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The Current Transcript for February 17, 2022

Host: Matt Galloway

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

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Latest HIV cure could be breakthrough for diverse populations

Guests: Marvelous Muchenje, Dr. Deborah Persaud

SOUNDCLIP

I think it shows us for the first time, very openly that the world survives on women's unpaid labour.

MATT GALLOWAY: Two years ago, the economist Armine Yalnizyan coined the term she session on this programme to describe the disproportionate effect the pandemic was already having on women in the workforce. Now, as Canada makes its way out of the Omicron wave, people are beginning to imagine what work might look like on the other side. This morning, our Work in Progress series continues with a look at equal pay, flexible schedules and how work life could work better for women. That's in 30 minutes. Also this morning, Ottawa police have increased the pressure on demonstrators occupying downtown Ottawa. The latest on whether that's actually moving protesters out. Plus.

SOUNDCLIP

I play my jokes, hopefully within good taste, so that nobody can really say, Well, that's just too mischievous. Who can object to Buff the Magic Dragon?

MG: Before the honking horns, the soundtrack of the capital was provided by Dominion Carolina Andrea McCready as the bells in the Peace Tower get set to fall silent for five years, the story of how a doctor from south of the border ended up being the voice of the nation for everything from Canada Day to 4:20. We start, though, with promising news in the search for a cure for HIV. Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway and this is The Current. Researchers announced earlier this week the first woman and third person seems to have been cured of HIV. The treatment involved a stem cell transplant and the woman has been in remission from the virus for 14 months. This is not a silver bullet for the millions of people worldwide living with HIV, but it is a step forward and the fact that the patient was a Bi-Racial woman opens the door to the treatment being more widely available. Dr. Deborah Persaud is a professor of paediatrics at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. She was the protocol virologist for the study and one of the leaders of this research, and we have reached her this morning in her research lab. Dr. Persaud. Good morning.

DR. DEBORAH PERSAUD: Good morning, Matt. Thank you for having me.

MG: Thank you for being here. The woman who has been treated does not want her identity revealed, but what do you know about how she is doing now?

DR. DEBORAH PERSAUD: We know she's doing very well. She's in remission from her leukaemia. And so far has not had any rebound in her HIV in her blood plasma, and she's been off treatment for 14 months.

MG: She'd been diagnosed with both HIV and leukaemia. At what point did her medical team think that this was the right time to try her on this treatment for HIV?

DR. DEBORAH PERSAUD: Yes. So first she was diagnosed with HIV, and that was four years before her diagnosis of leukaemia. She was on a treatment and was well suppressed, but unfortunately developed leukaemia. And it's with the development of her leukaemia that required that she get a stem cell transplant. What treatment of the leukaemia?

MG: And so in a way that we would understand. Walk us through how this treatment unfolded.

DR. DEBORAH PERSAUD: So essentially, as you as you know, leukaemia is a fatal disease. And in this setting, the treatment is a stem cell transplant. And so in discussing with the participant, what were the best options for her treatment, her oncologist, Dr. Cohen from B.C., a real Cornell Medical College, has experience with what's described as a happy little cord transplant. And what this means is cord blood cells comes from newborns, their newborn stem cells, and there are some cord blood banks that actually screen these cells for their resistance to HIV infection. Now what does that mean? HIV requires a special core receptor to enter the cell, and it's called the CCR 5. And about one percent of Caucasians have a genetic mutation that makes this receptor. Not that does not work in, um, people carrying this mutation. And so her primary care team discussed with her the potential to use these stem cells to treat her leukaemia.

MG: And so they found some of that cord blood from that one percent of their population and were able to use that.

DR. DEBORAH PERSAUD: They found cord blood cells that carry this mutation. The unique thing about cord blood cells, because they're newborn cells, they're less reactive. So it allows a person who needs a stem cell transplant to get a cell from a donor that doesn't have to be an identical match because these cells are not so reactive, so they're not rejected by the person's body who's receiving those cells. And so that's what was unique about this case is really the use of these cord blood cells in addition to what's called haplo cord and the dose set of cells are also given to support the cord before it in grass. So to kind of simplify this because this is a person of mixed race in general, it's harder to find a stem cell match for individuals who are mixed race and then to find a match that has these resistant cells with this mutation is even harder. But in this case, the team was able to find a match and she was transplanted did very well with this charge very early from the hospital and has been free of her leukaemia now. And also the HIV, given that she has been off treatment and we're not detecting any infectious virus or what we call replication competent virus in her CD4.

MG: How big of a breakthrough do you think this is?

DR. DEBORAH PERSAUD: I think it's it's you know, this has been reported before that use of these cells. Resistance cells have led to cure in two individuals, two male individuals. I think the third case is it a breakthrough, it's a breakthrough with respect to the treatment that's offered and the treatment here is the use of the newborn stem cells, the cord blood cells, because this then opens up an opportunity for more racially diverse populations to have the likelihood of having a match for these unique cells that could cure potentially cure both diseases, their leukaemia and their HIV.

MG: And again, just to be clear, I mean, it's the use of the the cord blood cells that would make this different than people might remember. The so-called Berlin patient, Timothy Ray Brown, is the first person to have been cured of HIV. That that's the real difference here.

DR. DEBORAH PERSAUD: Yeah, that's the difference here is really the use of cord blood cells, which makes it more available for individuals of different ancestries to be able to access these cells.

MG: Are you comfortable in saying that that this patient has been cured?

DR. DEBORAH PERSAUD: I'm not comfortable in saying that right now. You know, we don't have clear definitions as to what would consider an individual cured of HIV. I think it's very promising that she's 14 months off and toward treatment and hasn't had rebound just to put it into context for the Berlin patient. He was off treatment for 20 months. Before he was reported and he stayed free of HIV for over 12 years, the second patient, the London patient, was off treatment for six months and then the follow up at 30 months and a 30 months of treatment was considered cured. When would we consider this patient cured of HIV? I think in thinking through this, you know, she's been transplanted four years ago and we haven't detected any replication competent virus in ourselves and then being off treatment for 14 months suggests that she has a high likelihood of being cured. If we follow the science that the first two cases demonstrated.

MG: Before he became, in many ways, the face of the fight in the United States against covid, Dr. Anthony Fauci was an HIV specialist. Take a listen to what he had to say about this research.

SOUNDCLIP

This person happened to have an underlying disease, which required a stem cell transplant. So I don't want people to think that now this is something that can be applied to the 36 million people living with HIV. This is much more of a proof of concept that one can actually get the virus out and be suppressed for a long period of time. I want to just take this opportunity to emphasise that right now we have therapies and we've had them for some time that are really nothing short of spectacular in their capability of suppressing virus to below detectable level for essentially unlimited periods of time.

MG: Dr. Persaud. Are there other cures being worked on that would be applicable to that water population, that 36 million people that he mentioned who have HIV but perhaps don't have an underlying disease?

DR. DEBORAH PERSAUD: Yes. So first, I want to reiterate, and I'm glad you played that piece of Dr. Fauci that this is correct. This is not a widely applicable intervention, but there is from the NIH and other and the Gates Foundation in investment into HIV care research. And part of that cure research involves trying to figure out how to genetically manipulate and given person cells to actually not express the CCR five. On the cell surface, though, I think it moves this case, moves the science forward in terms of having these resistant cells is probably a key step to curing HIV. But I do want to say that in given this third case and the potential for cord blood cells being an opportunity to use these cells in more racially diverse population, which is where the burden of infection lies, that for individuals living with HIV who are unfortunate enough to get cancer or some underlying condition, that requires a stem cell transplant that perhaps efforts. Given that we know these CCR 5, Delta 32 cells or resistant cells are key, perhaps efforts should be made to identify cells that carry this mutation so that you end up with remission of two diseases. The underlying cancer and, of course, HIV.

MG: But you see you see real promise in this. I mean, again, cautious promise. If I can put it that way,

DR. DEBORAH PERSAUD: I see cautious promise because the reality is individuals living with HIV are at increased risk for cancer, and we now have three demonstrated cases two of cure and one of potentially or possibly cured with these resistant cells. And the question is going to be at what point this becomes a considered part of standard of care to seek to see if you can find a reasonable match in people who don't have a matched donor.

MG: Dr. Persaud, it's great to speak with you about this. Thank you very much. Thank you. Dr. Deborah Persaud is a professor of paediatrics at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, and she was the protocol virologist for this study and one of the leaders of this research. As you can imagine, people living with HIV are paying close attention to this new development. People like my next guest, Marvellous Muchenje, she has spent decades advocating for HIV patients, both here in Canada and abroad. She's a doctoral student in social work at the University of Toronto, who also does community outreach for the Vive Health Care. It's a company that's working on HIV therapies. Marvellous. Good morning to you.

MARVELLOUS MUCHENJE: Good morning. Thank you. Thank you so much for the invite. Well, I'm

MG: glad you're here. What goes through your mind when you hear of this news of a third patient potentially cured of HIV?

MARVELLOUS MUCHENJE: For me, what's really like everyone else is the sex in the racial background of the new case that became so significant when I heard the news, because the studies have shown that a lot of women do not participate in either vaccine studies due to various reasons. But when I hear that this, she is promising that the HIV maybe will disappear forever. And for me, as a woman living with HIV, also an African woman, that brings me excitement.

MG: What would I mean when you think about this? And again, as a woman, as an African woman living with HIV? What does the idea that you might possibly someday be cured of this? What would that mean to you?

MARVELLOUS MUCHENJE: Well, I think it will mean a lot like now if I can manage my my HIV, I've been HIV positive since 1995. And over the years, my take in treatment is significantly changed from the time when I was taking it. Maybe lots of medication. Now I'm taking just one pill, but I would love to have a day where I'm not taking medication, where I'm not worried about, OK, what is the impact of the treatment in the long run? Because as you age also, there are other chronic diseases that come. And on top of that with HIV, which means I have to have polypharmacy, meaning that I have to take more medication on top of my HIV medication. So having a cure and having to concentrate less pills would be marvellous. It's exciting.

MG: As the doctor mentioned, and as you've hinted at, one of the key breakthroughs here is that this patient was a biracial woman. What do we know about how HIV in particular affects members of black communities in this country?

MARVELLOUS MUCHENJE: So in terms of in Canada, basically when we look, maybe I could just give a few percentages. If we look in 2019, 897 positive HIV tests in Ontario, we actually identify of those six hundred eighty seven with 15 HIV diagnosis and 210 evidence of HIV, and out of the number 27 percent of face time HIV diagnosis, we amongst ACB people. When I say ACB, I mean African, Caribbean and Black people. And of those 70, we are male and fifty five were female. And when we look at that, about sixty five point one percent of African and Caribbean people report their HIV exposure category two to sexual contact. And when I look back to say we are now in so many decades later, out of since HIV aids was identified and people are still getting infected and also ACB populations, it's of concern to me because then I try to think of, is it because this lack of education? Is it because people become comfortable thinking that HIV doesn't exist? Most people are taking treatment and they are not seeing that as a face that used to be there before where someone is to be skinny, someone has to have you here that is almost dealing and falling off, that people have forgotten about just being vigilant on protecting themselves.

MG: Which speaks of the importance of focussing research, but also focussing some of the science on those communities.

MARVELLOUS MUCHENJE: Yes, yes it does. But we know also there are systemic barriers that are there already. There's so many things that prevent people from going to get tested. The stigma. Stigma is a big issue. Stigma not only within the ACP communities alone, but even within the health care system. There's so much stigma and discrimination, and people are not comfortable. Even just discussing HIV with their in their churches or within the community is to consider, as is sometimes what necessarily is a game is disease. But that comes with this being promiscuous and people don't want to talk about it.

MG: Can I specifically just briefly, can I specifically ask you about that when you were diagnosed? What sort of stigma did you face?

MARVELLOUS MUCHENJE: So when that was diagnosed, I was diagnosed while I was in Zimbabwe, and in that time, of course, it was, Zimbabwe does not consider as much as a game is disease, but it was posted before I used to think it's possible. It's not even there was six week, but it was posted. You or you were ever seen as if you are the one who brought the women mostly are the one who would go and to get into health care and did diagnose lose before their husband or their sexual partners. So it's become an issue of who brought the HIV in the family. So there was so much stigma and is still there. The stigma is still there, but also a lack of access of information the correct information needs. People also think that it's only certain categories of people get HIV. But now we are seeing children who have been born with HIV are surviving. They are almost in their 20s, someone in their fifties. So which mean that people are surviving with HIV?

MG: I know you do a lot of work at storytelling and trying to to tell the stories of people like yourself living with HIV just in the last couple of minutes that we have. Why is that so important and how have you seen a change in reducing that stigma through that work?

MARVELLOUS MUCHENJE: I think storytelling, especially for the racialized communities and indigenous women do storytelling has been the basis of learning, and sometimes you don't have to call it private parts with their names. You can use some metaphors, you can use some examples in people to get the message. So for most communities, they're comfortable talking about stories when it comes to diseases or just any other relationships. So for me, I think it's it is a conversation starter. Just start bringing something or mostly even knowing that it's about sex. People don't want to talk about sex, whether it's in the African community or other communities. So for me, stories actually bring more conversation in the spread. And so this can come in different ways. It can be digital stories. It can be drama. It can be poems. So it's a way of educating that is in some ways not stigmatising.

MG: And that can change people's attitudes around HIV?

MARVELLOUS MUCHENJE: Yes, it does.

MG: That's really powerful. I mean, and it speaks also just to the need, as you said, the focus on health care. But it speaks to just a change in conversation around how people think about HIV.

MARVELLOUS MUCHENJE: And for me before I said before, I think when we think to think about vaccines or think about cure, we have to think of the mistrust that already exists with. This of when it comes to racialized communities, so which means that a lot of research has to also do a lot of work to get that trust from the community and try and reach all those hard to reach populations who are really involved in studies. Because when you look at this current example of this study, it left me thinking it looks like a medical intensive and expensive procedure. So how can we scale it up to all the kids been said already? But let's think of other ways also of reaching out those communities was up to now. When you talk about treatment, even here in Canada, there are some communities who do not have access to treatment.

MG: I'm really glad to talk to you about this this morning. Thank you very much.

MARVELLOUS MUCHENJE: Thank you so much.

MG: Marvellous Muchenje, a doctoral student in social work at the University of Toronto, who works doing community outreach for a company working on HIV therapies. You're CBC News is up next. And then.

SOUNDCLIP

The fact that it fell so easily onto women's shoulders without much discussion just shows how entrenched it is in society. And that's the expectation right now is that it falls on women first.

MG: falls on women, first the emotional labour, the care economy in 90 seconds. We continue our series work in progress with a look at how this pandemic has affected women's work and what the future of work might look like when we get out of this. That's coming up in six minutes. I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current on CBC Radio One.

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How workplaces can give women a fair pandemic recovery

Guests: Armine Yalnizyan, Allison Venditti

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

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MG: Still to come on Parliament Hill right now, you'll mostly hear the honking of horns, but every weekday at noon, you might also hear something else if you listen closely. Carillon Concert in the Peace Tower This is a tradition that goes back to 1927. Dr Andrea McCrady is the Dominion Carillonneur, or her performances will fall silent after this week. My conversation with her in about 30 minutes, but first work in progress.

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MG: Stacey Ashfield is a psychotherapist in Fredericton with a busy job, two kids and a husband who's a lawyer. When the pandemic stretched her family and a hundred different directions, Stacey felt like it was her job to try to keep everything together.

SOUNDCLIP

It really does feel unfair that I was put in this situation where I have this choice between either get to do a good job making sure that my kids get well-educated and that they're getting everything they should. And I'm balancing that between the career that I quite like and I'm fairly committed to. And I planned on working full time and right until the pandemic started. I think I was doing a really good job with that. Everything was working out pretty smoothly and then the pandemic hit, and I really wasn't able to find that balance because the extra things that were put on me were really too much to fit into a day, and I just don't know how to cope with it.

MG: Stacey Ashfield is far from alone. This pandemic has forced a lot of working parents into tough positions and mothers more so than fathers. A survey done during the first year of the pandemic by the polling company Palabra found that a third of Canadian women surveyed had considered quitting their jobs compared to less than 20 percent of men. The employment rate for women is still below its pre-pandemic level, although it's starting to bounce back. And so today in our series work in progress, we take a closer look at the setbacks that women in particular have faced during this pandemic and what it will take to make sure those setbacks aren't permanent. Allison Venditti is a career coach, H.R. consultant and the founder of Moms at Work, a professional association for working mothers in Canada. Allison, good morning.

ALLISON VENDITTI: Good morning.

MG: That story from Stacey. Sound familiar? She's in this dilemma where she's trying to figure out how to keep her own career going during the pandemic and make sure that her kids are taken care of as well.

ALLISON VENDITTI: It's familiar because it's mine and probably most of our members story as well.

MG: Tell me about yours.

ALLISON VENDITTI: I am self-employed. My husband has a full time job and we have three kids who are eight and eight and four and trying to school them, keep a business afloat and do all those things. It was impossible, but at least at the beginning, I knew it was going to be impossible. So I had to make choices earlier, but shockingly, an organisation designed to for supporting mothers. We didn't make any money for the first six months of the pandemic. All of our business dried up.

MG: What does it say to you - and this, in some ways, is an obvious question, but it's important to ask when things are really difficult, so many women felt like they should be the ones to put their job and their career on hold.

ALLISON VENDITTI: I think it shows us, for the first time, very openly that the world survives on women's unpaid labour, and I think that a lot of women who had support outside the home who had day-care. You know, we're kind of making it work. But when push comes to shove, it's a very difficult. It wasn't a difficult decision. That's what makes it horrible is that if your partner makes twice as much money as you, which is a common place for many, for many women or has a more stable career, that wasn't a choice. It was it was sort of forced on women to make that decision. Under no circumstances would my husband give up his job so that I could continue with mine when he when he brings twice as much money in.

MG: And it speaks to what you have been pushing for for a long time, which is pay transparency. Tell me more about this.

ALLISON VENDITTI: I think pay transparency is itself is just one tool. Before we waste our time and energy applying for a job, just tell us what it pays the same way that you would put prices on things at the grocery store. This is how we decide how we feed our family and parents. So I think it's really critical at this point to stop wasting people's time and to start being very open and honest and providing a pay range.

MG: Why is there still in 2022 that reluctance for true pay transparency? Why is it, as you said, that that women in particular, they don't know if they're applying for this job, as you said, the time can be wasted. Just tell us what what the job pays?

ALLISON VENDITTI: As an H.R. person, I started hiring in health care and in health care. It's not a thing everybody knows that everybody makes because mostly unionised. So when I move to corporate side, I was shocked. I was shocked at the game that it entailed to go back and forth talking about how much do you want to pay over competitive? It's the same reason that people still don't talk about money. There's the phrase that it's rude to and my response to someone who says it's rude: why is it rude? Where did that come from? And nobody knows the answer. So maybe it's time to stop doing that.

MG: And in the absence of, you know, being rude and when people are trying to be polite, what is the cost of that?

ALLISON VENDITTI: Significant that we know for women and people of colour. It's just significant. I'm having been on the other side and seen the numbers firsthand at several organisations, without a doubt, we know that women are paid less than men, and it's not for lack of negotiation. But when women negotiate for money, they're seen as aggressive, pushy. All the things that you assign to women. So then you're sort of stuck between a rock and a hard place, so you really have to move through systems and use things like legislation to create more equity.

MG: When you said earlier that one of the things we've learnt is is that society in some ways runs on the unpaid labour of women. Tell me more about that and what the cost of that is on those women, but also on broader society.

ALLISON VENDITTI: There has not been as much discussion about unpaid labour, but it's always sort of working in the background is that women feel the expectation from society and for households that we do all of things. And really, it's the emotional labour that goes into things. So I'll put out the example that it's not just dropping off your kid at the birthday party, it's picking up the present, RSVP and talking to the parents about any allergies, figuring out how to get there, figuring out all those things. And I think most of that emotional labour is really usually unseen. But what happened during the pandemic was, you can't unsee this. You can't unsee that your partner was, you know, working a normal eight hours a day and you were running back and forth trying to, you know, set up a Zoom call trying to get on your laptop, trying to do whatever and making snacks. And the fact that it fell so easily onto women's shoulders without much discussion. It just shows how entrenched it is in society. And that's the expectation right now is that, you know, it falls on women first.

MG: I want to talk about whether that expectation is changing in just a moment. But first, let's hear from another working mother. Her name is Alyssa Hutton. She's chief operating officer of BC Food and Beverage. She's a solo mom to a son with special needs, and it just started a new job when this pandemic hit two years ago.

SOUNDCLIP

It was quite scary, to be honest. At the beginning, I didn't know what I was going to do, and I really, really considered that I might actually have to leave my job in order to support my son. My experience with my work, everybody was quite vulnerable and how they shared and very real and down to earth. And that certainly was our leadership. They were supportive and connected as much as we were going through this, this collective struggle and of course, being mother of a child with autism, work can be quite challenging at times. But they were really flexible with me and I felt very seen, very heard. And it actually really enabled me to show up and do my best work. And I think it's kind of unusual. But I was given a promotion during COVID and having a culture that really wasn't a plaque on the wall, it was really values that we all shared. It allowed for a really positive experience.

MG: That's a really interesting comment about the culture that she worked in. How important is a culture like that?

ALLISON VENDITTI: I think it's critical. Most employers are not large employers. Most employers are these small and midsize employers, and many of them did not have the capacity or knowledge in order to help facilitate that kind of growth because business owners were struggling and their employees struggled as well. But that was a great story to hear that they were so supportive.

MG: And it's not a common story?

ALLISON VENDITTI: It is for larger employers when you have an air team that can be devoted, when you have the ability to have flexible work. But I think this conversation always steers to people from who work from home. Most of our members, they don't work at home. So that situation for someone who has a special needs child, if they're a frontline worker doesn't end the same way. So that's what we have seen as the reality for working parents is that many people still had to show up to their job, still had no choices were told either get in or you're fired. And there were few, if any, accommodations made for anything that was happening at home.

MG: What's changed in the last couple of years when it comes to what employees expect from their workplaces and the culture that they expect in terms of understanding the situation that the employees are in, what they're what they're actually going through in their own lives?

ALLISON VENDITTI: I think it is wild the changes that we have seen because it's an employee market, because there's such a shortage of staff that we're seeing so many employees interviewing the employer, which is an H.R. person I've never seen in this capacity.

MG: What do you mean?

ALLISON VENDITTI: So they will ask questions about culture. I've heard spectacular questions about what were the top three things you did for your employees at the beginning of the pandemic. So we spent a significant of time trying to prove ourselves as employers to potential employees to show them that we are a great place to work. It's really about how it's going to fit with their life, and they're very open, honest about the things that they need. And I think that as scary as it is, will play out quite well on both sides because then there is more equal footing.

MG: Specifically, how do you think women could leverage that, that changing dynamic to their advantage, given what we've been talking about?

ALLISON VENDITTI: I think that they can gravitate to workplaces that are that are designed to support them, that can give them the opportunities because that can be even if they don't stay with that company forever and ever. It's a launching pad for something different. But if you're provided an opportunity and an organisation to get promotions and that they're willing to be flexible with you in case there's an emergency, then that's where you're going to flourish. And so we've really tried to. You know, push those employers forward as a great place for you to grow your career because honestly, most workers and half of our time hearing the stories of all the awful employers and connecting them with employment lawyers.

MG: The flip side of that for those who have been able to work from home and again, not everybody has been able to do that. But for those who have been able to work at home, is that the line between work and the rest of your life is, if not been blurred than just erased. And you'll have a lot of people who, you know, work in a flexible schedule, but it seems like they're working all the time. Maybe the kids go to bed and then they go back to work, for example, and they log back on. Is that what should happen after COVID? Is that a blueprint for for what work could look like?

ALLISON VENDITTI: No, and I really it's disappointing. Like, this isn't work from home. This is trying to keep working while surviving a pandemic with children crawling all over your head. And they're very different. Like I work from home before the pandemic. This is not work from home as it is, but I think that there is an appetite for it. Companies and workers are going to have to get much better about setting those boundaries and responsiveness with much more than, you know, a line at the bottom of your email saying, I work weird hours because right now it's free for all and pretty unhealthy. Mental health wise, what's

MG: your pitch to employers about making sure that they pay attention to equity and what women workers want coming out of this pandemic,

ALLISON VENDITTI: focussing on and supporting women who are just coming off maternity leave or mid-career? These are going to be your female leaders, so you should pay attention. So if you really want to fix that talent pipeline, quote unquote that you should pay attention to your mid-level female leaders and help them grow so that you have a strong female talent to make great female leaders. That's my pitch. If you can keep women during those really difficult years with little kids, you're going to keep them for a really long time.

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

ALLISON VENDITTI: Thank you.

MG: Allison Venditti, a career coach, H.R. consultant and the founder of Moms at Work. It's a professional association for working mothers in Canada. While life was uncertain for many working women in Canada, those in lower paid, precarious jobs were dealing with even more stress. Last week on the programme, I spoke with Ramona Gnanapragasam . She's a single mom of two who went from juggling jobs in retail and restaurants to training as a personal support worker during the pandemic, and she talked about the stress of holding down a job when she had to negotiate shifts around her child care.

SOUNDCLIP

It's a risk because some employers don't want to hear that, right. It's just excuses. So what if? What if they find a replacement because they can't keep up with what they promised me, or I'm not able to make my 35 to 40 hours a week just to get, you know, put food on the table? So you're literally gambling with their trust, right? Or like everyone's replaceable right?

MG: Armine Yalnizyan has been closely watching what's happening to women in the workforce. She is an economist and an Atkinson fellow on the future of workers are mean. Good morning to you. Good morning that you coined the term she cession used it on this very programme. It seems like ages ago to talk about what was happening to women at the very beginning of the pandemic. Are we now in 2022 still in a she-cession?

ARMINE YALNIZYAN: Yes, we are. We have fewer jobs at the last count, which is January 20 22, which was Omicron. But still, at that point, we had fewer jobs than we did in February of 2020, and men got more of those jobs than women about 63 percent of the jobs compared to women. But quality of jobs is also down. Met fewer hours on average for men, and often that is happening to men in the same sectors where they're losing full time jobs like construction and transportation. Right at the very same time, we are seeing in things like the care economy, which is health care and education women moving from part time to full time positions, even overtime, and we are experiencing burnout. So the quality of jobs is just as important as the number of jobs, and we have seen history flipped on its head from normally a recession, followed by a she covery to a she cession, followed by a recovery.

MG: How does unpaid labour factor into that? We're just talking with Allison about that in terms of what what has been revealed over the course of the last couple of years. How does unpaid labour roll into that?

ARMINE YALNIZYAN: There is a crisis that has been revealed by this pandemic about how reliant we are on unpaid labour to keep the wheels on the bus turning. And what we have seen is that the biggest change for women's participation in the labour force is women aged 55 and older. We're not 100 percent sure what's driving that. Is it because they're afraid of getting sick or getting sick? Is it because they're burning out? Is it because they're helping their prime aged children who themselves have kids keep their jobs? But we're just seeing about four times as women dropping out of the labour market as men in that age group. And that's a testament to what is happening to unpaid care. The other thing we're seeing is that the highest paid group. In in the economy for men, more are getting jobs in that highest paid groups. But women are there's far fewer of them and the group of workers who get 30 dollars an hour and more. And that's because they are they are reducing their hours of pay, which has a huge impact on both households, but also in what was just referred to as the pipeline of talent because it's at that point. Women aged 55 and over, or even younger women who just can't pick up the hours and are not going to get promoted because they can't juggle it all.

MG: How important is pay transparency? This is something that Allison has been pushing for for some time.

ARMINE YALNIZYAN: You know, talking about how much you make is the ultimate social taboo. But there is a difference between the women on top story and the people at the bottom. Women on top. It's really important to talk about inequalities and pay equity. And Allison was absolutely right that we have had pay equity legislation, which has just been ignored for a long time. I don't know whether the endemic labour shortages, which are likely to stay with us for decades because of population ageing, will lead to more pay transparency and more discussion of this and more improvement. But you know what, if you really want to make a big macro impact, macroeconomic impact, you should raise the minimum wage. More women are at the bottom than at the top. There's about one and a half million people in Ontario right now that are low wage workers. In fact, Canada has historically been a low wage economy, and raising the minimum wage isn't just pick a number. It's actually anchor the minimum wage to 60 percent of the average wage if you want to make a big difference. And that would affect an awful lot of people's incomes, household purchasing power, and it would affect more women than men and surprisingly, more adults than young workers.

MG: Do you agree that the game has changed and it's a part of this is around pay transparency, but it's also just around how people view their relationship with work. As Allison was saying, she knows a number of women who are interviewing their employers rather than the other way around. Have things really changed and is that throughout the spectrum? Or again, are certain groups more privileged in terms of their ability to see that game change?

ARMINE YALNIZYAN: Oh, 100 percent. We've all seen it love in in technicolour during this pandemic. You know, we have talked about the role of unpaid labour in this conversation, and for the last 20 to 23 months, it's clear that we are not just workers and the care economy is not a derivative. It's foundational to the essential economy, and the economy is fuelled by both paid and unpaid labour. And often the paid labour is like called essential but treated as essentially disposable. So we know that we need a bigger care economy. We need people to be able to be able to take more paid leaves, especially sick leave. But we also need to be able to turn to a functional child care system, a functional system of long term care, a functional health care system, which, by the way, we're talking about the crisis in unpaid labour. The biggest crisis in paid labour is in health care, right? Like we are looking at a catastrophe in in real time with zero strategy for how to deal with the absolutely predictable, which is the things we rely on the most at end of life as an emergency care service is not going to be available available because we might have the hospitals and beds, but we don't have the staff.

MG: You mentioned child care. How big of a piece in the puzzle is that the federal government has deals with most provinces, not Ontario, when it comes to national child care plan. How big of a deal is that when you're looking at an equitable recovery, a she-covery?

ARMINE YALNIZYAN: Think it was just a few weeks after you and I spoke in March of 2020 that I said no recovery without a recovery. No, she covery without child care. Child care is the choke point. Let me give you a very vivid example of this. I was talking to somebody that informed me recently that in 2021, full pandemic Canada attracted more venture capital than at any point in its history twelve point three billion dollars in venture capital. About a quarter of it went to the tech companies that are handled by community, which is based in Kitchener-Waterloo. They can't deploy the cash because they can't get the talent, because the talent needs child care, and that area of southern Ontario is deficient in providing public services. So you're seeing that where you were talking about the blurring of the line between work and life. But you know what we're blurring the line between in the economy is public and private. We need more government. And that's exactly what some of these protests are about is people want less government. But the moment we are in is we absolutely need more and better government to support us, so we can get to work.

MG: So what would that look like? I mean, the federal government promised a feminist economic recovery. What would that more government in this moment look like that would square with with the federal government's stated goals again?

ARMINE YALNIZYAN: The pandemic has revealed the playbook. The playbook requires a functioning economy as the foundation of everything else we do. And if every job in the care economy is a good job, then you propel the economy from the bottom up. You build it with a secure foundation. And what do I mean by that? I mean, you've got high quality, regulated child care and long term care with standards where the workers that are providing the care are actually not treated as disposable, they are treated as foundational to the provision of care. I think by so doing, you are looking at the potential potential for building the next middle class of Canada and you are helping parents and the elderly and our children and businesses get to the more important things of life which is maximising their potential in whatever way they choose to do it.

MG: Is that possible in a society that puts a price on everything?

ARMINE YALNIZYAN: A hundred percent. In the case of child care, it literally pays for itself. We've got a quarter century of data showing how the circularity of that part of the economy works. When we have a healthier workforce, we have a more productive workforce.

MG: Just finally, I mean, the whole point of this series is to talk about what the future of work could be like and how to take what we've learnt over the last couple of years and make the new normal a better normal. Are you optimistic that that new normal will be better, particularly for women in the economy?

ARMINE YALNIZYAN: I think it's absolutely up to us to choose not to snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory. That is what we are being offered. You know, in a nutshell, the solutions are the best benefits are portable benefits for everybody. More paid sick leaves, more leaves in general, a bigger care economy so you can get help in caring for those who are too old, too young and too sick to work. We know the playbook, Matt. This is not rocket science. We have been watching it unfold in real time in the last two years. So if we could just bring ourselves to take those lessons and put them to work, we would be so much more resilient on the other side, feminist or otherwise.

MG: I mean, it's great to talk to you, as always. Thank you very much. Thank you. Armenian Museum, an economist and the Atkinson fellow on the future of workers, would love to hear in particular from working women on this to those stories that we heard from Allison and Stacey. Sound familiar to you? Have you had to make similarly tough choices when it comes to work and that intersection between work and the rest of your life? And part of the series is about really thinking about what the future of work would look like? And so what would the future of work look like for you in a best case scenario, given what you have been through over the past couple of years? Let us know. You can email us The Current at CBC.ca. Find us on Twitter @TheCurrentCBC or go to the website cbc.ca/thecurrent and click on the contact link. Coming up after your regional update, the Emergencies Act has been invoked. Police have been handing out notices to protesters telling them to leave the streets of downtown Ottawa are still gridlocked by an occupation. We'll talk in 90 seconds with a reporter on the scene, our Ashley Burke, about the latest from the capital and what might be coming in the coming days and hours. That's in 90 seconds. I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current on CBC Radio One. Stay with us.

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Police signal greater enforcement to end occupation of Parliament Hill

Guest: Ashley Burke

MG: Hi, I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current. Downtown Ottawa is still occupied by protesters today that in spite of the Emergencies Act being invoked by the federal government on Monday. Yesterday, Ottawa police were handing out leaflets informing protesters that they could be subject to arrest and criminal charges if they did not leave immediately. The acting chief of police in Ottawa, Steve Bell, said that his police service does have a plan for ending the occupation, but he declined to give specifics. Ashley Burke is a senior reporter in the CBC's parliamentary bureau in Ottawa. Ashley, good morning.

ASHLEY BURKE: Good morning.

MG: What do we know about what's happening now on the streets of Ottawa right now?

ASHLEY BURKE: Matt, there are buses that are pulling up downtown and they are filled with police and they're starting to pour out of those vehicles. CBC's also confirmed that Quebec provincial police are on the way here. That is an additional police force on top of the OPP, the RCMP Ottawa police who've set up a command centre. So we've got crews out there right now. Reporters on the scene trying to find out if this is going to be the moment that they finally move in.

MG: That interim chief said yesterday in a City Council meeting that the techniques police were prepared to use to end the occupation. We're not perhaps what residents in Ottawa would be used to be seeing. Do we have any sense as to? I mean, he was very quiet in terms of saying specifically what those techniques would be. Do we have any sense as to what that might be?

ASHLEY BURKE: We don't. We don't have a sense this morning, but we do know that this is complicated because there are children on site. Police have been very clear that there's about 25 percent of these vehicles filled with children inside or they have children inside. And yesterday they were notifying them that they better have plans in place in case they start making arrests for those children. Otherwise, children aid children's aid society was going to be having to take them.

MG: You were out on the streets and we saw your report last night on the national. How entrenched are these protesters in the downtown core? What 18, 19 days into this?

ASHLEY BURKE: Well, Matt, they haven't just taken over the streets. They've moved in and they have made themselves comfortable. I've been out there for three weeks walking around and I've seen demonstrators install their own mailboxes, just steps from Parliament Hill. There are people soaking in an inflatable hot tub that they're able to keep warm all day. There's an outdoor gym set up in the middle of a street with weights and a bench press. Protesters here have created an entire community. There's free food, even pig roast, a first aid tent and free fuel. I spoke to a 19 year old who said he's part of a network of 100 people who spend all day hauling wagons loaded with cans of diesel between gas stations and the protests just to keep trucks running, and that their church in southern Ontario sent them here and is paying for it all. We also saw a black transport truck yesterday that was transformed into a mobile workshop, so we saw demonstrators with two-by-fours, huge plywood, plywood sheets heading inside. They tried to block our cameras, but we could see that they had power tools and they were building wooden outhouses inside because this because they said there was nowhere that they could go to the washroom.

MG: This is a really sophisticated supply chain and this is connected to encampments that we've been talking about that are outside the downtown core as well.

ASHLEY BURKE: Exactly. This operation is highly organised, and there are a series of supply camps outside the downtown core in a hotel parking lot, another in a farmer's field. And they're really the logistical nerve centres of this, where donations pour in and then are transferred into smaller trucks to protesters downtown. There's propane on site, huge stacks of firewood, water and at one point even soreness.

MG: I mentioned police were handing out these leaflets, protesters saying essentially leave or you could face arrest. How have those in the occupation been reacting to these notices?

ASHLEY BURKE: Some of them laughed at them. They called it a scare tactic yesterday. They said that the threat of arrest hefty fines if their trucks being seised in no way will deter them. But one of the convoys, organisers Tamara Leach, posted a tearful video on social media late last night, and she called on her supporters to send reinforcements to Ottawa. She said she'd probably be sent to jail, but that's OK. She's not afraid.

MG: So do we know whether any of the those in this protest in this occupation took the notice seriously and rolled their trucks out of the downtown core?

ASHLEY BURKE: Not that I saw yesterday. I mean, there's still hundreds of trucks packed downtown, even when I came in to work this morning, so I didn't personally see anyone that was leaving because of this. They really did see it as a scare tactic, but it's certainly something that we saw notices just like this handed out in Windsor before authorities there moved in to clear the Ambassador Bridge. So it is a sign that there could be movement today.

MG: In the context of all of this - there was a very messy Ottawa City Council meeting last night - what happened in that meeting it, watching part of it? It was as one of the councillors said, unfortunate in terms of what was unfolding.

ASHLEY BURKE: My colleagues that cover municipal politics said they have never seen anything like this. Just a day after Ottawa's police chief Peter slowly stepped down. City Council voted to oust the chair of the. Police Services Board Diane Deans. Now this was a surprise move, it was labelled as a way to restore public trust. But many city councillors said they were disgusted by the mayor who was behind it. They even called on him to resign some of them, and this was all over, leaked news that the board had hired an interim police chief from outside the city without any competition and then other three other members on the Board and Police Services Board resigned in protest.

MG: All of this unfolding while the downtown core is still in crisis.

ASHLEY BURKE: Exactly.

MG: We know yesterday, the federal Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino was characterising these protests as having gained momentum under the pretence of being about vaccine mandates and pandemic fatigue. But he says they're actually driven and coordinated by a larger ideological movement. What do we know about that?

ASHLEY BURKE: Well, the message from protesters, it really varies. For many that we talked to, they say this is all about peace, love, freedom of choice, that they just want to return to normal life without any COVID restrictions and that they're really fed up with misinformation and what they call even conspiracy theories around vaccines. But there's also some more extreme elements. You know, there are trucks in signs just outside the Prime Minister's Office downtown that say, if Trudeau. But with the full swearword, I also saw a sign yesterday with an image of a noose around Justin Trudeau's neck. But what we don't know yet is the extent that these far that far right groups may be involved in encouraging and also funding this movement. We know that Go Fund Me ended a $10 million fundraiser after being contacted by authorities. There were a lot of anonymous and fake names used to donate money, and a CBC analysis of donations to another fundraising site gives Gibson Go phone. About half were coming from the U.S. What we do know is that those involved are trying to undermine faith in public institutions. Also mainstream media, and that many of the organisers in the protest make it no secret that they don't see Trudeau as a legitimate leader and that they want him to resign.

MG: Do we know whether there has been actual coordination between the protesters in Ottawa and the blockades that we've seen in other places? You mentioned Windsor, but also includes Alberta. Both of those border blockades have since come down. But has there been coordination between those various sites?

ASHLEY BURKE: Well, one of the groups that are managing the logistics here in Ottawa, they live stream their latest operation plans this week, and packing is one of those seen on the video. He's known for his far right views and racist posts online. And he told those in cootes to stay put to stand their ground and that reinforcements were coming from the South. And he told supporters that Ottawa was really the main focus point right now, but also important to note that King has said things before that didn't end up being true.

MG: There has been a fierce debate in Parliament over the Emergencies Act being used in the way that the government has been handling these protests. How would you characterise that debate?

ASHLEY BURKE: It's been boisterous. The Liberals argue the government had no choice but to grant itself sweeping new powers that the goal of this protest is nothing but an attempt to overthrow the government. But in the House of Commons, the Conservatives yesterday argued that police have managed to end other protests at border crossing using existing laws. They say these powers aren't aren't necessary. But the NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh said his party has said that his party will give the government the votes that it needs to move forward. And the prime minister later this morning is going to lead off a debate on a motion to confirm the declaration of the public order of emergency later this morning.

MG: So what are we expecting to see in the next coming days? I mean, you mentioned these buses with police officers that have been pulling up. It's the family day long weekend. We know that on weekends in particular, there are more protesters that appear in the downtown core. What's the sense of urgency here?

ASHLEY BURKE: There really is a sense of urgency to act today. As you mentioned, the weekends, the crowd here swells and there are a lot of families with really young children, which makes it complicated for police. They they worry that this is volatile and that this is not a demonstration is not a place for police, for children. But there's also bad weather coming. There's a snowfall warning. In effect, it's pouring rain here this morning, so that could freeze. There's going to be gusting winds later this afternoon, so not great conditions for visibility. So really a lot of pressure on police to make their move and to clear people out before other people travel in here to Ottawa this weekend to help reinforce this.

MG: But on your way into work this morning, I mean, you see the the encampment there?

ASHLEY BURKE: Yeah, I came in, I walked down the street and there's still hundreds of trucks there. It was quiet this morning. I heard one long horn and that's usually a sign or has been assigned from protesters that if something's about to happen, they they sound the horn to warn others. But I didn't hear a repeat after that. But certainly there is a sign that something's happening. We haven't seen busloads of police arrive in this fashion before, at least I haven't personally. So all eyes really are on Parliament Hill right now.

MG: We will keep a close eye on this. Ashley, thank you very much.

ASHLEY BURKE: Thank you.

MG: The BBC's Ashley Burke, she was in Ottawa, the latest, of course, on this at cbc.ca.

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Dominion Carillonneur ready to play one last chime before Peace Tower renovation

Guest: Dr. Andrea McCrady

MG: Here on CBC Radio One before the honking took over downtown Ottawa, the soundtrack of the nation's capital. Sounded a bit more like this. This vehicle, a Canadian performed by Andrew McCrady, Andrew McCrady is the dominion Carillonneur Parliament Hill for 13 years. She has kept music ringing from the Peace Tower after this Friday, though those bells will fall silent for at least five years as the building closes for renovations. Andrew McCrady joins me from Ottawa. Andrea, good morning.

ANDREA MCCRADY: Good morning, Matt.

MG: What is life like for you in these last couple of weeks? I want to talk about what's going to happen on Friday, but these are not normal times in Ottawa. And certainly the month of celebration that you may have had planned has been derailed a little bit with the horns honking. What's that been like for you?

ANDREA MCCRADY: Oh, it's been challenging to say the least. My life ominion Carillonneur has been accompanied by lots of noise on the hill over the last 13 years, whether it's protests or celebrations or lots of construction noise. So I deal with it.

MG: You were back at the keyboard this week. What are you thinking about in the lead up to Friday?

ANDREA MCCRADY: When I'm playing, I'm just losing myself completely into the music, trying to perform as best as I can and enjoy every moment of it.

MG: Are you thinking about Friday?

ANDREA MCCRADY: Sure. But I have lots of other music that I'm playing even before that. So each day I'm really focussing on the music. But yes, I'm preparing for Friday.

MG: All right, we'll talk. We'll talk more about preparing. Tell me a little bit about for people who have never been, you know, who've been to Ottawa, but they have heard the music and not known where the music is coming from. Describe your space in the peace tower.

ANDREA MCCRADY: Well, I'm about two thirds of the way up in the tower below the observation deck. I can't see my audience and my audience can't see me. They can certainly hear me. I am sitting in a very small room embedded in The Belfry. The Belfry has 53 bells with the six biggest bells right below me and forty seven bells above me. They don't swing, they're bolted to a frame, and the only thing that moves is the clapper inside, which is attached to the keyboard by a wire transmission system. The keyboard looks like a it's a very different keyboard, almost like wooden handles or broom handles in two rows, like the white keys and the Black Keys. They're too big to play with my fingertips, so I play with the side of my hand like a drummer without the sticks. And then I also have 29 pedals that can play the heaviest bells below me. So it's a very big instrument, but it's quite expressive, and I tell my students we have to convince the audience on the ground. It's a live performance. It's always a live performance. One way to do that is not a good way by making too many mistakes, but the other way is to play such a wide variety of music so expressively that you know, a machine or a computer cannot recreate that.

MG: How often do you hear from people that they had no idea that there was an actual person playing the music?

ANDREA MCCRADY: All the time. One of the real delights in the last three years is that we have been able to live audio, stream every programme through our website and pahl view. And now when I'm playing a piece, say by a Canadian composer in Vancouver or St. John's, they can listen live to me, perform the piece and I get feedback from all over the continent and even across the world. So that's very gratifying and pretty exciting. A little intimidating, too, because everybody's going to hear every mistake I make.

MG: One of the things about being a performer is that often you're on a stage and you have an audience there and there's a relationship between you and the audience. You're up in this small, windowless room, as you said, you know, most of the way up the tower. What is that like in terms of not knowing what the reception has been like to the music that you're performing?

ANDREA MCCRADY: Every Carillon faces that problem. If we're playing a Carillon in a tower, there are such things as mobile Carillon's that are on ground level, but basically in the peace tower. Again, I can't see my audience. I just have to speak musically to them, so I'm imagining them. Up until January 2019, when Cinderblock was closed to the public for its big rehabilitation or restoration project. I hosted a number of guests in the small room. I could only accommodate up to six, and that was also very gratifying because I could host VIP like prime ministers or ambassadors. Or more often it was general public people staff that had worked on the Hill for years and had never seen the carol on. Played, they'd all heard it, and they had no idea. Not only that it was humanly played, but how it was played at this point, we are also in the process of making a lot of videos while I still have access and they are going to be posted on our website. We started posting them last summer, starting with a wonderful piece called We Are Circling by Buffy Sainte-Marie, and now people can go to our web site and actually see how the Carillons played.

MG: What are the bells feel like when you're in that room?

ANDREA MCCRADY: The biggest bell in the peace tower weighs 10 tons. That's a single bell. Everyone knows it's the hour strike. And so when you strike that bill, you can feel the vibrations through your body. So yes, there's a physical aspect to hearing what I'm playing, but it's a really it's a true joy to be feeling that and listening to that voice.

MG: Mackenzie King called this the voice of the nation. Do you feel I mean, not the 10 tonne weight, but do you feel the weight of that?

ANDREA MCCRADY: I do. One of the biggest parts of my job was designing programmes that would keep interest stay relevant and sewed my day to day programmes. I would assign themes, and some of them were fairly light-hearted. But I guess some of the times that really affected me are playing for Remembrance Day. Playing for commemorations. Playing for the National Day of Truth and Reconciliation. That is a great responsibility to try to represent in music what Canada may be trying to express as well.

MG: I was gonna say, how do you understand that responsibility when you are there? And you know that not just there on the hill, but people across the country are hearing the music that you're performing? How do you understand that responsibility?

ANDREA MCCRADY: I take it extremely seriously, and I really try to do my very best to to live up to it and and to express it.

MG: Can you play almost anything on the Carillon? I mean, people may have seen when Rick Mercer came and performed alongside you and he played cannon waving flag, which is not a song, perhaps that people might expect to come out of the Karellen. And yet it sounded perfect. Can you play almost anything on this instrument?

ANDREA MCCRADY: Well, when people ask, Do you take requests? I say I'm open to suggestions. I can play everything from Renaissance to hip hop if it will work. I want to do it justice, and some things just don't work very well with the acoustics of the Carillon. I also pay a lot of attention to the lyrics. If someone suggests a song and if I don't already have it in my repertoire, I'll go listen to it on YouTube and I will check the lyrics. And if the lyrics are not appropriate to be coming out of the Peace Tower if they're obscene or offensive, I will not adapt that piece.

MG: Is there something that your favourite thing to play? The thing that going so you can have quiet moments that you play this thing on because people would hear it, but something that you love to go back to that you look forward to going back to.

ANDREA MCCRADY: I always answer that question with. It is a great privilege to play O' Canada, which I open my programme with every day. The only time I don't play AU Canada is on Remembrance Day, when the Canadian Forces Band performs it at the National War Memorial. I play is very straight forward, not too fancy version of O' Canada, and that helps focus me and centre me and prepare me for the rest of the programme. As far as what genre, I'm Carolyn her and I really enjoy playing playing music directly composed for the Carillon because it gives it its best individual voice, and I love working with other composers to help them compose for the Karellen. I'm not a composer, I'm a performer who knows how to adapt music and make it most effective on the instrument. But I love working with composers, too.

MG: The path that people take to their jobs is always fascinating. How did you end up in this position? You're an American. You're also a doctor.

ANDREA MCCRADY: I've had probably two pathways parallel pathways through my life. I started playing the piano when I was turning six, and music has always been extremely important to me. And yes, I ended up going to McGill to become a medical doctor and trained in Toronto at St. Luke's Hospital. But I always had music to balance me. I first encountered the Carillon when I was an undergraduate at Trinity College Hartford, Connecticut. And that instrument, which? You could hear all over campus was played by a student club, and I went up the tower and was just completely captivated by the beautiful sound of the bells. So that began 50 years ago now. But I've never given up the Carillon, and I was on a plane on 9-11, bound for a medical meeting in Boston. That plane safely landed, and we all went through one of these moments in the history of what happens now. I was still very active as a doctor, but I decided when the time was right, I would pivot and follow my my love of music. And so I went back to university in 2006 to get a music degree in Carillon performance. And just as I was finishing that Gordon Slater, the previous dominion Carillonneur her announced his retirement and an international competition was announced for the Peace Tower. And I said, Jeez, this isn't going to come up as an opportunity again in my lifetime. And lo and behold, I won the competition. I always had considered Canada my second home. And once I landed in Ottawa, I said, it's now my first home and I want to become a Canadian citizen. It was my dream that on some Canada Day I would play Canada on the Peace Tower and then come down on the ground and swear in as a Canadian citizen. And that dream came true of all days on July 1st, 2017. Canada's 150th.

MG: That's an amazing story. I mean, in part, just about that idea that you followed your passion, but also where the passion led you.

ANDREA MCCRADY: Yes, and it led so many different ways. All Carolines are very public instruments and all Carillon's try to maintain a relationship with their audience and their audience can be very transitory. I mean, all the tourists that come and go on the hill, but you want to speak to them and to speak to Canadians. It's such a diverse audience. I've really enjoyed adapting music from cannons waving the flag. My final programme will include an Islamic piece called Alhamdulillah, Indigenous Pieces, even a piece that was written directly for the Peace Tower just in the past year called North Star. That last programme kind of shows my own personal journey in in this job.

MG: You also have a lot of fun when you're up there. I mean, there are very serious moments, but for example, on 420, which is sort of celebrated as this weed holiday look kind of cannabis marijuana holiday. What do you play on 420?

ANDREA MCCRADY: Puff the Magic Dragon.

MG: Yeah. Did you do you have to compute to clear that with anybody or is that you're there in front of the keyboard? You can play what you want to play?

ANDREA MCCRADY: Oh, well, come on, it's I play my jokes, hopefully within good taste so that nobody can really say, Well, that's just mean spirited or or too mischievous. So who can object to Puff the Magic Dragon?

MG: The bells will stop ringing on Friday, but does that mean, I mean, are they going silent? Is there going to be a recording that comes out of the tower or...

ANDREA MCCRADY: Oh no, no, no, no.

MG: Nothing at all.

ANDREA MCCRADY: The 53 bells will go silent because there's a lot of work that's about to start on the tower itself, and the Carillon. Carillon is turning 95 this year. So the first thing is the Carillon will go silent. Even the clock chime is going to go silent by this spring. The clock will continue to show the proper time, but you won't hear even the Westminster chime an hour strike by May. The smallest bells are going to be taken out because they're Clapper's need to be replaced. All of this work, we sincerely hope, will be finished well before the Peace Tower and its Carillon Turn 100, which will be July 1st, 2027. The bells will come back in. We hope to be sounding beautiful music. I hope to be part of that celebration. And in the meantime, we're doing a lot of projects here in my office, which is not up in the tower. My actual office is in. East Block is a practise keyboard where I can maintain my abilities and a huge library of Carillon materials. The third largest Carillon library in North America. Lots of audio files and music files. We're going to be digitising these and uploading them on our website to share the Karellen while the peace towers not being heard.

MG: I've heard your music performed so many times and had no idea where that instrument was and who was playing it. It's a real pleasure. To talk to you, and I hope we hear you again on that first of July 2027 or before.

ANDREA MCCRADY: Thank you so much, Matt. It's been a real honour to share this music with all Canadians and to share it with you today.

MG: What a pleasure to talk to you. Take care. Thank you very much.

ANDREA MCCRADY: You're welcome.

MG: Dr. Andrew McCrady is the dominion Carillonneur that is The Current for this Thursday.

[Music]

MG: q's up next on CBC Radio One, name that tune the Carillon is such an amazing instrument, in part because of how she's playing it, as she mentioned with her fists, and she can play just about anything, including While My Guitar Gently Weeps, performed yesterday afternoon. We'll leave you with some Andrea McCrady taking on George Harrison. I'm Matt Galloway thanks for listening to The Current and we'll see you tomorrow.

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Thursday February 17, 2022 Full Transcript

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