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The AIH Transcript for June 25, 2021

Hosts: Carol Off and Chris Howden

Prologue

CAROL OFF: Hello, I’m Carol Off.

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

[music: theme]

CH: Tonight:

CH: “As It Happens”, the Friday edition. Radio that urges luck be marmalady tonight.

[Music: Theme]

Part 1: Derek Chauvin Sentencing, Alien Observer Planets, Marmalade Winner

Derek Chauvin Sentencing

Guest: Ayesha Hardaway

CH: Derek Chauvin is going to prison. Today, Judge Peter Cahill sentenced the former Minneapolis police officer to 22-and-a-half years for the murder of George Floyd. The sentence falls short of the 30 years that the prosecution -- and Mr. Floyd's family -- had requested. Here's part of what his brother, Philonise Floyd, told the court in a victim impact statement.

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PHILONISE FLOYD: I haven't had a real night’s sleep because of the nightmares I constantly have here hearing my brother beg and plea for his life over and over again. Even saying they're going to kill me. Please, officer. Screaming for our mom. I have had to sit through each day of Derek Chauvin’s trial and watch the video of George dying for hours, over and over again. For an entire year, I had to relive George being tortured to death every hour of the day, only taking naps and not knowing what a good night's sleep is anymore. I've been lifting my voice tirelessly every day so that George's death would not be in vain.

CH: Philonese Floyd is George Floyd's brother. Today, a judge sentenced Derek Chauvin to 22-and-a-half years in prison for George Floyd's death. Ayesha Hardaway is an Assistant Professor at Case Western Reserve University School of Law who watched today's sentencing hearing. We reached her in Cleveland.

CO: Ayesha, first of all, I want to get your reaction to the sentence that Judge Cahill handed down today?

AYESHA HARDAWAY: Twenty-two-and-a-half years, based on everything that we know about the sentencing guidelines and the ability for deviation in Minnesota based on the aggravating factors, that 22-and-a-half years seems to fall in line. It's less than the 30 years that the state was asking for, but certainly more than the probation that Eric Nelson has the unmitigated gall to request and briefing, but didn't really push for any person today in court worth noting. I think Judge Cahill has taken a very balanced approach to this case from jury selection all the way through until sentencing and has done so in such a way that I'm sure in his mind makes it beyond reproach for an appellate court to try to substitute their judgement for his.

CO: it’s interesting the remarks he had before he read the sentence, and that's that he said that he was not going to speak at length. He would be submitting that is a document that though there was so much emotion in the court and so much pain that he was going to do this without much commentary. And so why do you think that was perhaps necessary for him to approach it that way?

AH: Well, first of all, I mean, thinking about the family that's sitting there and waiting to hear, and no one likes to sit in the courtroom waiting for a judge to pontificate and expound upon all of the reasons before they actually give the number, right? [chuckle] So, in some ways, I view it as a recognition of the very sensitive nature of that moment, but also a real respect and protection of the record. Because if he had been speaking from the bench, that transcript would also be a part of the record. And we know that Eric Nelson has oftentimes looked for any reason to point to misconduct and request a new trial.

CO: And Eric Nelson is, of course, the defence attorney in this case. And so what we heard, just tape before you and I began speaking, is that of George Floyd’s brother, and talking about the nightmares he's having, as he had to hear, and keeps hearing, and will forever hear the sound of his brother's voice calling for their mother, begging for his life. We've all heard it so many times. And each time, it's powerful for anyone listening to it, but so much more for his brother. What goes through your mind when you hear Philonese Floyd say that?

AH: Yeah, obviously, you know, as a Black woman, who's a mother to a Black boy, who is a partner to a Black man, it's heartbreaking on a personal level -- but also, recognizing as much as what this moment may not be able to be extrapolated out in terms of police reform. This was a significant moment for this family that will be forever changed by police violence. Unlike so many other families in similar situations, George Floyd’s family had the opportunity to speak in a court of law and deliver victim impact statements. And because officers routinely go without being subjected to criminal charges, that is new and different. That is an outlier here. And I want to make it clear that that should not be lost in this conversation.

CO: The reasons why... now, as you mentioned, the prosecution wanted 30 years. The judge could have given him 12 and a half years, which is, I guess, the sentencing guidelines. But he cites the aggravating factors in George Floyds death as being a... the reason why he went to the 22-and-a-half years. Can you tell us a bit about those aggravating factors?

AH: Absolutely. So one of the aggravating factors was that he committed the act while in a position of trust in authority. The other aggravating factor was that he did so in concert with a group of others. That the crime was committed with the level of depravity is the third. And the fourth was that it was committed in the presence of minors. And so the state was wanting the judge to go beyond the guidelines, the twelve-and-a-half years that you mentioned, and they cited cases where when only one aggravating factor, it served to double the sentence to the 22 years, right?. And so it appears that Judge Cahill did not use that sort of compounding aggravating factor analysis that. So we'll have to read his 22-page opinion to understand how he actually factored that all in.

CO: And you mentioned that Eric Nelson, the defence attorney for Derek Chauvin, he argued that there should be probation, that that is what should happen. And he said that Derek Chauvin was the product of a, quote, broken system, and he believed he was just doing his job. What do you make of that?

AH: Yes, yeah, that's in line with his defence theory throughout the case, right? He tried very much to put policing -- American policing -- on trial. And quite honestly, there might be an appropriate place for that. This case was not that case. And so, Chauvin’s actions were far out. The chief came in and testified that they were far outside of policy. The trainers came in and testified that they were outside of the training, right? And the folks in dispatch were watching on camera and said that something must be going on here because this frame was frozen for too long. And so, while his points may be able to gain traction in other instances, this just was not that case.

CO: The killing of George Floyd has become a symbol. George Floyd has become a symbol around the world for police excess. And Derek Chauvin's conviction has become a symbol as well. What do you think it represents? What does this conviction and this man going to prison represent in your country?

AH: Hmmm, it depends on what the people decide it should represent -- they want it to represent. I worry that right now seems like just a moment in time, and we have symbols, and they really serve no clear purpose, and they don't make lasting change. And so symbolism really doesn't carry the day, and I don't think is really enough. What we need is real action and what we need is real commitment. People who said that they stood for police reform and police accountability to continue to make that push even after today's verdict.

CO: Ayesha, I really appreciate speaking with you. Thank you.

AH: Thank you so much for having me, Carol.

CO: Bye-bye.

AH: Bye-bye.

CH: Ayesha Hardaway is an Assistant Professor at Case Western Reserve University School of Law. She spoke to us from Cleveland.

[music: folk]

Alien Observer Planets

Guest: Lisa Kaltenegger

CH: For decades, human curiosity has pushed us to learn more about the planets around us. But what if alien curiosity has pushed aliens to learn more about the planets around them? Including this one? Recently, astronomers in the U.S identified 29 planets that aliens, if they exist, could use to observe the Earth. As well as intercept human broadcasts. Like you're doing right now. Although you're probably not an alien. Lisa Kaltenegger is an astronomy professor at Cornell University. We reached her in Ithaca, New York.

CO: Lisa, do you ever get that feeling that you're being watched?

LISA KALTENEGGER: Well, now much more than before I did the study.

CO: [both chuckling] Well, now much more for me since I read about your study. How did you come to think that other planets in other systems could potentially be observing us here on Earth?

LK: Well, we are looking exactly the same way for brand new worlds out there. And about 70 per cent of the thousands we found, so worlds circling not our own sun, but another sun, we found when by chance they actually go on their path around the star between us and their star. So the star looks a tiny bit less bright for a short moment. And so I was thinking if we are looking that way, who could see us that way?

CO: [chuckling] OK, so you're looking at them, and you're thinking, OK, there might be some kind of alien eyeball, whatever it might be, maybe just a single one, looking back at you?

LK: [laughing] I was basically asking for whom would we be the aliens? Who would be like, oh my God, these things on Earth! Are they going to be nice? Are they not going to be nice? What am I going to do?

CO: How many planets do you think have a pretty good view of us?

LK: So we now from the NASA Kepler Mission that about every other star has at least the planet. And every fourth of those, what's kind of incredible, every fourth star has a planet that is not too hot, not too cold and small enough to be a rock like the Earth. So if you have two thousand stars and you say every fourth of those has a potential other the earth, we are talking about 500 planets with or without eyeballs [laughing] that could be watching us

CO: And listening to us, too, right? Because you figure that... that radio signals can be making their way to these worlds as well.

LK: So, on the Earth, life changed our air completely about two billion years ago by pumping a lot of oxygen that you and me breathe out. That's due to life. So you could say that there's life on the Earth if you'd seen us from two billion years ago. But if you also wanted to know, is their technology advanced life? Then one thing you could take would be radio waves that, when we started to use them, basically got also transmitted out into space unintentionally. So, we did the second get... the second study. And so we said, OK, which ones could see the earth transit, black out the light from the star, and get, you know, for better or worth our taste in music?

CO: [chuckling] So how long would it take for one of these planets to actually be listening to this broadcast?

LK: Oooo! That's going to be depending where they are. The closest on our list are about 10 light-years away. So what we're saying right now will be the best wisdom they'll have in about 10 years because light needs time to travel. So per one light-year, so 10 years to one of the first stars on our list. So you and me better say only very, very wise things.

CO: Right. OK, now I really feel like I'm being watched. [LK laughs] And... and so, that's... that's really quite close, right? So, I mean, [laughing] I guess relatively. How close are the stars, the galaxies and these... these planets that have potential to observe us? How far away are they?

LK: So the closest one is eight light-years away. And if you take our solar system, so that the sun and the planets, and shrink it to the size of a cookie, then the next star in the same scale would be four football fields away. So the first one that could see us block light out from the sun and get those radio waves. And it's called Wolf 359. And I think there's some sci-fi stories written about it, but we do not know if anybody's there and could be looking at us right now,

CO: given that they have to... it has to be all lined up perfectly, how often do... does that planet, for instance, get to sneak a peek at Earth?

LK: Absolutely. One of the things that was really interesting to me is that it's not like I see you, you see me. It's more like two ships passing in the night. And sometimes, you notice. And sometimes, you don't. Because the viewing geometry has to be just right. Your cosmic front seat to find another planet that way is temporary, so sometimes you have it, you can gain it, you can lose it. And so, for Wolf 359, that one started to see us 46 years ago and will see us until 432 years from now. But the next one -- Ross 128 -- was that has one known planet in the so-called habitable zone actually started to see us about 3000 years ago and lost that vantage point 900 years ago.

CO: And so, how often do these planets actually have a chance to see us? I mean, how... how often does this come up?

LK: So when you take the Earth, we need one year to go around the sun. And so once a year, for 12.6 hours, you could actually see us if you were an alien astronomer and curious enough to watch,

CO: how would we know if they were? I mean, I guess this is the issue. What would be a signal? What would give you a sense that there actually might be intelligent life observing us, or intelligent life at all out there?

LK: Well, what we are doing right now is we're actually using this list to watch with NASA's test spacecraft that is looking at the stars for planets close to us, we're looking at these 200 stars trying to find hidden worlds in this geometry where they block out the light from the star. And then, once we do, we want to ask the big James Webb Space Telescope that we plan to launch at the end of this year to actually catch enough light from these tiny planets to probe the atmosphere and see is there also oxygen and methane in the air? And then, of course, there's the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, SETI, that now can take this list and say, OK, here we're going to probe those 2,000 new star systems for any kind of radio signals or any kind of laser beams that they might shoot in our direction because they found us already.

CO: Oh, my gosh. All right. Lots to think about. Lisa, thank you.

LK: You're welcome. Thanks for having me.

CH: Lisa Kaltenegger is an astronomy professor at Cornell University. She's the lead author of new research published in the journal Nature.

[music: jazz]

Marmalade Winner

Guests: Flora Rider, Zoe Rider

CH: "A little pot of sunshine." That's how nine-year-old Flora Rider describes her homemade Seville orange marmalade. It sounds delicious. But it also sounds slightly modest. "Undisputed Number One" or "World's Greatest Little Pot of Sunshine" seems more fitting. Flora just won Best in Show at the Homemade Marmalade Awards or HMAs. Which means her recipe beat out 3,000 other contestants from around the world -- and that she is now the youngest-ever winner of the annual competition. We reached Flora, and her mother Zoe, on the Isle of Wight, England.

CO: Congratulations to you, Flora.

FLORA RIDER: Thank you.

CO: How did it feel to win the World's Best Marmalade?

FR: It’s been so amazing! I’m over the moon!

CO: [chuckling] Were you expecting that to happen? I mean, you sent this marmalade off to this competition. Did you have any idea that you would win?

FR: No!

CO: What did you think was going to happen?

ZOE RIDER: You might just get a certificate.

FR: Yeah, I thought I’d maybe get gold or something! [ZR and CO laugh]

CO: And that's... that's Zoe laughing there. That's the mom. How are you doing, Zoe?

ZR: I'm very well, thank you. Yes, we’re good.

CO: And how do you feel about your daughter not only winning this, but the youngest person to ever win this competition?

ZR: It's quite incredible. We didn't expect for this to happen. I mean, I suppose you don't usually when you enter a competition. It's all about taking part, as they say. So, yes, we're really, really surprised, really surprised. And really, really happy for Flora.

CO: Flora, you didn't just win against all the competition, 3,000 entries from around the world. You blew away the competition. That was... you were the unanimous choice of the judges. What do you think of that?

FR: Amazing!

CO: What do you think it is about your family that they like so much?

FR: Um, I quite like the flavour of orange blossom because it's... it's quite a nice bit and sort of sweet flavour.

CO: And so what you've just done is told us your secret ingredient?

FR: [ZR chuckles] Yeah.

CO: What is it... now, OK, you... this was something that they... the judges were blown away by this flavour. You don't have orange blossoms in the Isle of Wight, I think, right?

FR: No.

CO: How did you sneak that flavour into your marmalade?

FR: Orange blossom water. I used orange blossom water.

CO: Oh, how clever of you! Huh, and how many batches of marmalade did you make before you got the one that you sent off for the award?

FR: One.

CO: One! Are you serious?!

FR: Yeah.

CO: First try, you got this right.?!

FR: Yeah.

CO: [laughing] Flora, what got you interested in making marmalade?

FR: Because I didn't have anything to do in lockdown, and I thought it would be a nice project to do.

CO: Uh-huh. And so you got hold of what... tell us the ingredients that you got hold of?

FR: Seville oranges, sugar, water and orange blossom water.

CO: Whose idea was it to use the orange blossom water?

FR: Mine.

CO: Really?! Had you ever made anything with orange blossom water before?

FR: No.

CO: You are a clever girl!

FR: Yeah. [CO and ZR laugh]

CO: Now, Zoe, do help at all? A lot of chopping involved in making... making this kind of marmalade with Seville oranges.

ZR: There is a lot of chopping involved, but I did say to Flora, are you okay there? Do you want some help? But she insisted on doing it all herself. She actually really enjoyed the chopping part, believe it or not. Yeah, she just kind of got lost in it.

FR: Yeah.

ZR: You could just get lost in it, couldn’t you?

FR: [chuckling] Yeah, I really like chopping it.

CO: You didn't chop any of your fingers, though?

FR: No! [everyone chuckles]

CO: And then, how did you make it nice and thick? What did you add in order to make it... make it the right consistency?

FR: That's the pectin from the oranges. We put it in a little pack, and then we put it in to boil.

CO: Uh-huh. So you took all the pulp in the seeds, and you put them in a little bag, and then you boiled them with the orange pieces?

FR: Yeah.

CO: I'm getting all the tips, right, Flora? I'm learning how to make marmalade from you. [laughing]

ZR: Oh, she's giving it all away.

CO: But the orange blossom water is just a stroke of genius, I would say. And so now what becomes of

this? I mean, what happens now that you've won this prize? What do you get for that?

ZR: Oh, what happens, Flora?

FR: Umm, I get to go and see the marmalade making, and I got this spoon.

ZR: You got the silver spoon.

FR: Yeah.

ZR: And what's... what's the big prize. What do they do with your marmalade?

FR: Put it in Fortnum and Masons.

ZR: Fortnum and Masons.

CO: The department store?

ZR: Yes, that's right. So the store in London-Piccadilly, there's also one in Hong Kong. So Flora’s marmalade’s been reproduced and put on the shelves for people to buy and enjoy, hopefully.

CO: And what... what does the label say?

ZR: Oh, yes. It says Seville --

ZR AND FR: Seville Orange Marmalade.

ZR: And then,. underneath --

FR: Flora Rider.

ZR: Flora Rider. It has your name!

FR: Yeah.

ZR: Which is incredible!

CO: [chuckling] Flora… Flora, how do you feel when you see your name on a jar of marmalade in a department store? Do you... how do you think that's going to make you feel?

FR: Amazed!

ZR: Amazed.

CO: Are you going to make any more marmalades?

FR: Yes.

CO: What's your next project?

FR: Um, it's going to be elderflower marmalade.

CO: OK. And you know what? I'm just... I'm writing all this down, I'm stealing your ideas. [everyone chuckles] Flora, big congratulations to you. This is really quite extraordinary. And... and big thanks to your mum, Zoe. I'm sure she helped a lot with the encouragement, [chuckling] if not the shopping.

ZR: [laughing] Thanks so much.

CO: Thank you both. Bye, Flora.

FR: Bye!

CO: Bye, Zoe!

ZR: Bye, Carol. Lovely to speak to you today.

CO: You too! Bye.

ZR: Thank you. Take care. Bye-bye.

CH: Nine-year-old Flora Rider just became the youngest contestant to ever win the Homemade

Marmalade Awards. We reached Flora -- and her mother, Zoe -- on the Isle of Wight, England. You can find that interview and learn more about Flora's prize-winning preserve on our website: www.cbc.ca/aih.

[music: pop beat]

Montreal Canadiens Céline Dion

SOUNDCLIP

RAY FERRARO: A chance for Pacioretty, and now back the other way. They score!

[sound: a goal horn and many, many cheers]

RF: Artturi Lehkonen. It’s the Canadien! And Montreal is going to the Stanley Cup final!

CH: That's how it sounded last night when the Montreal Canadiens scored in overtime to eliminate the Las Vegas Golden Knights from the playoffs. The win sends the Habs to the Stanley Cup Finals for the first time since 1993. And it sends a strong message to one prankster in Las Vegas who thought they could play games with Céline Dion. Let me back up. Maybe you already heard, but on Tuesday night, during Game 5 of the series, a mysterious image appeared on the screen at the Las Vegas Golden Knights' arena. The scandalous photo appeared to show Céline Dion in a Golden Knights' jersey. To be fair, our national treasure often graces Sin City with sold-out performances. But she would never sell out and betray her beloved Canadiens. Before yesterday's game, Ms. Dion settled the score -- so the Habs could settle the series. She tweeted a Happy Saint-Jean-Baptiste day to all Quebeckers, and added, "By the way, I have nothing to do with this photo... And you know what photo I'm talking about!"

[music: indie rock]

Part 2: Afghanistan Withdrawal, Ancient Shark Attack

Afghanistan Withdrawal

Guest: Orzala Nemat

CH: This afternoon, Joe Biden welcomed Ashraf Ghani to Washington. The American and Afghan presidents met at a pivotal moment. US forces are rapidly withdrawing from Afghanistan -- so rapidly that they're expected to beat President Biden's September 11th deadline. But the Taliban are moving just as fast. They've launched a wave of attacks that have seen them seize power in more than 50 districts in the past two months. Most of the price of that violence is being paid by Afghan civilians. Orzala Nemat is the CEO of the Kabul-based civil society organization, the Afghan Research and Evaluation Unit. We reached her in London.

CO: Orzala, how critical a moment is this for Afghanistan?

ORZALA NEMAT: I think it is a critical moment for Afghanistan after 20 years of massive international presence. But what is more important at this very critical juncture is the fate of the Afghan people -- over 30 million population. Of whom, over 65 million are young people in the age of 25 and below. So it's a drastic situation. There is unemployment, poverty, humanitarian crisis and the war still ongoing.

CO: What's your greatest fear for Afghan population at this point?

ON: The basic and the most grave concern is security. Afghan lives are no longer safe, neither the civilians, I mean, let alone the military. They make a choice to become military and take arms and fight either on the government side or the anti-government side. But it is the general population that are really fearing for this war. The war is more concerned about for those who are working within the civil society, those who are working a civilian like non-military government posts. And those who are influential but not necessarily taking side in the conflict. So if two things are happening at the same time, there is a general war ongoing, and there is targeted assassination that makes everyone extremely worried at this point.

CO: How much control does Ashraf Ghani and the Kabul government have over the country? How much... how much of it is under their control at this point?

ON: Neither government of President Ghani nor the Taliban have full control of any place. There are elements of Taliban presence in the city of Kabul, you know, running military operations, sticking bombs into the civilian vehicles. They have presence that they have the capability of too, that run like operating with suicide bombings and MIEDs, which are the magnetic explosives or even mining different parts. There are areas with Taliban stronger influence or presence. And these areas are places where government elements are also operating there, such as intelligence when they go back and report to the government to come and bomb them. And we... we... we see that's happening on a frequent basis. So control is a problematic term. But in terms of, you know, what is going on now, there are fights over, you know, administrative offices such as district headquarters. And this is becoming a very insane and honourific kind of situation is emerging in the last week or so. As a result of which, Taliban are making offensives to take over a certain number of districts. And then the government has to send forces and take them back. And this fight in between, no one is really safe. There are floods of bullets going back and forth on both sides. And you just look at that and imagine like these are not over, you know, empty places. They are not like over stones and soil. It's over people's houses. People's houses have been used as a warfront. But we can see that we are heading towards an anarchism, which is extremely, extremely worrying

CO: And anarchy at the same time that the country is just awash with weapons. There are... the possibility of civil war is now on everyone's minds... well, devolving into further civil war. What is your greatest concern, given how many different factions, militias, civilians who now have weaponry? What do you see this devolving into?

ON: At the moment, the government, apparently their spokesperson, are trying to frame this and say it's a people's uprising. We just endorse it. They are working under the government control, and they are not going to act on themselves. But that's a very unproved kind of a statement to make because the history proves that these things are impossible. As soon as you give the arms in the hand of young population who are jobless, who are deprived of, you know, basic facilities, they will just take the law in their hands. Gun is force, its power. They have the power in their hands and acts according to their individual wishes.

CO: It's impossible not to compare this situation, this withdrawal, to the... to that time of the 1990s. The civil wars led to a failed state in Afghanistan and resulted in 9/11 itself. I mean, shouldn't that history be haunting the Biden administration as it does its pullout?

ON: We are in a different context. Of course, this is a different era from the 90s. Obviously, we are agreeing on that. But then there are similarities, as you said, and similarities are simple as this: abandoning Afghanistan, stopping aid and assistance to the country, stopping support to the government in Afghan is undoubtedly not leading only to a 9/11, but... but to... to... to things that probably will be worse and will... will be multiple targeting situations. Because now, also, we know that terror networks are also much more sophisticated as opposed to the time of 9/11 with all the social media and, you know, networks and mobilities and so forth. So I think there's a huge level of responsibility of the United States and its allies to ensure that humanitarian assistance, development assistance and particularly military assistance continues to the government of Afghanistan, not because of the current leadership. I mean, I'm not supporting the current leadership because leaderships come and go. But because this system, despite its failures, despite the corruption, despite, you know, a lot of internal issues that it has, is the only system that can, to a large scale, succeed and sustain, you know, the gains of the past 20 years, the investments of the past 20 years.

CO: Orzala, we will be watching, given the loss of life that Afghans have suffered. Also Canadians, Americans who have been in that country. It is of great consequence to all of us. And so, we will watch, and we will be following it. Thank you so much for speaking with us.

ON: You're welcome. It's a pleasure.

CH: Orzala Nemat is the CEO of the Afghan Research and Evaluation Unit. She's in London.

[music: Spanish guitar]

Car Dealership Residential School Conversation

CH: JoLee Sasakamoose knew that yesterday would be emotional. Ms. Sasakamoose was bracing herself for the announcement about the hundreds of umarked graves at the former Marieval Residential School in Saskatchewan. She teaches a Masters course on Indigenous family therapy at the University of Regina, and she was prepared to talk about the news with her students. What she wasn't prepared for was a profound conversation with a stranger about the deaths. She told CBC Saskatoon what happened.

SOUNDCLIP

JOLEE SASAKAMOOSE: Well, I knew the announcement was coming. I'm close to several band members, so I knew there was an announcement coming. And in preparation for that, we started calling on the psychiatrist, and the counsellors, the elders and knowledge keepers we knew had availability to take clients right away. And then I got a flat tire taking my son to school. I had to drive right to the dealership and get it repaired. And I was sitting in the Subaru service lobby when Chief Cadmus came on the television. So I was fully expecting to hear what we heard until he said the number. When he said the number 751, my body just had a trauma response. I felt like I'd been punched in the stomach. I was already weeping, but my ability to contain it, I actually didn't even realize that I was in a lobby anywhere. And I just profoundly wept. There was about an 80-year-old white man sitting at a table across from me. And, you know, I present white as well. I'm very fair. And he made this comment, and he said, you know, we just didn't know. How could we have known? How could any of us had known that this was happening? And I've heard that before. And it was a profound moment. And we just started to engage in a conversation, and I told them who I was and where I was from. And... and we just talked candidly. And I... and I knew he didn't have the language. He was... you know, he asked, is this OK if I say this? Is this OK if I say that? But he was genuinely hurt, you know? Maybe not as much as Indigenous people, but he genuinely felt ashamed and embarrassed and hurt and angry that he didn't know. And I think that's a common reaction that we're feeling across the province, across the country. We're just all in shock and awe. And it's a painful, painful awareness. A lot of people ask, you know, what they can do? And I think what you can do depends on where you are and who you are. So some of us just learning this. That might be the most you can do in a day, right? Just learn what you can. I really try to share with my students, try to learn where the inequities are. Learn that we don't have the same rights. Understand why we're always advocating as Indigenous people, or some people would perceive us as fighting because we're constantly disrupting things. Think about things like why do we have to ask this much? Why do we have to ask in 2021, knowing everything, knowing the TRC exists and all of this reconciliation that's supposed to happen, why are we still asking permission for things that are rightfully ours? I think those are the questions that we can take up in our homes and in our communities and our organizations and start to be advocates. And to get to know Indigenous people, get to build relationships with people. Because that's the only way change will happen is through relationships.

CH: That was JoLee Sasakamoose speaking to CBC Saskatoon.

[music: ambient]

Ancient Shark Attack

Guest: Alyssa White

CH: As archaeologists, Alyssa White and her colleagues are used to solving ancient mysteries. But recently they found themselves with an especially puzzling cold case on their hands: a 3,000-year-old skeleton with nearly 800 injuries all told. Gashes and puncture wounds that defied all explanations they could come up with. Except one.

SOUNDCLIP

[music: the tense ‘Jaws’ theme by John Williams and the London Symphony Orchestra]

CH: No, not John Williams and the London Symphony Orchestra. A shaaaaark attack. And Ms. White says it's the oldest known shark attack on the books. She's a PhD candidate in the School of Archaeology at the University of Oxford. We reached her in Auburn, Alabama.

CO: Alyssa, how did your team first come across these ancient remains?

ALYSSA WHITE: We first came across them in 2016 when we were at Kyoto University investigating prehistoric violence during the Jomon period of Japan. My supervisor, another doctoral student, and I were looking for evidence of human conflict. And on the last day, in the last hour, as these things go, we came across the bones of individual number 24 from Tsukumo mound. And we were really puzzled by the number of what seemed like sharp force lesions to his body.

CO: So you suspected from this that this person had suffered severe trauma. What did you find?

AW: When I was able to actually go back a year later and record the lesions in detail, we found that he has at least 790 traumatic lesions to his body. They're located primarily on his... his legs, his... his hips area, arms and the... the front part of the chest and abdomen.

CO: When you say his body, we're talking about his bones, right? Because these remains are 3,000 years old.

AW: Yes, definitely skeletal remains at that point.

CO: What were the initial theories? What... because you said you're looking for conflict among the remains that you were seeing. So what made... what were your first theories as to what had happened to this man?

AW: Our first theories were, A, that maybe it was caused by human conflict because some of the lesions almost mimic wounds caused by metal weapons. But we couldn't figure out why someone would cause those kinds of lesions just because there are so many and certain parts of the body. And additionally, there aren't metal weapons from this period in Japanese prehistory. And we eventually ruled out terrestrial carnivores and scavengers and things like that. And then we began looking further afield. And when we were trying to look for maybe marine causes, we came across an archaeological example of a shark attack from Florida. And we went, oh, this is incredibly similar. And then we began to really go at it from there.

CO: And so the wounds on these... these remains indicate he got really, really chewed up, right? So maybe just describe what you suspect this poor man went through in his final throes with this shark?

AW: So most likely, he was in deeper water, out fishing with companions; his community were fishers, hunters, gatherers. And his right leg was missing at the time of burial. It's actually fantastic. We have a photo from the excavations that took place around 1920 of his original burial. So we know that the leg just wasn't kind of lost over the years. So it wasn't there when he was buried. And we have bite marks around the hips. He's also missing his left hand at the time of burial. And there's bite marks around his wrist. And his left leg was buried kind of on top of him in an inverted position, meaning that it wasn't attached to him when he was buried.

CO: Yikes! Wow!

AW: [chuckling] Right. So there's a lot of very severe trauma. And what we can begin to piece together is that most likely, you have a concentration of injuries to the lower body because he was maybe swimming or something in the shark came from below. Probably the right leg was removed during the attack. And you tend to get injuries to the hands as the defensive motion in shark attacks. And he probably lost his left hand in trying to defend himself from attack from below. So it's a bit of a gruesome story, but because of the sheer number of wounds, we can begin to piece it together quite coherently.

CO: It must be so chilling when you do that when you look at something like these remains, and you start to imagine what the final moments of this man's life were probably like?

AW: it can be. I certainly talked to him a lot while I was working with him. [chuckling] But, at first, it was what... what happened to you? What caused all of these marks? And then later it was, oh, dear, there's another one. Because I kept on finding more and more injuries. Oh, no, I… you... you feel for him a lot.

CO: Makes you never want to get back in the water.

AW: You're more likely to be killed by a falling coconut than in a shark attack.

CO: [laughing] All right. Thank you for that. [laughing some more] That's very, very helpful. But now, the other part of it is it's so interesting that the way that he was buried, that he was there was a ceremony, he was taken someplace. Someone had to retrieve not only his body but a limb that had been severed, right? So what evidence is from the grave that you can see how he... how he interacted, how he was treated by his community?

AW: He seems to have been treated no differently, which is, I think, the important part. He was a member of his community. And this was just a very rare thing to have occurred -- the way that he died, likely died. But he was just a member of his community. He was buried in, you know, almost like a crouched position within a shell mound within his communal cemetery. And he had to have been recovered relatively quickly. His bones weren't out in the water for a long time. So he's obviously someone who was cared for and, you know, taken care of within that group.

CO: It's one thing to know about just the general history of a time, but another thing to put together a story of somebody from 3,000 years ago from the research that you did. It must be quite extraordinary to do that?

AW: It's really exciting, especially to have so much evidence there that we can really begin to understand what happened to him and be able to tell the story coherently. The chances of someone being in a shark attack, one, this severe. And then to have been buried in a shell mound that protected his bones from the relatively acidic soil in Japan that usually erode organic material quite quickly. And then, for us to find him and be able to investigate his remains, it's quite remarkable.

CO: Well, is it a great story, and I appreciate your work, and... and telling us about it. And I will look out for falling coconuts.

AW: Thank you.

CO: [chuckling] Thank you, Alyssa.

CH: Alyssa White is a PhD candidate in the School of Archaeology at the University of Oxford. Her supervisor and co-author is Rick Schulting. And we reached Ms. White in Auburn, Alabama.

[music: elevator music]

FOA: Andy Wells Obit

CH: As one reporter put it this morning, Andy Wells was arguably the most colourful politician in a province known for being colourful. Mr. Wells, the former mayor of St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador, has died. Over the years, we watched and listened with wonder and delight as Mr. Wells lit up St. John's city council. And most of those sparks came from his clashes with fellow politician John Murphy. Like this one, where Mayor Murphy reacts to then-city councillor Wells calling him vain.

SOUNDCLIP

JOHN MURPHY: Where's the vain remarks?

ANDY WELLS: You’re a vain, vain, pretentious person.

JM: Yeah, OK.

AW: This letter exudes it.

JM: All right. What are the remarks? You cannot say that without backing it up with remarks. Where are the remarks?

AW: You worship your own filth. Your letter. The contents of your letter.

JM: No, just just tell me what is vain?

AW: No one in this town’s got treated fairly as far as you're concerned. Your house wasn't suitable for bringing the family up in. Look at this house here. Only someone whose --

JM: What is the vain, condescending remarks?

AW: Throw out your whole letter.

JM: No, no, you can't say throw my letter out.

AW: I can!

JM No, you've got to tell me, what are the vain, condescending remarks?

AW: Where's the first page?

JM: You accuse me of being vain and condescending.

AW: Yeah, I've got to find my first page now. I got ten minutes?

JM: No, you haven't got ten minutes.

AW: I have been seven years as mayor. And as you know, when I took over the previous council, of which you were a member, had left the city in a very disheartening --

JM: You don’t need to read the whole letter. The letter has been circulated.

AW: That’s nonsense!

CH: That was then-St John's city councillor Andy Wells and then-mayor John Murphy in a heated debate over... a letter. In case you didn't catch that. Andy Wells was the kind of guy who could make anything interesting. Even the weather. Which is what we called him up to talk about in May of 2001, when he was mayor.

SOUNDCLIP

MARY LOU FINLAY: Hi, Mayor Wells.

AW: Well, how much snow did we have yesterday?

MLF: [chuckling] Mayor Wells?

AW: Hello.

MLF: Hi.

AW: How are you?

MLF: I'm very well. How's the weather?

AW: Well, it is not snowing today, but it is certainly not Spring Lake as you Uper Canadians understand it.

MLF: How's the driving?

AW: Oh, it’s pretty good. I mean, you know, whatever snow we have this time of the year, and we can still get nailed, it will not stick around because it is getting somewhat milder.

MLF: You hope!

AW: Well, yeah, we live in hope. What was it? You live in hope and die in despair, the old saying goes.

MLF: Last time you and I had a chat about the weather, it was, you know, you were asking for snow ploughs from Nova Scotia and New Brunswick --

AW: Snow blowers.

MLF: Snow blowers to come and help you. But that was March. It's May, for heaven's sakes!

AW: Yes. Well, sure. Can I ask you what your point is? [both laughing] We had 20 centimetres yesterday. I was just advised.

MLF: Oh, 20 centimetres!

AW: Yeah!

MLF: But you broke all the records long ago?

AW: Oh, yeah. We're up to the record previous for I think it was 127 years was 594 centimetres. As of yesterday, we are now at around 635, heading to 640. So the record was broken a long time ago. That's correct. Many snowflakes ago.

MLF: You're not thinking of moving, though?

AW: No. A friend of mine was here yesterday and he summed it up for me. He said, look, Newfoundlanders, look, there's no sense in Newfoundlanders complaining about the climate. If you don't like the climate b’y, go live somewhere else. So I never complain about the weather. It's something we've got to live with here and put up with. And it's the price of living in this province.

MLF: Well, we think that you're very brave.

AW: Brave? [deep laugh] I got no choice! [laughing]

MLF: All right. Mayor Wells, nice to talk to you again.

AW: OK, Mary Lou.

MLF: And give... give everybody there a big warm hug for us.

AW: I certainly will. I'm a huggable sort.

MLF: [chuckling] Bye

BARBARA BUDD: Isn’t he just? You gotta love him. The unflappable Andy Wells is the mayor of St. John's, Newfoundland.

CH: That was Barbara Budd, of course. From our archives, that was Andy Wells speaking with former "As It Happens" host Mary Lou Finlay in 2001. The former mayor of St. John's has died.

[music: elevator music]

Part 3: Restored Rembrandt, Encore: Border Songs - Jim Lynch

Restored Rembrandt

Guest: Robert Erdmann

CH: For centuries, Rembrandt's gigantic masterpiece, "The Night Watch", has long been a national treasure in the Netherlands. But actually, it's only most of a national treasure: shortly after its creation, Dutch authorities trimmed the 17th-century painting -- a little off the top and sides. That's kind of hard to imagine. Harder to imagine is exactly what got sliced off. But now, scientists at the Rijksmuseum have temporarily restored the painting to its original glory -- with the help of artificial intelligence. Robert Erdmann is the senior scientist at the Rijksmuseum. We reached him in Amsterdam.

CO: Robert, first of all, what was missing from this Rembrandt masterpiece?

ROBERT ERDMANN: When the original Night Watch was painted, it was quite a bit bigger than it is now. And when the painting was transferred from the [militia's club house] to the city hall, it wouldn't fit between the two doors where they wanted to place it. So they ended up cutting off all four sides of the painting. The biggest chunk on the left side, about 63 centimetres there. And this actually left the painting minus the top of a... of an arch. Three figures were cut off of the left side, the backs of a couple of figures on the right side and the ground into which the main figures were walking was also removed from the bottom.

CO: Yikes! And how big... this is a huge canvas in the first place, isn't it? How big was it before they did the trimming?

RE: Yeah. Well, we don't know the exact original size, but it was probably about five metres wide and about four metres tall.

CO: And so... so they cut it down to size. And so you decided that, well, after all these... this was done years ago, right, in the early 1700s that they did the trimming?

RE: That's right, 1715.

CO: Why has it taken till now to figure out a way to actually restore that?

RE: The term restoration could be confusing. This is really just a temporary exhibition in which we're sort of imagining what these pieces would be like. So, yeah, we are fortunate in this case that there was a small copy made by a different painter, Gerrit Lundens, before The Night Watch was cut down. It's less than 20 per cent of full scale. And this is actually owned by the National Gallery in London. But it's been generously on long-term loan at the national museum here, the Rijksmuseum. So we have an idea from a different painter at a different scale with a different style and different palette of what the missing parts looked like.

CO: And this imagining that you're doing is quite sophisticated, right? This isn't a bunch of you sitting around in a room trying to figure this out. [both chuckling] You... you turned to artificial intelligence.

RE: Yeah, that's right. I mean, certainly, we could have hired an artist to imagine translating the style of this small copy by Lundens into that of Rembrandt. But in this case, we wanted to remove the influence of the artist and to really see if we could use the latest technology to make a direct translation from the style of this much smaller painting to the style of The Night Watch.

CO: Run us through the process of how you... how you recreated these missing parts of the painting?

RE: So the good news about the copy is that it was very thorough in its capturing of the content. You know, if there's four buttons on one figure, there's four buttons on the... on the matching figure and so on. But the... the bad news is that it's much smaller. A lot of the geometry is not quite right. The angles of heads and the relative proportions of figures and so on are a bit different, and the palettes are also different. So there was a multistep process to make this translation. So we used a neural network to first find more than 10,000 matching details between the two paintings. This would then enable a second neural network to find a way to kind of distort the copy so that it would be very precisely aligned so that these slight geometric differences that I mentioned would no longer be present. So feature for feature down to the smallest detail, both the copy and the original Night Work… Night Watch would be aligned. And then, this enabled the final step, which I like to call sending the computer to art school, where essentially we would cut up each of the virtual paintings into thousands of little tiles. And then I gave this to a neural network to teach it how to translate from the style, the scale because, of course, when you paint something at a small scale, it's quite different than when you painted it full scale -- so translating from the style and the scale and the palette of the copy up into the style, scale and palette of the Rembrandt. Once this training process is done, then we could ask this neural network to recreate the missing parts in the style, palette and scale of The Night Watch.

CO: Do you think that maybe instead of sending a computer to art school, you could have hired someone who had been to art school to do that?

RE: Yeah, absolutely. And that would have been a reasonable choice. But then, it's quite likely that we would also get the style of that artist. And that... that's fine, but we wanted to see if we could do that without having the hand of an artist in there. So the most direct translation from the style of Lundens to the style of Rembrandt,

CO: Has this ever been done before?

RE: Broadly, style transfer is something that's quite an active research area in artificial intelligence. But this is a bit different because style transfer doesn't usually have to respect the geometry so perfectly. And in this case, the extension of The Night Watch had to perfectly align with The Night Watch. So, where The Night Watch was cut off, the continuation had to match in every way down to the smallest detail. Otherwise, it would have ruined the illusion of the continuation.

CO: Just what is the story in this painting? This is a... this is a large canvas, very busy. Just tell us what's going on in it?

RE: Sure. It's a civic guard portrait that used to hang next to a number of other civic guard portraits. So this was the civic guard for the Second District in Amsterdam. And it was quite innovative for its day because they would traditionally just be a bunch of musketeers and so on posed or sitting around a dinner table. But in this case, they're very active. They're posed in front of a building, and they're setting off. And there is a sort of glowing girl who's kneeling in the left of centre of the painting. She's the sort of symbol of the militia company, and they're about to set off on a mission to step out of the painting towards the left.

CO: Wow! What do you think he would think of [laughing] your... your recovery of his work in this way?

RE: [laughing] Ummm, I like to think that since Rembrandt was himself very innovative, he was willing to try new techniques constantly and invent new ways of doing things, that he would appreciate this sense of what we've done. The rest would be pure speculation. [chuckling]

CO: You better hope so! [both chuckling] You might get a curse on your painting or something. [RE laughing] Robert, it's good to talk to you. Thank you.

RE: Thank you very much.

CO: Bye-bye.

RE: Bye.

CH Robert Erdmann is the senior scientist at the Rijksmuseum. He's in Amsterdam. And you can find more on that story and see images of the Rembrandt painting on our website: www.cbc.ca/aih.

[music: upbeat]

Encore: Border Songs - Jim Lynch

CH: The longest international border between two countries has been closed for 461 days now. As you are likely very well aware, non-essential travel between Canada and the US has been restricted since March 21, 2020. Which means people separated from their loved ones -- and politicians on both sides of the border -- are getting increasingly frustrated. The last time there was this kind of tension around the normally tranquil border was in the months following the 9/11 terrorism attack. That's when U.S. politicians turned their attention to the mostly unguarded border to the north. And communities separated by little more than a ditch in Washington State and British Columbia were suddenly being patrolled for terrorists. That last event inspired author Jim Lynch to write his 2009 book "Border Songs." It's about the War on Terror and the War on Drugs -- and a very tall, very unusual Border Patrol agent named Brandon Vanderkool. But it's also about what separates us, and what makes us the same. With the news that the border will remained closed until at least July 21st, we've decided to revisit that conversation. From our archives, here is Carol speaking with Jim Lynch in the "As It Happens" studio, in 2009.

SOUNDCLIP

CO: Jim Lynch, welcome to the “As It Happens” studio.

JIM LYNCH: Thank you for having me.

CO: This entire novel takes place over… [chuckling] in a very small area, actually, over the Canada-U.S. border between British Columbia and Washington State. And it's really not much more than a ditch. But yet, it's this huge thing. I mean, for Canadians, this border is so enormous. And for these people, it becomes so enormous. Why did you think that the border could have... could sustain a novel like this, this little section of it?

JL: Well, it's a really interesting 30-mile section of it because it's one of the busier sections of the border. It's at the very western end. And I’d travelled back and through it as a kid and then as an adult, as a reporter. And I fell in love with the idea of it as a setting for... for a novel when I did reporting right after 9/11 up there. And at that point, they were tripling the Border Patrol up there. And it just all struck me as fascinating in that you had all these green and white SUVs with the Border Patrol patrolling the heck out of what essentially looked like farmlands. And so you had this rural, casual countryside that was suddenly getting transformed by all this... all this tension. And when they were beefing up the patrols, they weren't catching terrorists. What they were catching was primarily marijuana smugglers. And so, kind of the closer I looked, the more fun it looked as... as a both provocative and potentially humorous story.

CO: What state do... you live in the United States, but where abouts in?

JL: Washington state. So, I'm two-and-a-half hours from the border down south of Seattle.

CO: So it's based on where you live. But we can… can we safely assume that... that Brandon Vanderkool, your central character, who's, what... six foot eight?

JL: Right.

CO: Dyslexic, an oddball in every possible sense. This is not autobiographical.

JL: [both laughing] No, this isn't. And I'm still kind of trying to figure out where Brandon came from. But, in part, I wanted to have an unusual character at the centre of this very unusual place. And I started out with him being extraordinarily large because the protagonist of my last novel was extraordinarily small. And so I thought I could... I could write big. And then as I developed him, I wanted him to see things in a way that other characters don't. And I wanted him to have a kind of a different kind of vision. And I'd always been interested in Temple Grandin’s books about how her autism allowed her to understand animal behaviour so well but she found human behaviour to be such a mystery. And so I kind of borrowed some of that... that thought line.

CO: And then, to have Brandon Vanderkool become the kind of uber cop, the guy who's patrolling the border, he becomes famous throughout the United States because he's so good at catching people, this kind of gentle giant who really would rather be... in fact, catches most of his, most of the... the culprits because he's out birdwatching instead of being on duty. I mean, why did you think he would make this interesting border police?

JL: Well, I thought it'd be fun to have a guy who... who hss grown up in this area, and yet he is a rookie Border Patrol agent. So he suddenly looking at his neighbourhood or his scene where he grew up through these different eyes. And I liked him being hyper observant in a way that... that he tunes into birds and... and he looks for ways to make art out of the landscape. And in the process, he can't help but notice that the criminals and the illegals and so on trespassing through. And I just feel that it created kind of a fun momentum to the book.

CO: He gets caught up in the spirit of the work. But at the same time, he just... he has no stomach for it when he is finding illegal immigrants packed in the backs and the bottoms of cars and trucks, and... and these people just trying to get into the United States to work or trying to get ahead, or even these poor people who can't speak a word of English. It breaks his heart, doesn't it, that he has to take them in?

JL: Well, it does. And it conflicts with what he's been told. You know, he's... he's a young man and he's been told, you know, look out for these terrorists. They might be carrying nuclear devices. And he's warned about how these illegals are all liars and tricksters. And he instead just finds these, you know, scared, scared, sympathetic people.

CO: But he also finds bales and bales of marijuana being smuggled over the border. [chuckling]

JL: Right. And it does correspond historically, you know, that in this time period that I'm writing about, which is kind of the 2002, 2003 window, there was an incredible spike of marijuana smuggling. And I think part of it was the Canadian dollar was down or whatever. But it was just a remarkable export going out of British Columbia during that stretch. And BC bud was... was the rage on the West Coast and throughout some of the rest of U.S. So it has some truth to... to the craziness there.

CO: But in the end, because Brandon catches so many of these... these characters and well, one, the belief that one of them is actually a terrorist who's trying to get across with his marijuana, which is an odd kind of falls… it starts to unravel almost as soon as it comes out. But it's a story, you know, too good to check on the part of reporters and politicians. They end up putting up CCTV cameras and watching every move people make. There is just this scrutiny. And this microcosm of your 30 miles of border becomes really what we've come to see happening across the Canadian-U.S. border, isn't it?

JL: Well, I think so. And to me, it's always interesting from the U.S. side because Americans seem to forget the border exists until they suddenly are reminded that it exists, and then they're alarmed that it's so wide open. And so, every time we get alarmed that it's wide open, members of Congress push for more security and the cameras go up and the... and the border patrols double. And it really feels like if you if you ride around with the Border Patrol agents and you... and you look at it all, and they keep telling you, like they tell me, that, you know, we only catch the stupid ones. It really makes me wonder if we're not just always rebuilding this illusion of security? Because I don't really think... the border is so unguardable that to think that you're actually sealing it off is somewhat silly, in my mind.

CO: How did you do the research about the cross-border trade and the cross-border criminality?

JL: Well, a lot of it was spent riding around with Border Patrol agents who... who are dealing with this stuff on a daily basis. And then I also just... I was a reporter for... for a long time. And so I just researched U.S. and Canadian stories on it. And so a lot of it was somewhat journalistic in gathering all the information I could find about what actually does go on and then adding my own imagination to it. And included in that is I did talk to people in the cannabis industry, so to speak, in British Columbia who claimed that they weren't actually smugglers, but they knew what kind of... what the smugglers did. And... and so I talked to growers and people close to the whole operations.

CO: When you add your own imagination to it, this is when, of course, it becomes not just a novel, it becomes incredibly interesting. And I just want to explore with you what the border represents. It’s the metaphor of this border between us. You know, between you and I, there is a border. And it is a line that we in Canada have a love/hate relationship with. And how did... how did you see the border? How did you absorb that idea?

JL: Well, I guess as... as I kind of said, the closer I looked at it, the more nonsensical it seemed, at least from... from the U.S. side because we're not fending off Canadian aggression. And all it does is seem to be in place to kind of hassle the honest people to some degree. So I'm just not exactly sure. I can see the advantages from... from Canada's angle that... that you've got this big, often overbearing and often obnoxious neighbour that you need to have at least a thin line between you. But I'm not really clear on what the American upside is to it. I don't really buy the fact that it's shielding us from your so-called lax immigration policies.

CO: As far as, though, the difference between us, I mean, that... we hear so often, more often from Americans, that there's no difference between us and we have this hyper consciousness that we're different, of course, we’re different, except that we are so similar in so many ways. And the distinctions are only there, as you point out, when we want them to be. How did you see Canadians and Americans being different?

JL: I think that well, the cliche in America is that the Canadians are so polite, of course. But... but I find Canadians just flat out more engaging -- that there's a higher percentage of people who you can just have conversations with. And it strikes me as more like London in that regard, just my own personal perspective. But I also feel that I just feel that there's more of a European flavour to Canada. And I think that what is different about the border focus in large part is that in the United States, 95 per cent of the people live a long ways away from the border. And in Canada, you know, 90 per cent or whatever it is, live within 100 miles of the border. And so, it's... it's in your consciousness so much more than it is down below. And when Americans think of the border, they think of Mexico, you know, they think of the Rio Grande.

CO: The difference, this vast difference between these two peoples is, [laughing] of course, all the more ironic and amusing when you have, as you do, these characters like Wayne Russo, who's the I guess the quintessential Canadian in your story, who's a dope smoking former teacher who basically tries to keep reinventing the light bulb [both chuckling] in his basement, and who's shouting over the ditch, over the U.S. Canada border at poor dairy farmer Norm Vanderkool, who he just keeps trying to educate. And so maybe you can talk about these two characters and how much fun you must have had writing them?

JL: Yeah, well, thank you, because actually it was a lot of fun to write ‘em. And they were actually based in just a very American setting of when I was growing up, my father had a neighbour who he constantly was having a battle with. My dad's a very peaceful guy, but my dad's a liberal man and this conservative moved in next door, and they used to have these arguments over the fence. And it kind of was rooted in that personally. But I like the idea of having a bombastic, in-your-face Canadian right over the border. And I like the contrast of the fact that Norm is a basically inarticulate, by comparison, simple conservative American farmer. And yet, they're both endearing in their own right. You can understand the disconnect that they have, and they even have some begrudging respect of each other. And so, it just always struck me that when these neighbourhoods on one side of the ditch are Canadians, on one side of the ditch are Americans, that... that was something that just kind of fed my imagination, that... that it would be a forum that I could have these kinds of discussions and that they'd be fun.

CO: And Norm Vanderkool, the dairy farmer on the American side, has so many certainties, or he wants to have certainties. He's sure of what's right and wrong. He's sure of what the United States is. He's sure of the American heroes of his history. And Wayne keeps trying. He's challenging him on every certainty, constantly, every single day. But both of them are so uncertain.

JL: That's very true. And... and I kind of feel like all the characters in the novel, with the exception of Brandon, are kind of desperately trying to squeeze more out of life. And I feel that that urgency is kind of grows out of the time that they're in, that this kind of post-9/11 uncertainty and urgency about what we're doing with our lives. And... and I like the contrast from all of them and all their insecurities with Brandon, who's considered the most peculiar of them all, by and large, by... by everybody else. But yet... yet he's actually the one who's who's fully living and and truly alive.

CO: And he's looking for love in all the wrong places.

JL: [both laughing] Yes. Well, he doesn't really know how to... how to look for... for love. He's just trying to get some decent human relationship, some decent human communication. And it just so happens that the one person he feels strongly about is the one who is dipping into the marijuana culture in Canada, Madeline.

CO: And over the... over the ditch, too.

JL: Right.

CO And he's supposed to be watching these things. Now, why did you make Brandon a birder? He loves birds. Why did you do that?

JL: Part of it was just because, like most of the novel, it rose up out of the setting and there's an incredible amount of bird life there. And so, when I was trying to bring the story to life, I started getting interested in birding. And I hadn't been much of a birder before then. But I started following around people who are excellent birders. And... and they just seemed like so good at seeing things that the rest of us miss, that it seemed metaphorically appropriate for what the storyline was going to be.

CO: And also, the idea that birds, North American birds, know no borders.

JL: Right.

CO: I mean, they are constantly flying over our borders. And I was amused just recently that much was made of the fact that the... the... the…. the plane that went down in the Hudson River coming out of LaGuardia, which was sabotaged by Canada geese that they've just recently discovered, not just Canada geese from New York... upper New York State, but Canada geese from Newfoundland specifically. They did isotope DNA on them to be sure they were Canadian.

JL: Unbelievable.

CO: My God! These are geese. They go back and forth. But there was that obsessive need to know they weren't American geese that did this.

JL: Yeah, American geese wouldn't do that.

CO: [laughing] No, of course, they wouldn’t. Only those Newfoundland geese would.

JL: Absolutely!

CO: But this border is... is just so fascinating for us, especially now that the United States is cracking down on our border activity. And are you conscious of that, that you are actually going to come into a historical period when you wrote the book?

JL: Well, it was one of those subjects where... where I kept expecting my plot to be outdone by reality. And... and since it was a plot that I pulled in part from reality because there's so much juicy material out there, when you guys have a Molson brewery up here that's converted into a marijuana growing operation and tunnels are built under the border to smuggle and so on, all of that I use as material. But it seems to me that the border is forever going to be a flashpoint, and it's going to go in and out of vogue as far as just how much it is in the forefront of the news. But I don't... I can't really imagine it ever going away or changing all that dramatically, you know, in a tamer direction.

CO: But even the idea that we are a source of drugs for the United States, my God, the amount of drugs that come over the border to Canada from the United States through... actually, from Mexico.

JL: Right.

CO: And plus, you know, the guns to help support them is staggering. I mean, it does really go the other way, far more than toward the United States. Is there a perception of that?

JL: I don't know. I just know that when I was up there on the border, what... what they said was... was the common exchange was guns and cocaine going north for marijuana going south. [CO chuckles] That was… that was the daily commerce.

CO: As far as you know, this... this border of ours is, of course, in the Canadian-U.S. imagination, I mean, this is one... the border hasn't really existed for us for so long. I mean, we believe that somehow we have... we have a right to go down there and buy cheap towels, damn it. [laughing]

JL: Right.

CO: And Americans have a right to come here when they want to. And do you think there'll ever be a time when we... when we see ourselves as one?

JL: I don't know. I get the impression, though, that Canada would rather that doesn't happen, that... that a majority of Canadians would like to keep a distinct difference from the United States. And I can kind of understand that because our culture and our corporations overrun our borders as it is. But it does strike me as bizarre that... that two neighbouring peaceful nations have to go through the rigmarole that we both have to go through to cross the border. When France and Germany, you can... you can drive right across in those old warring nations and you don't even have to check in. So it seems anachronistic, but I don't really hear anybody trying to, you know, vote for getting rid of it.

CO: Your title, “Border Songs”, what are the songs that you hear when... when you write this book? What are the... what are the songs we should hear?

JL: Well, the title kind of came from, obviously, that… that Brandon, the central character, is very tuned into birdsongs up along the border. But... but more so, just that.. that I tell the story through... through five different heads. And it feels... feels kind of operatic to me when I'm... when I'm writing it, that... that each one of these characters has this kind of yearning, emotional song that... that they're singing. So that's the way I was looking at the title.

CO: Jim, maybe before we say goodbye to you, maybe you can read some of your book for us?

JL: Yeah, I'd be happy to. The section I'd like to read is…. it's... it's a summary section that comes right after Brandon has made a bust that he kind of lucked into that... that has created a big stir. And so this is what follows.

JL [reading] As the story lingered, reporters scrambled over one another for fresh angles, casting the western end of the border as a farmer's, retirees and outlaws paradise. Or dredging up its rum running days, and its historical ebb and flow of legal and illegal commerce. Papers ran fever charts showing recent spikes and bud seizures and alien captures. Or highlighted the country's differences in immigration and drug laws. Old stories were rewritten with more hype, particularly on the study that identified 50 active terrorist groups in Canada. Editorialists, bloggers and cartoonists piled on as the outrage swelled. While Mexican farmlands faced a gauntlet of fences and agents and vigilantes, terrorists were driving across the unguarded northern border with tanks full of explosives. Congressmen were demanding more studies and greater investments in security. Not to be out alarmed, Washington's governor offered the state's National Guard and the same Minutemen exasperating BP's along the southern border vowed to help seal the north. Meanwhile, sales of deadbolts and canned goods surged in the valley. Hardware stores ran out of ammo and home alarms. Mailbox flyers suddenly touted security consultants. And local paranoia mined the unknowable. How many other cars were hauling explosives through here? Dirk Hoffman offered his concise reader board commentary: Canada exports drugs and terror,

CO: [laughing] So, it's written ironically, and... but it so speaks to the feeling and the mood between the two countries right now, doesn't it?

JL: Well, it does seem to reflect how we are feeling these days, yes.

CO: It's an excellent book, Jim. And I hope you have success with it. It was really a pleasure to read.

JL: Well, thank you very much for reading it, and for your time.

CH: From June of 2009, that was Carol speaking with author Jim Lynch about his book "Border Songs."

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