURKIW: I think so. And, you know, the the Crimea adventure was a very costly one, building that bridge across the Kerch Straits. And as I mentioned earlier, the water problem. I think Mark McKinnon positioned it very well in terms of, you know, the kind of mentality of the Russian people. But corruption is another big one. Navalny has done a very good job of exposing that. And that's where Ukraine, Ukrainian and Russian people share a similarity is they want corruption eradicated because they look around and they see that their lives are not improving. But yet these oligarchs keep on getting richer and richer and richer.

MG: Just in the last minute or so that we have. What are you most closely watching as this continues to unfold?

MICHAEL BOCIURKIW: I'm going to be closely watching the border now. Having been with the OSCE, I know that the Russian backed fighters are very well supplied. The OSCE doesn't have a small observation point along the Ukraine Russian border and they have been seeing more traffic going back and forth across the border. So no one, whether these this Build-Up of troops will be removed, but let that not distract us or make us feel bad. Because like I said, Russia has a very, very developed capability of doing things very subtly, especially when the West is distracted. So I think the smart money would be on what I said earlier, those so-called Russian peacekeepers moving in and getting more control. And then one last thing. I think there may be some legislative action on the Russian side to kind of better protect or embrace the Donbas so that it looks more a part of Russia, at least legislatively, and then that may give them more influence and leverage over that region.

MG: Michael, I really appreciate you helping untangle the situation for us this morning. Thank you very much.

MICHAEL BOCIURKIW: My pleasure.

MG: Michael Bassekou is a global affairs analyst formerly with the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe. Well, coming up, after your regional update.

SOUNDCLIP

that freedom is what I love about it. I choose this because this is the higher quality of life. And it's why the majority of people who come out here are forced into it would stay with it. And nearly everyone in Western civilisation does not ever consider what is a quality life.

MG: [/sc]

MG: Bob Wells has spent years living in a van, roaming highways and back roads and living in parks. Now he and others like him are having their stories told in the Oscar nominated film Nomadland. In a moment, Bob Wells reflects on a life lived on the move. I'm Matt Galloway. This is The Current. We're back in 90 seconds.

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Real-life nomad Bob Wells says the life you've been told to want is 'one great, big, enormous lie'

Guest: Bob Wells

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

SOUNDCLIP

And out here, there's a lot of people our age, inevitably there's grief and loss and a lot of them don't get over it either. And that's OK. That's OK. One of the things I love most about this life is that there's no final goodbye. You know, I've met hundreds of people out here and I don't ever say a final goodbye. I was just saying I'll see you down the road and I do. And whether it's a month or a year or sometimes years, I see them again and I can look down the road and I can be certain in my heart that I'll see my son again. You'll see Bo again and you can remember your lives together then.

MG: That's a scene from the Oscar nominated film Nomadland. It is a beautiful affecting movie starring Frances McDormand as a widow who loses her job and then begins living in her van. The voice you heard there is not that of an actor, though. His name is Bob Wells and he is one of several real life nomads who appear in Nomad land. Bob Wells lives in his RV and shares advice and wisdom about life on the road, on his blog and on his YouTube channel. And he joins me now from the road in southwest Nevada. Bob Wells, good morning.

BOB WELLS: Good morning.

MG: That is an amazing scene from what is a beautiful, beautiful film. Tell me a little bit about what you remember about shooting that scene.

BOB WELLS: Well, it was a very emotional scene for me. I have not handled the death of my son well. And so I have not- you know, to me, grief is a very private thing, and you carry it within you, and so rightly or wrongly, that's what I've done and it has not been good for me to do that. So I also people would ask me how many kids I had. And so that was a hard question to answer because I had to. But now I only have one on this earth. And so what is the right answer? Do I say just one like my son never existed? Do I say two? But one has passed and that just is a conversation killer. Everyone is sorry for you and expresses their grief for you. And I don't enjoy that. I just I don't know. I'm a weird guy. Maybe I'm weird that way, but it's not. It's very difficult for me. So at anyway, Chloe asked me if I would if there was anything in my any grief, in my past. Chloe, the director, writer, director, producer, just about everything. She asked me if there was any grief in my past that I would be willing to share in the movie. And I told her I would. I would share this because, you know, I had to honour my son and I have never figured that out, so I did and it worked well. I'm delighted that I did. And I think it's helped people. And that's the most important thing in my life, is to help people.

MG: Can you just tell me a little bit about your son?

BOB WELLS: He was he was a really, really smart kid, really smart. In fact, he was going to Carnegie Mellon, which in the US is a very high achieving college and very adventurous. He had spent a year in Hong Kong as an exchange student. He joined the military and had been in the National Guard for a couple of years. And he was just an adventurous, intelligent kid that was just open to doing anything, any experience. He was just willing to have them. Unfortunately, there was real mental illness and as by the time we recognised it, he was so deep into it that he wouldn't listen and he wouldn't. He was an adult and we, other than going to a court and forcing him to get help. And that would that was- those don't work. You put the people who are forced into mental health help. They'll give them drugs that will straighten them right out. The person doesn't like our deals. They walk out, walk out the door, throw it away in the right back where they were only worse. And so we didn't know what to do and we didn't. We did everything we could. We encouraged him. We tried tough love, tried great love, and it was just a mental illness that finally claimed him. In retrospect, talking to some of the officers he'd served with in the military seems almost certainly like it was schizophrenia, which is really a devastating killer of young men. He was 33. So it's it's really it's really bad amongst young men. So it was ultimately schizophrenia that got him, we believe.

MG: I'm sorry about that. I mean, you speak in that scene to Frances McDormand, and she is somebody who who has lost her husband, who's lost her job, who's lost her community in the community that you are part of. How common is that that that sense of loss amongst people who have found themselves on the road travelling?

BOB WELLS: It is very common because my audience, I'm older, and so my audience is predominantly older and in financial trouble, that's my particular audience is older, in financial trouble. And so they come to me looking for financial solutions. But I think they also then along the way find real emotional healing for grief. My age, I'm sixty five, which really isn't very old. But in my young life, I've watched friends die. I've watched out here, I've watched numerous people die. In fact, I've had at least a dozen people that I've known that had just really bad health scares. And we're out here they say, well, if I'm going to die, I'm going to die living the way I want. And they come out here to die and ultimately they did. So grief is a common experience because we're an older group and grief is an experience amongst older people. And one of the thing is we find healing for it, but then we also find an ability to express it. And that's like myself, I'm a perfect example of someone who has this grief and cannot express it. And our society doesn't like to hear about your grief. We want to shuffle old people away into homes and let them have their grief and their memories all alone in that room in there instead of treasuring the memories. We are not a good society. America in particular is not a good society for that. Yeah, there's a lot of grief, but there's also an enormous amount of healing that goes along with particularly being in nature. And there's this openness that happens between the community where you are, you're more open then, and I don't really know why. I've given a lot of thought and ideas, but I think the big thing is we're all moving. We're on the move and I'm only going to be with you or a certain amount of time. And if I'm going to get to know you and actually know another human being, I've got to do it now because I'm leaving. And you're leaving. Might be a week, maybe two weeks, might be a month. But we're on the move. And so I think there's a letting down of the guard and this is who I am. And that happens here. That doesn't happen amongst anyone else.

MG: How did you end up in that situation, end up on the road?

BOB WELLS: I was 40 years old. I was going through divorce and a midlife crisis type thing. And I, you know, divorces are economically devastating. And so I was setting up I went from one household, which was fine. We were financially just average Americans. And and then all of a sudden we have two households and not just my income wouldn't support that. So I didn't know how I was going to live. I didn't know how I was going to pay for an apartment for myself. And I had always been- I'm from, I lived all my life in Alaska. I lived in Alaska over 40 years, Anchorage, Alaska. And so I knew all about camping and backpacking. I did it my whole life. I enjoyed it. I loved it. A chance to go backpacking was a good day, a good weekend or a good month. And so. I just thought to myself I drove to work every day past this old beat up box van. The box van has a vandal's and a box, just a big box behind it. And I looked at that every day and I drove, you know what? I could live in there. If I can live in a tent for a month at a time, I can live in that box. And so I stopped one day and bought it and moved in. And so that began my van dwelling journey.

MG: How would you describe the setup that you're in right now?

BOB WELLS: Well, most people would consider, very primitive, a rolling steel tent, that's kind of how I describe it. It's six foot by 10 foot where I'm sitting right now. So it's like being in a big square walled canvas, six by 10 tent that is on wheels and that can be driven around. That's basically what I meant.

MG: And what are the amenities that you have in that space?

BOB WELLS: Well, because it's a rolling steel tent, I can have a whole lot more. There are a lot of things that we consider essential that I don't care about, and I'm glad to do with that. There are a few that I think are important. And so I've arranged to have them. I have a refrigerator. I want to be able to cook and and keep leftovers and have cold drinks. So I have a refrigerator. I'm a bachelor. Been a bachelor for a long time. And so I do bachelor cooking. And to be a microwave is essential or a bachelor cooking. I have a microwave and a stove and so I can do really basic fundamental cooking. And then I've got the fridge to store the leftovers. I like to make big pots of things. I'll make something and eat it for four days in a row. That's I just find that is economical of time and resources and energy. So and I of course I have lights so I have a lot of- I'm pretty High-Tech, I'm running a YouTube channel and send part of a non-profit and so I've got a lot of electronics in here with me, a lot of cameras and tripods and all kinds of stuff. It makes it pretty crowded with the business.

MG: One of the things I mean, that you see in the film and the real challenges in living in a small space like that, and that's I mean, extreme weather. It's, you know, bathroom stuff. What do you have to do to survive in something like this? I mean, one of the hard the hard things that you're facing.

BOB WELLS: Well, I'm a snowbird because I am free to move around. I don't have any restrictions. If you have to work in one place, then you're no longer able to move. Then you have the weather. And there are very few places around that don't have hot summers or cold winters or more likely both. And so it's the weather is the largest challenge. If you can move, then that eliminates most of that. So I follow the weather. I will move to the desert and I'm in Las Vegas now and Las Vegas can actually get surprisingly cold and windy in the winter. I will even go further south. Yuma, Arizona, is a good place. Yuma, Arizona has the most days of sunshine of any town in the United States, over three hundred days a year of sunshine. So I like Yuma and I will usually go down there in that area within one hundred miles of it for most of my winter before the good weather. And then when that gets hot, which, it will become unbearably in a van. A hot van is just a thing of misery. So when the van is hot, you go north and the key there is elevation. The temperature drops every thousand feet, three and a half degrees. So if you go 10,000 feet, you dropped about 35 degrees. Well, so I have to go up in elevation and you can get into a comfortable temperature and you can get into the trees and get shade. And so it's very comfortable as long as you go higher elevation or north go to Canada where you get all the coolness you want. So but I don't usually go that far.

MG: How long would you be in one place before you moved on?

BOB WELLS: Well, I stay on public land and nearly all public land in the United States and there's an abundance of it is too weak state the maximum. And I don't very often state at all. Two weeks, I will usually stay five between five to ten days. And by then I need supplies. And so if I'm going to go into town to get more water or dump my trash or go buy groceries, I will probably just move on to a different place. So for the most part, occasionally I will stay in one place longer, especially since I've been working. As somebody who works, I tend to stay longer, but my preference would be to move every 10 days at the outside and 14 would be the longest.

MG: Let me ask you about work, because we see in the film some of the folks who who pick up sort of short term work and they're working and the Amazon warehouse or what have you. What are some of the things that that people do to make money?

BOB WELLS: Well, we have kind of a circuit that works really well. And you can be any part of any part of this circuit. In the summer, you can be a campground host in the United States. There are a lot of public land with campgrounds, and those campgrounds are usually turned over to a private contractor or the private contractor. [Unintelligible] I suggest you work for one of those hosts. You get a free campsite. You usually get minimum wage, which in some states is very low, in some states is very high. So you will you can do that for usually four to five months a year. And some people make enough in that time to supplement their income, whatever it may be. Or maybe that's not enough. And from there, you can go to something called the Beat harvest. I would assume they have a beet harvest in Canada, most of it is done along right up the northern tier of the United States with it usually within a hundred miles of the border. And that lasts very short, but it pays really well. It's like a three week job, maybe a month. It all depends on the weather. The weather controls. If you don't pick the beets, you help them unload them. You're not a farm hand. You are working for the sugar company and you are unloading the trucks. Truck will back in and dump the beets from the farm. And you are part of the operation of controlling it. You'll direct the truck is some falls out, you'll throw it on the pile. You're creating a huge pile of beets. I mean, like 50 foot pile, one hundred feet wide, thousand feet long of beets. And so maybe you'll operate a bobcat skid steer, you'll clean up the mud. You're just a general and you're not on a farm. That's 12 hours a day, no matter the weather and cold weather is better than hot weather and rainy weather is OK. So it's an unpleasant job for those standpoints is just you're out in the weather on your feet all day. And so from that standpoint, it's difficult for older folks, but it pays really well. After that three weeks, you should easily be able to have three thousand dollars in your pocket. And then from there, that is usually runs September to October, late September or late October, somewhere in that ballpark. That's the fall for that far north. And then from there, you would go to Amazon and you'd work there. You could be there from October to December 31st, and then you're making pretty good money. You're making fifteen dollars an hour there generally and you get a free site. In all these places, you get a free site. You're not paying for your home. And so that that makes it pretty economical. And basically other than what you eat and that's even reduced because you're working all the time, you should be able to save all the money you make other than your fixed expenses. So it ends up at the end of that season, those together, you should have put a whole bunch of money in the bank.

MG: How much of this I mean, the lifestyle this comes up throughout the film is a lifestyle that people choose because of, you know, the economic reality of America today, that people there's something that people want to do. But there's also the sense that some people in many ways are driven to this because of what the economic reality is.

BOB WELLS: Well, I think of a nomadic living as a big tent, and in that tent there are all kinds of people, all kinds of economic classes and particularly all kinds of agents. After the 2008 Economic Great Recession, there were a lot of young people that deliberately chose this life. They were so disillusioned with what they saw the economy doing, they saw all the people with their pensions just wiped out. They went to court. Court said no more pensions to buy. You work for some place, 20 years, pensions gone. They saw that your home will not always go up in value. They saw that the promise of the golden years was probably not true. And so after 2008, there have been a lot of young people and those young people are not doing it for economics. You know, they're young. They can go get a job. They're healthy. There are a lot of jobs that were before the pandemic, a lot of jobs available. It's all a lifestyle choice. It's not until you get to the 60s, 70s, 80s, then you're looking at real financial hardship. So and that's the group I predominantly serve, is because I tell them how they could live on their fixed income. In America we have Social Security. We don't have nearly the safety net the Canadians have. I wish we did. There's not perfect. Of course. I'm sure you would. You could tell me many, many things you don't like about it. But it's certainly better than having to debate whether you were going to go to the doctor or die and die or pay rent. And most of Canadians are not in that situation. And so many Americans are in that situation. They're deciding if you're less than sixty five and you can't work or just don't work, can't find a job. And most sixty and a lot of us that age can't find a job. Why would an employer hire us instead of a 20, 30, 40 years old? They just won't. And so at the end of the month, you can't live and maybe you're on Social Security and you're getting eight hundred or a thousand a month, but you can't rent an apartment on that and pay for food. So I offer a way out. I say, 'Here's a way you can live on even your $800 or your thousand dollars a month. And a lot of Americans are making that what they have to live on. And I tell them how. And so they do come out because of the older group. A lot of them do come out because of finances. But soon my experience has been that very quickly they fall in love with the lifestyle. You know, it's it's maybe a last resort step, but they love it. They fall in love with it and they wouldn't go back if they could. And you see that in the movie, Ferne is offered numerous opportunities to go back and chooses not to because she loves this line.

MG: What do you love about it? And is there anything that you miss from a more stable, if I can put it that way, exist?

BOB WELLS: No. No, from stability, no, I don't see that. Freedom is what I love about it, and I can be stable, I can stay in one place, there are places where I could stay and be in one fixed place. I make enough that money is not an issue in my life at all. I could I could buy a home tomorrow, I could pay cash for a home tomorrow and move in and not have to worry about money. I choose this because this is a higher quality of life and it's why the majority of people who come out here are forced into it would stay with it. My friend would stay with it. It's higher quality of life, a higher

MG: quality of life. I mean, just briefly, what do you mean by that?

BOB WELLS: Well, you do have to define what is the quality of life. And nearly every everyone in Western civilisation does not ever consider what is a quality life. All we think about is what we're told. Your parents start teaching you a quality life when you're born. The media is teaching you what is a quality life. You go to school and it's pounded into you K to 12 through college, to PhD, whatever you get. The quality of life is to get a job, work your way up the corporate ladder, get married, buy a house, buy a bigger house, buy a bigger house, retire with your golden years, sacrifice your best 60, 70 years of your life and then be gloriously happy for the last ten or twenty. That's a quality life. That's what we're told. And that's just one great, big, enormous lie. And if you ever are able to break out of it and most of us are forced, I was forced out of it. Then I look at that and I say that was not a quality life. I was not in control over my life. I didn't have any true freedom. Average Canadian American, how many choices do you get to make a day about what you do? There are almost no choices. You do what your boss tells you. Ultimately, you do what the dollar bill tells you. This is what I have to do to get a dollar because the dollar owns my life is the master of my life. And it's the only way to have true choices on a daily basis over your life is to reduce your dependence on the dollar. And until then, you won't. You'll do whatever the dollar tells you you have to do. So to me, that's it, it's I choose and control my life and and yes, nearly all of us, unless you're older like I am and I have a fixed income I can live on, I have a small pension and Social Security. I can live on that very comfortably the rest of my life. I don't have to have to work. But I did work a long time to get the pension and to build up the Social Security, which I had. But I had a chance I'd go back. I wouldn't do it what I did. And so now I'm comfortable. But I traded the first 60 years of my life of going to work. Oh, I just what a horrible idea. That is trades- Maths. Think about the maths. If we taught this in grade school, we'd have a different world. You're going to give away the 60 best prime years of your life for the 20 poorest years of your health, of your life, of your mental capacities, of your life. What you're going to be golden years. It's a terrible, terrible trade. Why do any of us do it? Because it's pounded into us from the beginning. So that is not a quality life, giving up all your power, your choices, your freedom or the hope. And now that hope is gone of a few golden years. Terrible, terrible plan.

MG: You make it sound really appealing. Let me just ask you, I mean, would you ever have imagined the lifestyle that you're leading would be the subject of this Oscar nominated film that that people love around the world?

BOB WELLS: No, that would never, never, never in a million years have occurred to me. And none of my nothing that's happened in my life could ever have occurred to me that did not put one foot in front of the other. And see what happens when

MG: You watch the Oscars.

BOB WELLS: I'm not planning on it. I've seen the movie a couple of times, but I don't enjoy watching it or or I don't enjoy watching my parts of it. I loved the experience of the movie production. I loved everything about that. It was amazing and wonderful. Working with Frances was such an incredible, incredible experience. And Chloe and the whole crew, they were all fantastic. But, yeah. You know, you hear of actors who never watch the work again, and I guess I'm one of those.

MG: Now, you're an actor?

BOB WELLS: I guess so.

MG: It's a real pleasure to talk to you. Take care of yourself. And thank you very much.

BOB WELLS: Thank you, my pleasure.

MG: Bob Wills appears as himself in the Oscar nominated film Nomad Land. His YouTube channel is called excitinThe Academy Awards will be handed out on Sunday night. That is The Current for this Thursday. Coming up next on CBC Radio One, it's Q. Tom Power sits down with Sir Anthony Hopkins, nominated himself for best actor at this weekend's Oscars for his work in the amazing film The Father. He plays a man with dementia locked in a power struggle with his daughter, played by Olivia Colman. You'll hear Sir Anthony Hopkins coming up on cue in just a few moments. We started today's show with our final stop on Canada's road ahead, pulling our virtual RV into Summerland, B.C. One of our guests was the co-owner of a winery called the Okanogan Crush Pad. Covid and the new travel restrictions in B.C. have made a trip to the winery impossible unless you happen to live in the area right now. So we'll bring you a little wine tasting virtually. I know it's just the start of the day, but you do you. If you're in the mood, you have two seconds to pour your own glass right now. All right. Are you ready? Here we go.

SOUNDCLIP

Hi, my name is Andrew, and I'm a wine educator and a member of the team at Okanogan Crush Pad Winery. We're really going to focus today on how to taste wine like a wine pro. And there's five different aspects of wine tasting. There's site, there's a swirl, there's sniff, there sip and there's savour. There's no better place to start a wine tasting than with some sparkling wine. So what we have here is a native EXI method. It's made from Chardonnay and Pinot Noir grapes, which are the grapes that you're going to find in champagne. And this wine is made in Okanogan TouchPads, state of the art Sheremet method tanks, exact same way that Prosecco would be made. We're going to focus on this wine, just the sight, the way the wine looks. And in all honesty, the way the wine looks is probably the least important of the five S's. We can see the bubbles rising and we can get a little bit of an indication of the colour of the wine, which can even give us some clues as to what to expect from the wine. So from there, we're going to bring the wine to our nose and we're going to sniff. Now, if you're paying attention, you notice that I didn't swirl the wine. And that's because with sparkling wine, it's actually not that important to swirl the wine because the carbonation, the lifting of the bubbles will actually lift some of the aromatics up to the surface of the glass. So you don't need to swirl it. But when it comes to just sniffing the wine, basically we just want to bring it to our nose and then start to think about some of the aromas that we get. So for me, straight away, I'm getting some red fruit. I'm getting some nice toasty notes. And all you really need to think about is, am I getting fruit? Am I getting some floral notes? So we've sniffed the wine. We didn't swirl the wine. Now we're going to sip the wine. So all you need to do right now is bring the wine up, take a sip, and then bring a little bit of oxygen in with your sip. And you're going to be able to hear it on the camera when I sit this wine. [sipping sound] So it seems rude, but what you're doing is you're bringing the oxygen in there, which is going to lift the aromatics, so we've sipped the wine and now all we have to do is savour the wine. Think about the wine. Do we like the way it tastes? Do we want to continue drinking it? Does it seem balanced? And we'll focus on these concepts a little bit more with the other wines. But what we wanted to focus on with this wine was the way that it looked and some of the clues that we can get from it. It's a rosé. We know it's carbonated and it's a fantastic sparkling wine and a really great place to start the tasting site.

MG: Swirl, sniff, sip, savour, site, swirl, sniff, sip, savour. Its kind of meditative, isn't it? Cheers. I'm Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening to The Current. We'll talk to you tomorrow.

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Thursday April 22, 2021 Full Transcript

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