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The AIH Transcript For August 02, 2021

[hosts]Katie Simpson, Ali Hassan[/hosts]

KATIE SIMPSON: Hello, I'm Katie Simpson, sitting in for Carol Off.

ALI HASSAN: Good evening. I'm Ali Hassan, sitting in for Chris Howden. This is “As It Happens”.

[music: theme]

Prologue

CH: Tonight:

KS: Kicking it gold school. Canada's women's soccer team will play for Olympic gold for the first time ever, and a former teammate recounts the long road to achieve this particular goal.

AH: Not hostile about the takeover. Critics fear democracy is in critical condition in Tunisia after the president takes over all three branches of government and refuses to let them go. But our guest says he's found support among a frustrated population ravaged by COVID.

KS: From bad to the worst. As COVID cases in Florida reach new heights, a Miami nurse manager tells us what that means for the people at the front lines.

AH: More than just the sum of its parts. A woman who just completed a 27,000 kilometre trek across Canada tells us why she couldn't resist the trail -- even though it took her six years to finish it.

KS: When the not rubber meets the road. A B.C. bus operator discovers a four foot long corn snake in his vehicle and assumes it's a fake -- until it becomes clear the reptile is real.

AH: And…. a game of cat and titmouse. An Illinois professor tells us what might be behind a risky manoeuvre by a little songbird that plucks hair from its predators and even people.

AH: “As It Happens”, the Monday edition. Radio that guesses they just won't take no fur an answer.

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Part 1: Canada Soccer Win, Florida COVID: Miami Hospital, Birds Pluck Hair

Canada Soccer Win

Guest: Clare Rustad

AH: Canada's soccer team is going for gold. As you've likely heard, the women's team has earned a chance to reach the top of the podium. And they got there by beating the United States for the first time in 20 years... with a penalty kick.

SOUNDCLIP

ANNOUNCER: Fleming against Franch. [lots of cheering] Fleming scores!!! Canada leads in the semi-final. Maybe, just maybe, this is the night for Canada.

AH: It was, in fact, the night for Canada. That was the sound of Jessie Fleming scoring the one and only goal during today's match between Canada and the US... setting up a chance to go for gold against Sweden on Thursday night. Clare Rustad is a retired Team Canada soccer player who played at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. She is now a doctor and a soccer analyst for CBC. We reached her in Toronto.

KS: Clare, when you saw that goal. What was it like watching that moment?

CLARE RUSTAD: Yeah, this is not something typically happens for me, but I didn't have a lot of words. It was... it was such a huge moment for the program. Really a big moment for the team. I know that their mandate coming into this games was to... to change the colour of the medal. And that goal did it for them. And it's really great. I mean, you can see it written on all of their faces when the final whistle went what that goal meant to them,

KS: Was that a goosebumps moment?

CR: Yeah, a little bit, yeah. And I'm not like the most emotional person ever, but that was... that was... that was quite the moment. And it... I mean, I was involved with the team so long ago. I wasn't involved in 2012 or 2016. I've been doing the... the analyst stuff basically for the last 10 years and following the team that way. And it really was... it really was a fun moment to see, just to see the pure joy that came out of that team.

KS: You can't talk about this team without talking about their captain, Christine Sinclair. How special is it to see her head into a gold medal match for the first time in her career?

CR: You know, it's so funny because I think so much of her legacy is already solidified, right? One of the best women's footballers in the world. One of the best footballers in the world, period. Scored more goals than anybody else on the planet. Just huge achievements under her belt. And…. and what's so... what's so fantastic, what makes her such a good leader is... is how humble she is and how I'm certain if anybody asked her kind of what this game meant to her, she would redirect that and probably say what it meant... what it meant for the team. I think it was... it was a game that this team certainly wanted to win for her, for all of the service that she's put in for this country over the last, gosh, 20 years playing for this team. And you could see... you could see it after she missed that penalty and the relief in the... in the match against Brazil. The relief on her face when they won and when she saw Steph Labbe and burst into tears. You can see what... what it means for her to perform for this team. And... and it was just... it was just so wonderful to see. And I think... I think every player on that team really wanted to make sure they won that game for her.

KS: After the game, Christine was asked if this win was an answer to her prayers? And we're going to play a clip. Here's what she said.

SOUNDCLIP

CHRISTINE SINCLAIR: My prayers have been answered, but a little revenge is nice. And obviously, to come away with a win going to the gold medal match, it's why we're here.

KS: Now, she's referring to a call made in the 2012 London Olympics. Can you tell us about that?

CR: Yeah, so, I mean, I think it's not even just that. It's just how many times the Americans have... have beaten the Canadians over the last 20… it's been 20 years since the Canadians have beaten them. And only three times in the history of the programs meeting. And yeah, I mean, she's referring to the call in 2012 in the Olympic semi-finals where there were a couple of interesting calls that aren't typically made that went against the Canadians and... and resulted in the Americans pulling even and then winning in extra time. And I think it felt really good for the Canadian team to beat this team in regulation. I think it felt really good to have it done the way it was with... with a good... a good effort, a great performance from the Canadian team. And, yeah, it's... there's always something extra special about... about beating the Americans. And because that rivalry is so strong. So I'm really happy for them.

KS: The rivalry, it seemed to really be tense today. We heard from Megan Rapinoe, the U.S. forward, who is one of the stars, obviously, of that team. And she threw some shade at Canada after the game. She said it's a bitter one to swallow. Obviously, we never want to lose to Canada. So with knowing that tension is this... is this is a sweet revenge?

CR: I think that just speaks more to kind of the rivalry that they have. It's always a very physical game when the Canadians play the Americans. It's always a very difficult game, regardless of what the final score ends up being. And I think just speaking more probably to... to how difficult that rivalry is more than anything else.

KS: Let's look ahead. Thursday, gold medal game up against Sweden. What do you feel about that matchup?

CR: I think Sweden is a beatable team. I think that not... and not an easily beatable team by any degree. They've scored 13 goals in the tournament. And by contrast, the Canadians have only scored five. So they're certainly very dangerous up front. They have been the most consistent team in the tournament. And I don't really expect that to change in the gold medal match. So it will be difficult for the Canadians. If they put in a defensive performance like they put in against the Americans, I think they will be successful. And where they need to be successful and where they need to start producing is up front. They need to start creating more chances. The Canadians did not actually have a shot on goal against the Americans. The only shot on goal they had was that penalty. So they have to be more productive up front. It's going to be really difficult to win a gold medal game without getting a shot on goal, without producing more dangerous chances up front. So that's the thing that needs to change for them. But honestly, it's doable.

KS: And lastly, what is this kind of pressure like? Can you describe it for those of us who are not Olympians?

CR: I'm not sure... I'm not sure I can. It's very... it's very difficult to describe. And I know that... that every player has a different way of dealing with it. And you develop little tricks. There'd be some players who would dance in the locker room before games. There would be some players who would play music. There would still be some players who were just quiet. Some people read a book. I mean, that's why it's so hard to describe because so many people deal with it in a different way. And, again, I think that the Canadians really have dealt with it well so far. They did a fantastic job in the... in penalties against Brazil. And that's a huge amount of pressure. That's a huge amount of individual pressure, let alone team pressure. And Jesse Fleming scoring that penalty against the Americans just shows that they are responding to it well, and they're dealing with it.

KS: Clare, thank you so much for your time today. And we, of course, will be watching every moment closely.

CR: Yeah, no worries.

KS: Have a great day.

CR: You, too.

KS: Bye.

CR: OK. Bye.

AH: Clare Rustad is a retired Team Canada soccer player who is now an analyst for CBC. We reached her in Toronto.

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Florida COVID: Miami Hospital

Guest: Alix Zacharski

CH: A couple of weeks ago it was bad. Now, it's much, much worse. Last month, you may have heard our interview with a Jacksonville hospital director. He told us about the surge in COVID patients he was seeing -- as his state of Florida was averaging around 8,000 new cases a day. Now, the CDC has reported that there were more than 21,000 new cases last Friday. And this weekend, the state also broke its record for hospitalizations. Deaths have for now not reached peaks seen in previous waves, but Florida is being called the COVID epicentre of the US. Alix Zacharski is the nurse manager in the COVID ICU at Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami. That's where we reached her.

KS: Alix, how are you holding up in this latest surge?

ALIX ZACHARSKI: So we are... I am holding OK. I... I would much rather be on the beach [laughing] and I would much rather be planning and doing something a little bit different rather than kind of stalling on other projects and returning back to open COVID units and realigning teams and trying to get more staff to take care of very sick patients.

KS: Are you at capacity in your COVID beds in your hospital?

AZ: No, quite yet, but I would not be surprised by the second week of August, we will be.

KS: What are you seeing in your COVID units right now? What can you tell us about the patients that are coming in with COVID?

AZ: Our patient population has drastically been different from what we have seen last year? Much more younger patients, much more rapidly becoming sicker, the virus seems to be more aggressive. Patients have been becoming decompensated much more quicker than before. And not lasting longer. I mean, the hospitalization time very fast. We blast the patients with the interventions pretty fast. We don't delay any interventions. We never did. But I think we were much more, you know, quicker to do what we need to do. And we just not getting the results that we would like. Patients are pretty much not leaving the ICU in the way we want, they are pretty much all dying. So especially, you know, those patients that are in the ages that we… they’re not supposed to die.

KS: You say that the patients are coming in younger. How young are we talking?

AZ: We're talking about patients about in their 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s.

KS: Are they the ones having the outcome that you just described? Are they the ones that are not leaving the ICU in the way that you want them to leave? Are they the ones dying in hospital?

AZ: They're the ones that are dying. We just... we just lost last Friday, two patients side by side. One who was... she was 54 years old, pretty sick. She lasted two weeks after she arrived, you know, with a mask, an oxygen mask. And she was, you know, talking to us somewhat and then just could not sustain anymore. She was unvaccinated. That's another commonality among these patients. And the other patient died about ten minutes... ten minutes before…. after that. She was 27 years old.

KS: Wow! What we understand about what's going on in Florida, about half the state is fully vaccinated. And your hospital's chief executive told the New York Times that as of last Thursday, among staff at your house hospital, there was about a 60 per cent vaccination rate. When you hear those numbers, given the situation in the U.S. right now, we know there is more than enough vaccine to go around. When you hear that, what do you think?

AZ: Well, [clears throat] it is very hard for the folks that are vaccinated, for us that are vaccinated, to hear that even among us there are some disagreement on vaccination. And it is... is… it’s a choice. But at the same time, if we’re choosing to do this and be exposed, there's a level of responsibility that we have with ourselves, with our families and with others. So it is frustrating for us. I mean, I’m deeply saddened when we see... we have had staff members from our hospital very sick here, unvaccinated, that we have to take care to take care of. And it’s unfortunate some of them have, you know, come out with very harsh outcomes.

KS: When you look at the situation this time this year, compared to this time last year. Florida had gone through a summer spike and had... had set some records. And we are seeing a spike right now with Florida setting records that are worse than the spike last year. But this year, there are vaccines available. There is protections available. Did you ever imagine at a time when there is so much vaccine available to those who want it that you'd be going through this process again, setting records again?

AZ: Honestly, no. I never imagined that we would go through this spike again, especially because of that. Because of what you just mentioned. We had no choice last year. We had no choices. We had no vaccines. We were really frightened and unknown. We had little knowledge about COVID of the whole. Imagine that even though it was a spike, we all had masks, we were in a massive quarantine. Imagine now that we have vaccines, where no quarantine, there are no mandate for masking because we are not mandated now to mask. Many hospitals, many areas, I'm sorry not hospitals, but many restaurants and many open public spaces, you don't have to mask. So now, our fear has triplicated. And this spike can be even worse because we don't have any of that. To top it off, people are not vaccinated because they choose not to, not because they don't have a vaccine available.

KS: Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, has barred school districts from requiring students to wear masks. Kids under the age of 12 do not... are not eligible to be vaccinated. And he said this about his own children. He said, quote, I want to see my kids smiling. I want them having fun. In your position, as someone who's witnessing what you're witnessing at your hospital right now, what message do you have for your governor?

AZ: I would say to him, I do want to see the same. I want to see the children to do that. But I don't want to see children without their parents. I would like to see their children that they can enjoy their parents, but it will take a little bit of time for having them to enjoy that. So I don't see why is so hard to have the mask. I don't see why is so hard to not to embrace a little bit of more prudence while we can [clears throat] as a collective... collective community.

KS: Alix, thank you very much for your time today.

AZ: Thank you so much.

CH: Alix Zacharski is the nurse manager in the COVID ICU at Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami. That's where we reached her.

[music: sombre acoustic guitar]

Birds Pluck Hair

Guest: Mark Hauber

AH: Head on over to YouTube and type "titmouse and hair" into the search bar. You'll find some fascinating results. Specifically, footage of the small birds landing on other creatures -- from raccoons, to dogs, to humans -- and plucking their hair. That behaviour dubbed "kleptotrichy" is the focus of a paper published recently in the journal "Ecology." It's titled "What the pluck? Theft of mammal hair by birds is an overlooked but common behaviour with fitness implications.” Mark Hauber is the senior author. We reached him in Delmenhorst, Germany.

KS: Professor Hauber, what's up with these birds? Why are they plucking other animals hair?

MARK HAUBER: I don't know, but they are definitely endangering their lives. The favourite thing of a raccoon is to raid a bird's nest, eggs or nestlings. And so the idea that they would just lay there and let their live fur to be plucked to use for a feather... nest construction is... is really quite counterintuitive.

KS: What led you and your colleagues to want to write a paper about this?

MH: Well, the wonderful Journal of Ecology has a great section on natural history, miscellaneous. And it's rare these days that scientific journals do this. And so when we discovered this phenomenon, together with Henry Pollack and Jeff Brown, who have observed this behaviour, we realized that people haven't really published on this behaviour very much. We knew that birds have mammalian hair and often avian feathers in their nests. But we didn't know how they source this. We just assumed that it was from carcasses or from leftover patches of hair during shedding. But it was this behaviour during regular bird count that titmouse was plucking feathers from a sleeping raccoon.

KS: And from what I understand, there are quite a few videos about this on YouTube, correct?

MH: Absolutely. There's about nine times more mentioning of this phenomenon on YouTube than in the scientific literature. You know, great credit to our bird watchers and nature enthusiasts all around the world. We were very excited to find these... these videos because the scientific literature was quite depauperate on this.

KS: So the first time you saw this, what did you think? How did you react?

MH: I just thought it was... it was dangerous. I just... it just reminded me of birds walking in... in the open mouth of crocodiles and, you know, sort of endangering themselves, you know, by hiking on giraffes. And, you know, this is... this is dangerous. And so that was my first thought. The second thought was, well, we now know where the hair comes from. I was told that if you want to find a song sparrow’s nest, for instance, you should put some, you know, patches of horsehair onto vegetation and then you can follow the female as she builds the nest. I used to study song sparrows, for that matter. But now we know that, you know, that hair comes from live animals, too.

KS: So how do those live animals, the creatures that are having your hair, you know, plucked out? How do they seem to feel about all of this?

MH: Well, they didn't seem to wake up when Henry and Jeff saw they saw this behaviour in the instance that was described in the paper -- my co-authors, that is. And other animals, you know, sometimes they get annoyed and hush the animals away. Other times, they just stand there passively and act like true altruism. There's really no other explanation here because it doesn't look like these chickadees are plucking lice or ticks out of the fur. They are going for the fur itself.

KS: And the title of your paper says this has fitness implications for the birds. What exactly does that mean?

MH: We are talking about Darwinian fitness. And so, this is reproductive success. We think that having fur and other types of hair in the nest protects you from cold weather. Alternatives include protection from predators that are... can smell the mammalian hair in the nest, so they don't think it's a bird's nest. Other possibilities, we were told after the paper was published, somebody wrote to us today and said, what about chemical differences? For mammalian fur, for instance, is not attractive to mosquitoes that... that suck blood from amphibians. And so maybe that's also true for avian-focused mosquitoes. And then finally, we know that a bird's nest often have lice and mites that chew on feathers, which is made of keratin, of course. And so, you know, what if you could misguide those mites and lice by having them chew on this mammalian fur instead of your nestlings’ feathers?

KS: Are these birds going in after humans, like if someone's out for a walk [MH laughs] and you feel some sort of bristling at the top of your head, should people be concerned?

MH: That’s what birds do, of course. Yes, yes, they do. They will land on a human's head and try to pluck feathers. I mean the fur... I mean hair.

KS: I would love to see what my very bleached, very broken hair would do to keep those animals warm. [both laughing]

MH: Mine is very short, so it’s not very pliable for weaving it into the nest either.

KS: Now, this behaviour has been documented a lot. It's all over YouTube, and please go look it up. It's fascinating for anyone listening right now. With so much documentation out there, why do you think it's so important to get this information in scientific literature?

MH: Because the questions about the functional significance, the fitness implications are still out there. I just listed you for different alternatives. There's probably 15 other alternatives that I haven't thought of, and we haven't mentioned in the paper. The next step is experiments. To go out and ask the questions, why are birds putting themselves at risk to put fur from live animals, live mammals, into that nest?

KS: Professor Hauber, thank you for your time today.

MH: Thank you so much.

AH: Mark Hauber is a professor of evolution, ecology and behaviour at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. We reached him in Delmenhorst, Germany. And if you'd like to see some videos of the behaviour he spoke about, visit our website: www.cbc.ca/aih.

[music: electronic]

Snake On A Bus

AH: As the operator of Mountain Man Mike's bus service in British Columbia, Michael Hathaway is used to finding these forgotten items on his buses. But he wasn't expecting to find a stowaway on board last week. In fact, Michael wasn't even convinced that what he was seeing was real, until he took a closer look. He spoke with CBC's Janella Hamilton about discovering a four-foot-long corn snake on his bus and his plans for the resilient reptile.

SOUNDCLIP

MICHAEL HATAWAY: I took the bus to do maintenance on it, and that's when I found the snake is when I was checking on air conditioning vent temperatures. And I looked down, and I saw what I thought was a rubber snake sticking out of one of the floor-mounted heaters. And I didn't even stop what I was doing. I kept working and figured I'd come back and check it out after. I even laughed about it when I thought it was just like snakes on a plane. You know, that... that movie, the Samuel Jackson. And I thought, oh, somebody being funny. And they've left this toy snake on the bus to try to scare me. When I came to it, I realized it was actually a live snake. So I was quite concerned for its well-being because it was jammed into the heater, and I was worried that maybe it had become injured. Also, the bus was parked in a parking lot for around 16 hours. It was about 120 degrees in that bus. But as soon as I poked, it came to life and started trying to get into the wall of the bus. So I quickly grabbed the cardboard box, and I grabbed him by the tail and got him inside that box. We've had all sorts of interesting stuff left on the bus, but I never expected a snake on the bus.

JANELLA HAMILTON: What happened with the snake now? What was the next step for you after that?

MH: Well, we've set up a cage. We had a snake expert come by and check it out for its general health. They determined that it's a corn snake and that it was actually hungry. So we fed the snake two mice last night. And it's in a glass aquarium. So far, we contacted all of the passengers who rode the bus in the last two days. And nobody has claimed ownership of the snake. But it's quite a friendly snake, and it looks like it really well cared for before. If it's not claimed, we're going to... it'll become part of our family. But I'm very interested in finding its owner and finding out exactly how it came into contact with our bus service.

AH: That is Michael Hathaway, who operates Mountain Man Mike's bus service in British Columbia. Michael is still trying to uncover the exact origins of the corn snake. But in the meantime, his kids are taking good care of the orange and white reptile, which they've named 'cream corn.'

[music: ambient]

Part 2: Tunisia Clampdown, Dianne Whelan: Trans Canada Trail

Tunisia Clampdown

Guest: Ghaya Ben Mbarek

AH: Tunisia's democracy is on a knife-edge. Last week the country's president, Kais Saied, suspended parliament, stripped MPs of their official roles, fired the prime minister, and announced he was taking over all three branches of government...which includes the judiciary. And that move came after days of violent anti-government protests--over corruption and the poor handling of the pandemic. But with no clear path toward a new government, critics are accusing the president of staging a coup. Ghaya Ben Mbarek is a Tunisian reporter for the independent news site, Meshkal. We reached her in the country's capital, Tunis.

KS: Ghaya, how was the president able to seize so much power in Tunisia with the stroke of a pen?

GHAYA BEN MBAREK: Well, President Kais Saied announced on July 25th that he would be acting upon Article 80 of the Constitution. And what he did basically was act upon the article that says if the country is into grave danger, he's allowed to take exceptional measures. The exceptional measures that he has taken was to fire the prime minister, freeze the work of the parliament and lift parliamentary immunity of some of the MPs. This actually came after a popular protest that took place on July 25th, which coincides with the 64th anniversary of the announcement of the Tunisian Republic and also the eighth anniversary of the assassination of Opposition Leader Mohammed Brahmi. Lots of people took to the streets demanding the president to actually dissolve the parliament, fire the government and get rid of another. And this popular demand has been actually called for in the country for months after really degradation in the situation and the lives of Tunisians.

KS: So popular publicly. But legally, does the president have the authority to do all of this?

GBM: Now, this has been a question of a lot of debate in Tunisia. Some people say, of course, he has the right. He acted in the right way, and these are within the exceptional measures afforded to him by the Constitution to act when our country is facing a pretty dangerous crisis. But some other experts, constitutional law professors, even science professors has described this as unconstitutional and illegal to take place because the Constitution is only plausible for interpretation when the text is silent. But there are some paragraphs of the Constitution, for example, that says the parliament, even when the country is in case of a grave danger, the parliament still can hold its sessions, even outside the building of the parliament or even outside the capital, Tunis. But what Kais Saied did was freeze the parliament. And some people said that he doesn't have any right to do that. So it's a question... I would say it's a question of a lot of debate that people have not given any conclusive opinion about it so far, even constitutional experts.

KS: So you sort of hinted at this or spoke of this earlier, but what is sort of the reaction been of the everyday people living here?

GBM: The majority, I would say, the great majority have been very happy with the decisions taken by the president because they've been feeling frustrated for the past 10 years of the ruling of the major main Islamist party, Ennada Party, and some of its allies. People have called for the president to actually take even more serious measures. Some people have told me during my reporting that this actually was a bit late, but they're glad that the Saied had finally had the guts to do it. And, like, the main reason behind this is because people have been very frustrated with how the governments have been dealing with the covid-19 crisis and also of how we're seeing dysfunctional parliament and the parliament really not doing its work. So that's one of the reasons that people have been like, celebrating since, like, July 25th, like on the night Saied announced the decisions. There is some skepticism amongst some people. People have been also telling me that they were not giving like a blank check to Saied. Like, they agree with what he did, whether it's constitutional or not. But they will be keeping track of his actions until today like we're still waiting every day for the next step that he will be taken.

KS: Is it the previous government's handling of COVID that really left it so unpopular, or is there much more to this? Why was the previous government so unpopular?

GBM: There's definitely more to it than just like the mishandling of the COVID-19 crisis. Of course, it is obvious that the government... the previous government was responsible for more than 20,000 Tunisian deaths. But besides that, we have been also seeing since last January lots of protests on the streets, on the streets, calling for social justice. We've seen also lots of crimes committed by the police. Recently, we had this one young man that was killed by the police in one popular working-class neighbourhood. This was one of the reason because Prime Minister Mechichi was also the acting interior ministry. So he was in charge of the security forces. And he never, like, apologized in any instance for those crimes that were well documented by the press and by civil society and human rights defenders. So all of these, like, came to a boiling point where people went out to the street and kept asking for this government to resign, for the prime minister to resign.

KS: Wow. So moving forward, we're hearing from some MPs who are frustrated, and they're calling this a constitutional coup. How is the president responding to this?

GBM: Now, the president has been very obvious and very, really direct and straight to the point. He does not see anything that... any decision that he has taken as unconstitutional and illegal. He believes that what he did is what Article 80 entitles him to do. And he said this one sentence. He said, if you do not… like if you have not taken a closer look at the article, you should probably review your lessons and your law lessons. Because the president is originally is a constitutional law professor, and he is a complete outsider of politics. So he has said this in multiple occasions that he believes that his decisions are within the spirit of the Constitution.

KS: What reforms is the president promising at this point?

GBM: At this point, the president hasn't actually announced any roadmap, which actually lots of civil society organizations have been asking him to do. He has not… he is also yet to announce a prime minister to form the government. But from what we have seen is that the president have been trying to follow on people and that people and, of course, the political class that have corruption linked to their names. We've seen him, for example, meet with the president of the private sector, like private sector and Chamber of Commerce, the person responsible for it, meeting him and showing him like files of corrupt Tunisian businessmen. But what I would say about the decisions and the measures that he will be taken is a day-to-day thing and like a wait-and-see thing. So we're just waiting for him, waiting to see his decisions on the basis. But the main thing that Tunisians have been demanding, at least the political class and civil society organizations, is for him to make a roadmap and announce it as soon as possible. And it's been 10 days, and he has not announced that yet.

KS: Ghaya, we'll continue to follow this. Thank you very much for your time today.

GBM: Thank you so much. Thank you.

AH: Ghaya Ben Mbarek is a Tunisian reporter for the independent news site, Meshkal. We reached her in the country's capital, Tunis.

[music: sad piano]

Changing Climate Professor

AH: This summer, some effects of climate change have been impossible to ignore in Canada. While for others, a closer look is needed. In recent weeks a mobile unit from Yukon University's new Permafrost Institute has been out along remote roads and highways, studying changes in the ground conditions. They're working on risk assessments and alarms to warn locals about hazards -- but the extent of damage they're seeing, as the thawing leads to landslides and floods, is wiping out roads completely. Chris Burn has been studying Canada's permafrost for four decades. And what he's seeing now has him concerned.

SOUNDCLIP

CHRIS BURN: There are new events, things that we hadn't anticipated happening when we first started looking at things in the 1980s. The best example of this is the large number of landslides that we can see from the Dempster Highway. There have been particular summers in which the... for example, the highway was washed out and also blocked by landslides. And then even people who drive between Chapman Lake at KM 124, which is the where the airstrip is down towards Tombstone, they'll notice on the sides of the hills you can count something like 38 landslide tracks that weren't there in 2015 but are there now. So those are things that are really not available in any of the air photo records or the satellite records, but have now been picked up in the... in the very, very recent past.

ELYN JONES: Wow!

CB: So those are... those are the new things.

EJ: Yeah. Well, talking about the Dempster Highway, what does that mean for the roads we travel on and how we maintain those roads?

CB: Well, the most important thing is it means the costs are going up fast. The other big issue is the temperature of the ground reaching between minus one and zero. And that's the temperature at which it's very difficult to support structures. So, for example, at Dry Creek on the Alaska Highway, which is towards Beavercreek, Transportation had to put in... they had to chill the road effectively over about half a kilometre because, underneath the road, there's a significant amount of ice leftover from the last glaciation. So ice that was been sitting there happily for about 12,000 years is now in danger of thawing out. And if that happens, you lose the road. And so they... they put in equipment, which we call thermosiphons. And these... these lead to enhanced chilling of the road during the wintertime. But the price is significant because it's four million dollars for half a kilometre or eight million dollars per kilometre. And it's just... it's just impossible to consider hundreds of kilometres of road with thermosiphons at that sort of cost estimate.

EJ: I guess looking... you know, there's so much talk about trying to meet climate targets and get off fossil fuels and that sort of thing and try to slow the rate of change here. Do you think that can be done? Can we turn this around and stop this?

CB: I don't think we can turn it around, but I think we can stabilize things. So we're going to lose the ice from Greenland. And we're going to lose large portions of the West Antarctic ice cap. But if we can stabilize the change, there's a possibility that we can reach some kind of balanced environment which isn't... isn't changing further. And which... in which we can sort of begin to manage what is the new situation. So it's going to take a long time to stabilize things. But if we don't stabilize things, we will reach an environment that is completely beyond any of our experience.

AH: Chris Burn is a geography and environmental studies professor at Carleton University. He spoke with CBC host Elyn Jones today on Yukon Morning.

[music: Spanish guitar]

Dianne Whelan: Trans Canada Trail

Guest: Dianne Whelan

AH: Maybe you've been spending the long weekend outdoors. Got a hike or two under your belt. Maybe it's been rejeuvenating. Or maybe a few nights under the stars with mosquitos for company is more than enough. Either way, it's unlikely you're craving the kind of exposure Dianne Whelan has had. The artist and filmmaker has spent the better part of the past six years hiking, snowshoeing, biking and canoeing the entirety of the Trans Canada Trail from coast to coast to coast. If you’re looking for numbers, that's more than 24,000 kilometres, with at least one near-drowning, a fair few bear encounters and a lot of bug bites along the way. This weekend, Ms. Whelan completed that long trek in Victoria, B.C. and that's where we reached her.

KS: Dianne, describe the moment when you arrived in Victoria after six long years?

DIANNE WHELAN: Well, Katie, I spent, I think, the last 20 minutes on the water crying, my heart was very soft and open. Waiting on the shores for me were my parents and my family and friends and also Cecilia Dick, who is the daughter of the hereditary chief of the Songhees people. And this is their traditional territory. And it was very moving for me that both her... Cecelia and her sister, Lorreta, came to welcome me. And I was able to follow traditional Coast Salish protocol, which is to ask permission to land before getting out of my canoe, to let them know that I came in peace. And then they sang a welcoming song for me and walked. We held each other's hands and walked to Mile Zero, and they sang a beautiful song. So a very moving final moments of the journey after six years,

KS: When you set out on this journey, you did not do this as a feat of athleticism, but... so why did you do it?

DW: Well, Katie, you know, I'm a… I'm a filmmaker. As a storyteller, a trail for me was this beautiful metaphor, an umbilical cord that connects us all. And I set out to find a more inclusive story and to pay my respects to the ancestors of this land six years ago when I left. So that was what inspired me.

KS: Along the way, you visited with members of many different Indigenous communities across this country. When you think back and look... look at that now, what stands out to you most about those interactions?

DW: For me, that's where I started seeing so much hope. And when I left on this journey, I didn't have that. You know, when I left on this journey in 2015, we had a government at that time federally that wouldn't even start an inquiry for the missing and murdered Indigenous women. And when I began, I every morning held silent prayer for those women. That was part of my inspiration for leaving. And... and it was the way that I wanted to show my respects for the ancestors. And what I didn't know was that that silent prayer would shape this journey. And I feel very fortunate to have spent time with the Mi'kmaq, the Maliseet, the Ojibwe, the Dene, Cree, Lakota, Dakota. I spent weeks in some of these communities collaborating artistically with them and a collaborative process with elders and grandmothers and youth. This film will emerge from this shared reflection and dialogue.

KS: Can you tell us a little bit about some of the more challenging moments along the Trans Canada Trail? [DW chuckles] What were some of the most memorable misadventures?

DW: Well, there were quite a few misadventures. I'd like to say, I’m like the fool and the tarot deck when I left. I think I lost six tents in the first two months. And I'd like to say that there were some like, really profound reasons why. But most of it was because I just wasn't tying things down tight enough. And so I had my first kind of close call to death just a few months into the journey on the Bras d'Or Lake , which is the Potlotek lake in Cape Breton. I'd come to shore. I saw this beautiful red rock embedded in a cliff and dug it out and went, oh, beautiful rock, you know, put it in my pocket and then got back in the canoe. And the next thing you know, a wind came up and blew my canoe out into open water. I was just trying to follow shorelines, you know, just huge waves were crashing against me. And I thought that, oh, my gosh, this is this. I'm only three months into my journey and I'm about to die. Anyway, when I got to shore, I experienced a profound shift in myself after a few hours of sort of reflection. And I realized that I had come to do something different. You know, I'd come out here to pay respects to the land, to the ancestors and to find wisdom. And then here I had done what explorers have done for centuries. I'd taken something and left, you know? And in that moment, I experienced a shift in my concept of exploration, you know, that maybe exploring is through listening as opposed to sort of wanting to extract something. So, yeah, there were a lot of sort of… or not a lot, but there were definitely a few moments where I had to face my mortality, whether it was because I was paddling through a forest fire, you know, up and heading up towards the Arctic two years ago. On rivers, just watching forest burn around me and jumping into the river and swimming, as I paddled down the river with my partner, Louisa Robinson at that point. And I had a few encounters with bears, but I don't want to dwell on instilling fear in people when it comes to nature. For me, it's about hope. [chuckling] because we have so much fear around us these days and there's so much more positive things to dwell on than the moments of fear. And I can tell you that most of the fear that I have was something that I carried with me when I left. You know, I had fear of being a woman, camping alone by myself out there. But then night after night, I did it and nothing happened. And I can also tell you, Katie, that in six years of travelling across this land, whether I was in an Indigenous communities listening and learning or whether I was bumping into hunters in the middle of the night, lost in the woods, I have met nothing but kindness from people on this land. I think it's important for people to remember that. It's easy when you watch the news, we give shadow front page, you know? but really, there's far more good than there is shadow out there. And it was great to be reminded of that. And I guess that's why I just finished this journey with so much faith and hope and optimism for the future.

KS: That sort of leads to what I want to ask you about next. You spent a lot of time alone when you were venturing across Canada. How did that experience shape you or change you?

DW: I like to say solitude reveals what a mirror cannot. [chuckling] It’s a very grounding experience to be in nature alone for weeks at a time. You have to kind of accept the fact that if things go sideways, you've got to be responsible to save yourself. And also, very humbling experience to be a fragile being alone on the vast waters of Lake Superior or deep in the woods of an old fur trader trail. But then something woke up in my DNA, Katie. I don't know if it was a year into the journey or two years into the journey. You don't feel alone because all of a sudden your connections to everything that's alive around you. I mean, humans are just zero zero. I think it's like .0001 per cent of all life on Earth. And so when you're out there, you get to connect to the other 99 per cent. But except the ticks and black flies, I must say, I never did develop a love for either the ticks or the black flies. [laughing]

KS: Dianne, thank you for your time today.

DW: Thank you, Katie. Take care.

KS: Have a good day.

DW: You too. Bye.

AH: Dianne Whelan has just completed a six-year journey across the country on the Trans Canada Trail. She was in Victoria, B.C.

[music: world music]

Canto Pop Singer Arested

AH: First, they came for activists and politicians, then the media and now, a pop star. Hong Kong singer Anthony Wong Yiu-ming was arrested today by the city's anti-corruption watchdog. It was the latest in a crackdown against pro-democracy advocates that began over a year ago. Authorities say Mr. Wong broke the law when he performed two songs at a political rally for a pro-democracy candidate in 2018. He faces one count of engaging in corrupt conduct by, quote, "providing entertainment [...] for another person for the purpose of inducing the other person to vote for [the candidate] at the election." Mr. Wong has had a long career of both rocking the vote and rocking the boat. He's already been banned from performing in mainland China and has seen his music disappear from streaming sites. In one of the songs at issue now, an allegorical apple-a-day acts as a stand-in for the pro-democracy newspaper Apple Daily, which was forced to close after its leadership was arrested in the crackdown. Local media say Mr. Wong has been let out on bail, perhaps with the hope he will change his tune and/or tunes. But given his tracks record, I'm not convinced he'll be following any doctored orders.

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August 02, 2021 Episode Transcript

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