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The AIH Transcript for March 3, 2022

Hosts: Helen Mann and Chris Howden

Prologue

HELEN MANN: Hello. I'm Helen Mann.

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

[Music: Theme]

CH: Tonight:

HM: Radio silence, the liberal Russian station Echo of Moscow has vanished from the airwaves, and its deputy editor in chief tells us it was shut down for trying to tell the truth about the invasion of Ukraine.

CH: A fighting chance. There are ominous signs that the worst is yet to come. So an opposition MP in Kyiv says goodbye to her kids and prepares to do battle.

HM: Doing right by those who've left. More than a million Ukrainians have abandoned their homes in the chaos, and now the Trudeau government says it will welcome as many as can make it here.

CH: Crater creator. When a three ton piece of space junk hits the moon, it will be the first time human garbage has accidentally slammed into the lunar surface, and its whole journey has already made a major impact on one asteroid tracker.

HM: She wanted strawberries, but they gave her a raspberry. A New York woman sues Kellogg's, claiming its strawberry pop tarts lack the titular ingredient. But like the toaster pastry itself, her efforts do not bear fruit.

CH: And pearls before wine. While eating a clam appetizer at a restaurant with his wife, a New Jersey man crunches down on the shiniest, most lucrative bit of food contamination imaginable. As It Happens, the Thursday edition. Radio that's not cold but is unusually clammy.

[Music: Theme]

Part 1: Russia media shutdown, Ukraine MP in Kyiv, Ukraine refugees: Sean Fraser

Russia media shutdown

Guest: Tatyana Felgenhauer

CH: For Muscovites, the radio frequency 91.2 was a voice in the wilderness. Echo of Moscow was one of the only media outlets in the country that was willing to call Vladimir Putin's special military operation in Ukraine and invasion and a war. But if you tuned to the station now, all you'll hear is static. Echo of Moscow has been pulled off the air, along with the country's last remaining independent television station. Tatyana Felgenhauer is a presenter and deputy editor in chief at Echo of Moscow.

HM: Tatyana, how did you realise that Echo of Moscow was off the air?

TATYANA FELGENHAUER: I got a text from my friend and she asked me what happened, because suddenly the air just disappeared and I checked my radio and instead of program, I heard like, sh.

HM: How did you feel in that moment?

TF: Oh, I was very angry. I was very angry and I was very sad. I couldn't believe that they just cut us. It was very, very strange. And, you know, I thought that I could be ready because we are on the war and of course, Vladimir Putin he doesn't need free media. He needs only propaganda. But still, I was very upset. And today we found out that the board decided to liquidate our radio station and our website.

HM: I've seen a quote where authorities say Echo has been delivering false information about Russia's invasion of Ukraine. How have you been covering the war?

TF: Professionally. As always, we are professional journalists and this is our main problem. So as you know, authorities, they don't call the war the war, and they try to make us call it like military operation. But it's a war. How can we use some other words? This is invasion war. So this is an act of the censorship. It's obvious to me.

HM: You said that Vladimir Putin wants nothing but propaganda. How cut off are Russians at this point from any independent information about what is happening in Ukraine?

TF: So for now, they try to shut down every free media. They block all the websites of free media, so they try to control all the information about this war. But the social media are still alive. So people in Russia can still learn something about this war, from social media and from several websites. And of course, we can use VPNs to get some information from who which were blocked.

HM: After the shutdown you continue to broadcast through YouTube now that the board has dissolved Echo of Moscow. Are you still able to do that?

TF: Yes. Our program, you can find all the programs on our YouTube channel and tomorrow I have my morning show there. I hope that we can keep our YouTube channel for a while.

HM: Do you feel that you are in any personal danger, either talking to us right now or by continuing to broadcast through YouTube?

TF: It's not a big problem to talk to you, but it's a huge problem if we continue our work and if we continue to tell people about this war. So yes, it might be dangerous, but it's our job. This is our profession. So what can we do?

HM: You're not just talking when you say that. You've encountered censorship before, in 2017, you were stabbed in the throat by a man who burst into the studio. What drives you to keep doing what you do?

TF: My listeners, my audience, I don't know this is my life. This is my life. I've been working on Echo for 18 years. This is my home, my family, and this is what I do and this is what I want to do. This is my past, my present, and I hope my future

HM: Has the reality of the sanctions begun to sink in for ordinary Russians right now?

TF: It's not like right now they understand what happened. But for example, today I saw a lot of pictures of huge lines in IKEA. And this is very, you know, like our common life, like buy some furniture. And yes, of course, I think people will realize what happened when they cannot buy, I don't know a sofa or when they cannot buy some doors.

HM: And it's not just that people are worried about the value of their money. They are at IKEA because IKEA says going forward, it's not going to sell in Russia.

TF: Yeah, and everyone like, Oh my gosh, what we will do without IKEA? They understand this is our last time when we can buy something in IKEA or, for example, Nike. I guess that they won't be working in Russia anymore. And I saw two guys with bags from Nike. I think there were about 10 bags. So this is like, welcome back to the USSR.

HM: We have seen some protests over the last week. We've heard, you know, hundreds of people have been arrested for protesting against the war in various Russian cities. What is your sense of that protest movement? Is it going to pick up steam? Are people being intimidated by these arrests?

TF: The level of protest is low, really low. I think two hours ago, I was on the [inaudible] place the centre of our city and there were a lot of policemen. And I cannot say to you how many people were detained? About 100, maybe. So no, it's only in Moscow and St. Petersburg and [inaudible]. But most people, they don't care about this war. Or maybe they support this war. So unfortunately, we have very low level of protests.

HM: Tatyana, I really appreciate the work you're doing and your willingness to speak with us about it as well. Thank you very much. Please take care.

TF: Thank you. Bye.

HM: Bye.

CH: Tatyana Felgenhauer is a presenter and deputy editor in chief of the independent radio station Echo of Moscow, which has just been taken off the air.

[Music: instrumental fantasy]

Ukraine MP in Kyiv

Guest: Lesia Vasylenko

CH: Ukraine's fight against Vladimir Putin's invasion is growing ever more desperate. Russian forces continue their assault on the country's biggest cities. As we go to air they've made advances that threaten the country's access to the Black Sea. But Lesia Vasylenko says she's not about to give up the fight. Ms.Vasylenko is an opposition MP in the Ukrainian Rada. She and her fellow parliamentarians gathered in secret today for a series of votes. We reached her in Kyiv.

HM: Ms.Vasylenko, what is the situation in Kyiv tonight?

LESIA VASYLENKO: Tonight is the same as all the previous nights. There are sirens going off. There are explosions in the background. It depends which area of Kyiv you're staying in, really. But mainly we expect to be hearing noise in the background all night through.

HM: Earlier in a phone call today with President Emmanuel Macron of France. Putin reportedly said that the war is going according to plan. Do you think this is how he planned things?

LV: Definitely not. Putin is already known for saying one thing, but meaning something completely different and usually absolutely opposite to what he's actually saying when he says, I'm not going to invade and I want peace, that means that I'm going to go all in, throw all my forces, hit you with all the missiles that I have, and I want war. So when he says that everything went according to plan and is going according to plan, then that essentially means that I don't have a plan. And whatever plan I may have had some time it didn't work and it didn't work because he expected to come into Ukraine, bend Kyiv over in just two hours and have a puppet government installed. That would be running the country from Moscow. That didn't happen. Today we are in Kyiv. We are closing in on our eighth day of war and Ukraine is still standing. Kyiv is still standing. All the major cities in Ukraine are under Ukrainian control and we fight for every single small city, no matter how small, we fight for every single village that might find itself under the occupation of Russia, and we will continue to do so.

HM: Earlier this week, you described your anger at Vladimir Putin after you placed your own young children in the care of their grandmother. It has to have been extremely difficult. Can you tell me what that goodbye was like?

LV: That was one of the most difficult points in my life, which I had to go through and that is something that millions of parents are going through right now in Ukraine. The situation on Ukrainian borders is that of tears, of pain, of families being torn apart. And along with those feelings of sadness, of huge love and of partition come feelings of hatred. And this is what I was writing about. I was actually really scared of this mounting hatred inside of me, which was just growing and growing. It's almost like, you know, it's not something that I would want or wish to ever have inside of me. But I now have this feeling and I now carry this feeling. And this feeling I think it's essential also for all of us Ukrainians to stand in unity and to keep fighting back the biggest army in the world.

HM: Are you willing to share what you said to your children?

LV: That is very simple. I just told them that I loved them and I told them that I'm staying here because I have to do a little bit of work and that they are going to see different places and they are also going to spend a little time with their family. And they were actually quite excited because they really like them. They see them very, very rarely. But, you know, they were excited. And for me, as a mother, it's the main thing not to have my children worried, not to have my children scared. The main reason why I took them out of all of this was because I didn't want them to live one more day in sirens and explosions and then having to sleep under the stairs rather than sleeping in their own beds. So I understood how much detrimental damage that is going to cause to them now and also in their future. I want them to have a normal life. I don't want Putin to steal their childhoods and their dreams and this naivete, which every child has. And I think that every parent who's sending their kids away, they're thinking exactly the same. They don't want their children to live in a war, and they don't want the damage, the psychological damage of war to get to their children and impact their lives and their future.

HM: A lot of these parents must be thinking, must be wondering if they will see their children again. Do you let your mind go there?

LV: It's in the back of my mind for sure, as it is in the back of the mind of every single parent, whether they are sending their kids away or not. I mean, like for the whole first week of war, my children were staying with me and I was with them. And every time it was the same thing, will they hit our house with something, a rocket, the missile, artillery fire or won't they? And every time it was like, how will we wake up in the morning? Will it be all of us? Will it be some of us? Will we wake up in our house? Or maybe part of our house will be gone? And millions of families across Ukraine all thinking exactly the same thoughts. So once you get your children out of the way will sound very strange phrase right now. But it is that out of the way of war, you can be in a much, much calmer state of mind. But I see what you mean by your question. I really couldn't say. And that's the hard bit of the whole politician. I really couldn't say when I will be able to see them again, when I will be able to hug them again, to smell them again and put them to bed and tell them a bedtime story or sing a lullaby. I really don't know when that will happen. I don't know when this will stop. I don't know when we will be reunited again.

HM: Ms. Vasylenko, thank you very much for taking time at this especially difficult moment in your country to speak with us. I wish you the very best.

LV: Thank you.

CH: Lesia Vasylenko is an opposition member of the Ukrainian Rada. We reached her in Kyiv.

Ukraine refugees: Sean Fraser

Guest: Sean Fraser

CH: The war in Ukraine has already driven more than a million people from their homes. Now, the Trudeau government says it will put no limit on the number it will welcome here in Canada. Immigration Minister Sean Fraser made the announcement today. It involves a pair of programs. One will expedite the visa process for people looking for a safe haven until the war ends. The other will offer a permanent place for Ukrainians who don't go back. We reached Sean Fraser, Canada's minister for Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship, in Ottawa.

HM: Minister Fraser, what signal are you sending by opening the door for Ukrainians to make Canada their permanent home?

SEAN FRASER: Well, we're sending the signal that Canada wants to do its part to contribute to the effort that Ukrainians are making as they fight the oppressive and tyrannical war of aggression by Vladimir Putin. We're opening the doors to Ukrainians who are seeking safe haven and providing them with an opportunity to work here. And for some of them to stay here. This is a big step we've taken and we want to do whatever we can as fast as we can to ensure we can give safety to some of the most vulnerable people in the world.

HM: You have said that there is no limit to the number of people Canada will take. The Ukrainians, Canada will take at least in the short term for, say, two years or possibly more. Does your department have the resources both here and on the ground in Europe to turn this particular offer into reality for people who need it now?

SF: We do. And we've had to innovate to create that capacity and we had to prepare in advance. Thankfully, we started preparing for this set of circumstances, which we hoped would never come to pass. On January 19th, what we saw since that time was the ability to move biometric kits to the area in Warsaw and Vienna and Bucharest, and 30 other locations throughout Europe, where they already existed. This is going to give us the capacity to process people quickly on the ground, but our internal capacity was something that I was concerned about. But what we've done was we modified essentially the system that we used to bring tourists to Canada because that's one of the systems that has the most horsepower across our department because it's accustomed to processing two million people a year by leveraging the system, by peeling off the administrative barriers that are the most likely things to lead to a refusal to entry for people who are seeking to come to Canada. We're going to simplify the process and be able to have one of our most powerful instruments to process as many people as possible as quickly as possible.

HM: Now you're promising to create an expedited visa process, but you are stopping short of the conservatives' call for you to waive the visa requirements entirely for Ukrainians. Why is that?

SF: Well, there's two reasons, and my primary motivation was speed, but there are some security issues as well. When I first learnt of the potential influx of people seeking to come to Canada, when I heard the likelihood of a further invasion into Ukraine by Vladimir Putin, I started to ask myself, How can we respond? My first reaction was to consider whether we could set up a refugee resettlement program, which would have taken years to successfully settle the numbers that we were dealing with. And we heard from the community that a lot of people wanted the safe haven, but not a permanent home because they wanted to return to their homeland. The second thing I considered was the visa waiver, but when I dug into that issue, I realized it was going to require changes to regulations and updates to our IP system across three different government departments and potentially with private airlines as well. And the estimated timeline to issue a visa waiver would have been 12 to 14 weeks. We're going to be able to stand up this new system in a two week period and expedite applications that are in the system in the meantime. In addition, there are concerns because there have been pro-Russian forces fighting Ukrainians in eastern Ukraine in the Donbas over the past eight years. And we want to make sure if we're willing to take whoever is willing to apply, that there's some rigour applied to the process. So we don't create security risks, which we can avoid by having biometric assessments in place. This is the fastest and safest way to get people here, and I'm thrilled because I think it's going to work and be very effective.

HM: Your government has been struggling to deliver on your existing refugee promises. Are tens of thousands of Afghans going to be put on hold as Ukraine becomes Canada's new priority?

SF: No. And let me say that we can do more than one thing at a time, and our commitment to resettle 40,000 Afghan refugees has not wavered one bit. In fact, we've now got more than 8500 Afghan refugees. There was 335, I believe, landed in Calgary last week. There will be more flights arriving each week. One of the strengths to the approach that I've identified earlier was, we use a system that's based on the model we used to process tourists and people who come on a temporary basis. This is a separate system and process that's used to process our refugee applications for people who are coming through. The challenges that we're facing in Afghanistan have very little to do with our processing capacity. They have a lot to do with the situation on the ground because we made commitments to specific people who worked alongside Canada that are still in Afghanistan and the Taliban have seized control of the territory. And they're a terrorist entity under Canadian law, and they are not letting people leave. So the circumstances on the ground were what's causing difficulties, but it's not going to impact our commitment one bit. And we still do have flights arriving, bringing Afghan refugees every week to Canada, and that will remain the case until we reach our target of resettling 40,000 on a permanent basis here in our country.

HM: We did talk earlier about the signal the government is sending by making today's announcement. I'm just wondering what you say to Afghan listeners here who wonder why the Taliban's victims don't deserve a similar unlimited welcome?

SF: Well, one of the things that we learnt when we spoke with leaders from the Ukrainian Canadian community is that many of the people, most of the people who might want to come did not want to come on a permanent basis. We have the ability to offer people a temporary stay in the short term in a much different way than we can use for traditional refugee resettlement because Afghanistan is a protracted conflict, because people who are coming here are going to want to stay because their home country has no longer be... is no longer a welcoming place for them. We have to use a completely different process and leverage different programs and resources. I would remind you, though, that the commitment to [inaudible] 40,000 Afghans is by far and away the most substantial commitment in the world on a per capita basis. And one of the most substantial commitments of any country in the world on the raw numbers basis. The reason that we made a commitment to Afghanistan is because we have a moral obligation to the people who worked and fought alongside the Canadian Forces during our mission there. We're going to make good on that obligation.

HM: You say that Canada was proactive in initiating this whole process for Ukrainians to come to the country. Today, though, you say it will be a couple of weeks. Why that time, why is it going to take so long?

SF: There's an interim process that we started using as of January 19th, but when we introduce this new system, we're going to be able to peel off some of the existing barriers that could lead to refusals of people who would enter Canada under the normal rules. And it's going to become quicker in the approval rate is probably going to increase as well.

HM: Mr. Fraser, it's good to talk with you today. Thank you for your time.

SF: The pleasure is all mine. Thank you so much.

CH: Shawn Fraser is Canada's Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship. He's in Ottawa. And for more on that story, you can go to our website. That's cbc.ca/aih.

[Music: Techno]

Paralympic games: Ukraine

CH: Tomorrow, the Winter Paralympic Games will begin as planned, except now the world is a very different place in a sudden about face Russian and Beylorussian athletes have been expelled by the International Paralympic Committee and the athletes from Ukraine will compete while their friends and family back home face a national crisis. This morning in Beijing, Oleksandr Onishchenko, team leader of the Ukrainian Paralympic Committee, talked about what it took to get the team to China.

OLEKSANDR ONISHCHENKO: I would like to say that we were travelling from Ukraine and through the territory of Ukraine for many days and we overcame so many barriers connected to war while travel. Many of our athletes, the running of bombs and missiles part of the team was already abroad, but another part was in Ukraine. I must say that it's a miracle that we are here, that our team is here. Ukraine is one of the countries and leaders of the Paralympic Movement, and at that time, everyone understood that if no Ukraine presented at Paralympic Games, it means there is no existence of Ukraine and we could not afford absence of Ukraine at Paralympic Games. It's a symbol that Ukraine is alive, that we are amongst the Paralympic family. It just happened that a bomb destroyed a children's gymnasium in the city of Kharkiv. It's a special gymnasium for children who are totally blind, and now it is destroyed. Many athletes from Ukrainian team, they are holding their mobile devices and following the news all the time. It's completely difficult for them, and it's completely difficult to compete under such circumstances. But we spoke and we understand that there is one frontline and battle for our army, for our warriors, and the second frontline is here.

CH: That was Oleksandr Onishchenko, team leader of the Ukrainian Paralympic Committee, this morning in Beijing.

[Music: guitar instrumental]

Part 2: Rocket hitting moon, New Jersey pearl in supper

Rocket hitting moon

Guest: Bill Gray

CH: The far side of the moon is about to get an unexpected visitor, and it's really going to crash the party. Right now a large chunk of space junk is careening toward the moon, and it's expected to make landfall soon. When it does, it will mark the first time a piece of space junk has accidentally struck the lunar surface. Bill Gray has been following its journey for the past seven years. He runs the asteroid tracking site Project Pluto. We reached him in Bowdoinham, Maine.

HM: Bill, when do you expect this space junk to make impact with the moon?

BILL GRAY: It should hit within a few seconds before 7:26 Eastern Standard Time tomorrow morning.

HM: You can pinpoint it down to that actual minute?

BILL GRAY: We're down to plus or minus a few seconds.

HM: Wow, how fast is that moving?

BILL GRAY: It's been moving about two and a half kilometres a second, which would be... give me a moment here... That's about 9000 kilometres a second, call it about 54 hundred miles an hour.

HM: That's pretty fast.

BILL GRAY: Oh yeah.

HM: What exactly is this piece of junk?

BILL GRAY: Well, when we first saw it... We've been tracking it for about seven years, when we first saw it, we identified it. While I identified it as having been a piece of a NASA research mission called Discover. We thought it was a booster from Discover that it turned out... part of the problem with these objects, is we frequently don't have a lot of information as to what we're looking at. More recently, we've realised that it is actually a piece of junk from a Chinese lunar mission. Chang'e 5-T1 was launched in 2014.

HM: How did you make that determination?

BILL GRAY: When I ran the orbit backward in time to see where this object had been before we first saw it. The resulting orbit went past the moon at the time that the Chang'e 5-T1 mission would have and was headed out over China in the direction the Chinese Lunar missions tend to go within about 20 minutes of the actual launch time, and that started giving us some very solid evidence.

HM: China has not confirmed it belongs to them. Do you think countries and companies should have to step up and take responsibility for the stuff they're leaving in space?

BILL GRAY: Well, yeah, I.... Space X never said that it wasn't theirs because they hadn't kept track of it. They didn't know. And the Chinese similarly, I strongly doubt that they really kept track of this object after launch. More recently, I should say that in at least one instance that I'm aware of, it at least looks as if the Chinese thought through where their junk was going to go and made sure that it splashed down in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, far away from any land masses. And if they're doing that, then I think they're starting to do the right thing.

HM: Can you give us a sense of the size and the dimensions of this thing?

BILL GRAY: We're looking at something that's in the ballpark of about 20 yards long, maybe three across sort of a long cylinder weighing about four tons.

HM: That's huge. So what kind of mark is that going to make on the lunar surface?

BILL GRAY: Well, because it is moving so fast, it's going to have a fair bit of energy behind it and it should make a crater, basically a new crater about maybe 20 metres across or so. Of course, the reality is the moon is so covered with craters that you wouldn't necessarily notice. And in fact, it's probably going to require a bit of scanning before and after images to figure out where the new crater is.

HM: Is it likely to displace any of the surface? You know, dust, rocks, things like that?

BILL GRAY: It will probably kick up, you know, kick a big hole out. It will turn up some fresh soil underneath there. One of the... one of the reasons this is interesting is that we'll be able to get a sense as to what material exists under the surface in that particular part of the moon.

HM: So given how fast it's going, do you assume it will disintegrate, the pieces will bounce or that some will be embedded?

BILL GRAY: It will basically disintegrate. There will be bits and pieces of it all over the moon, hundreds of kilometres away. By the time the dust settles from this.

HM: But the crater will be there forever.

BILL GRAY: Crater will be there forever, yeah.

HM: But you're not going to actually see the impact happen.

BILL GRAY: Unfortunately, no. I've been hoping for an event of this sort. I've been tracking these objects for about 15 or 20 years, and there's always the chance that one would hit the moon. But this is the first time that we know of where something like that's happened. And I always hoped it would land on the near side of the moon, the side that faces us. Instead, it's going to be hitting on the far side of the moon, so there's no hope of anybody on Earth being able to see it. And no spacecraft will be positioned such that they can get an image of it at the time of impact.

HM: It sounds a bit surprising that you've been waiting or wanting something like this to happen. You know, a lot of people are concerned about space junk out there. Does it bother you?

BILL GRAY: Not particularly, no. As I say, this is going to be just another crater on the moon. There will be no identifiable bits when you're done. That would tell the difference between this and just your average ordinary rock hitting the moon. I do understand the concern, and I think there is enough concern being expressed about this, that it's reasonably likely that in the future, somewhat greater care will be taken of where junk like this goes. It really is just not been something that anybody even cared about until basically this object came up.

HM: You've spent the last seven years watching this section of rocket. What do you think it'll be like when it finally stops? Do you have other things you're tracking?

BILL GRAY: Oh, yeah, yeah, this is... I'm perfectly happy to have... It's essentially a chore crossed off my list. There are plenty of other bits of junk that I will be keeping track of.

HM: Will you be popping a cork on Friday night when it hits?

BILL GRAY: I will be pretty happy about it. Yeah, I actually, I think the Cork will really come out when the spacecraft that are orbiting the moon get images of it and we see the crater and we learn how big a crater it made. Get some idea as to how much energy it takes to make a crater of a given size. And once we learn a little bit about that particular wreckage essentially the geology of that part of the moon.

HM: It'd be pretty cool to see those images, I expect. Thank you so much for talking to us.

BILL GRAY: Glad to talk to you.

HM: OK, bye bye.

BILL GRAY: Bye.

CH: Bill Grey runs the asteroid tracking side Project Pluto. He was in Bowdoinham, Maine.

Pen pals: Carter and Marilyn

CH: Two years into this pandemic, most people will tell you that connecting is everything. COVID has kept us away from so many face to face activities that give our lives meaning. But people have still found ways to forge bonds. Take Carter Nobrega and Marilyn McNamara. They've become pen pals despite a 74 year age difference. Last spring, Carter, who was five at the time, sent a postcard to Maryland. It was part of an effort by a Sunday school in Trenton, Ontario, to bring people together. And a year later, even after Carter and his family moved 200 kilometres away, they continue to correspond. Here are Carter and Marilyn talking about what the friendship means to them.

CARTER NOBREGA: Hi.

MARILYN MCNAMARA: Hi, Carter. Nice to talk to you again. Hope you had a good day at school?

CARTER NOBREGA: Yeah.

CARTER'S MOM: Tell them what happened today at school, what did you win?

CARTER NOBREGA: I won the prize of the maths contest.

MARILYN MCNAMARA: Is that right? Well, that's super. That's super, Carter.

PAULA DUHATSCHEK: Okay. Lovely. So Carter, what do you tell Marilyn about in your letters?

CARTER NOBREGA: I tell her that I play hockey.

MARILYN MCNAMARA: Yeah. And that was super because I used to play hockey too, and my brothers played hockey. I wish we were closer so I could go and watch Carter play. And you told me about how you counted and things and your pictures are always so nice.

CARTER NOBREGA: I told her about the 24 inch fish that I caught at the cottage.

MARILYN MCNAMARA: You were out... you drew a picture just outside the cottage and it showed the nice... your nice drawing. Yeah, but Carter is involved in so many activities, and when he came to my house, he played the piano for me the first time I met him. It was just a super afternoon.

PAULA DUHATSCHEK: Marilyn, what does it mean to you to get these letters from Carter, your pen pal?

MARILYN MCNAMARA: Well, it was such a surprise to get this letter at Easter time, and because I'm an old kindergarten/grade one teacher, Carter, his printing was so good and I just wrote him a letter back and sent him a toonie and never expected any more. So it was a surprise to get another letter in June from him.

PAULA DUHATSCHEK: Carter, can you hear how happy your letters have made Marilyn? How does it make you feel to hear how happy she is?

CARTER NOBREGA: It makes me happy too. I like it when I write my letters to Marilyn.

MARILYN MCNAMARA: And it's really nice to get them. It's been a great experience. It's just been fun.

CH: Pen pals Carter Nobrega and Marilyn McNamara speaking to CBC Kitchener-Waterloo reporter Paula Duhatschek.

[Music: upbeat percussion and guitar]

New Jersey pearl in supper

Guest: Michael Spressler

CH: Michael Spressler might be off the hook for buying his wife jewellery for a while, not because he was unusually generous, but because a bivalve mollusk was. Mr Pressler and his wife were eating at a restaurant in Cape May, New Jersey, a few weeks ago when he crunched down on something very, very hard. We reached him in Brick, New Jersey.

HM: Michael, what went through your mind when you started chewing on this clam and felt something hard in your mouth?

MICHAEL SPRESSLER: Well, the story went like this. I have President's Day off. That was on February 20th. So the day before Sunday, my wife on a whim, she just said to me, Hey, you want to go down to Cape May? And I said sure if you want to take a ride, yeah, let's go. So whenever we go down to Cape May, once we get off the Garden State Parkway in New Jersey, we go over a little bridge and we always hug the left and we go into the lobster house. Because to me, the Lobster House has the best seafood in the state of Jersey. So whenever we go there, I always start out with a dozen clams. So I ordered a dozen clams on a half shell and a bowl of the clam chowder, which is fantastic. And I started eating the clams clockwise and I got to the last one. I put it in my mouth and I went to just bite down on it and chew it. And believe it or not, for an instant, I thought that one of my molars in the back cracked. But then I felt with my tongue that it was intact and it didn't crack. But I'm like, What's this hard thing in my mouth? And then I thought it was like, maybe like a little sea stone or a rock. But when I plucked it out onto the palm, my hand, there it was. It was this perfectly round white pearl.

HM: And did you immediately present your palm to your wife so she could see it?

MS: Yeah, I looked... I waved my hand over to her and I said, Check this out. And she goes, Oh my God, that's a pearl. And I'm like, I thought pearls only came from oysters.

HM: Me too.

MS: Yeah. And she says to me, no, believe it or not, there's a thing called a clam pearl. And when we got home that day, she did her little bit of investigating on the internet. She found out that it's true that there is something called a clam pearl. She also found out that the chances of finding a clam pearl was like 1 in 10,000.

HM: That's amazing. Now you mentioned you love this restaurant. It's also a special place for you and your wife, as I understand it.

MS: It's a very special place because 35 years ago, and this is going back to 1987. He just started dating a few years earlier in 85, and we went down to Cape May for our first time in 87. So when we were writing down that day we were like, Hey, don't you remember we came down here 35 years ago today on Presidents Day weekend, I went, Yeah, you know, that's some thought. And our actual wedding anniversary is going to be May 19th of this year. We'll be married 32 years. But yeah.

HM: And no, no other times have you had anything extraordinary like this happen. No gemstones popping out or anything like that.

MS: No, nothing like that. The only extra extraordinary thing that happened in my life besides finding this was meeting my wife.

HM: Oh, that's so nice. Now you went home with the pearl. The story ends up getting out. How come?

MS: Because when we got home and my wife started doing some investigating, you know, like about clam pearls and their size and what's the chances on finding one, which is 1 in 10,000. She was just fascinated by the whole thing about it. So she just decided to put a story onto like a Cape Bay website, like start a thread. And it started out where she got like 500 likes and then a thousand likes, then 1500 likes, and it went up to like 2000. And all of these people were fascinated by this story. And I couldn't believe where all of this interest was coming from.

HM: Now, do you have any idea how much this pearl might be worth?

MS: I really have no idea. I've been told by my wife because she talked to a lot of pearl experts online. She actually got a phone call from somebody from London who told her, don't go taking it to just a jewellery store or a jeweller because they really don't know what they're worth, and they may tell you it's not really worth anything, you know. So they told her, actually, go to a pearl expert, somebody with stones, gems and who deals with pearls, and they'll tell you the exact value of what it's worth. But as for right now, I'm actually looking at it now. I have no idea what this is worth, what the value is, but I do want to get it appraised.

HM: I mean, I guess it depends on what it's worth, but are you thinking of keeping it, having it put into some jewellery for your wife or selling?

MS: My wife already connected with a jeweller, local, I think she's from Red Bank or something, and she actually handcrafts a lot of her own homemade jewellery. She's a really good jeweller, though, but she deals specifically in silver and my wife's thinking of having it put into something with kind of like a mermaid theme, which I think would be really nice. You know what I mean? But she could do whatever she wants with it. I mean, she could have it, and she's my wife. But I'm just so curious as to what it's worth because I'm reading it could be worth anywhere from 50 to $100,000. I have no idea what this pearl could be worth. It’s a pearl.

HM: That's a lot of clams.

MS: Yeah, I'm a quality control inspector by trade, so I actually brought it to work. I work for an aerospace company. And I have all the measuring instruments at work and stuff like that. So I put it just in between the chores of my calibre at work, and I measured it up and it measured up at 8.83 Millimetres. And we also have scales to measure certain parts that go on rockets and aerospace stuff, and its weight is 0.27 Grams. There's that, if all of that means anything to you.

HM: Well, the size in terms of the actual dimensions sound pretty big actually.

MS: Yeah, I took the actual diameter dimensions and that's a pretty big size 8.83 mm and 0.27 Grams.

HM: What did the restaurant folks say to you about this?

MS: They were shocked. They actually... That day they interviewed one of the servers, and she says, I've been here for 10 years serving raw oysters, raw clams on a half shell, and never have I ever seen anybody come forward and say, look what I found in one of your clams or oysters? Never.

HM: You said your 32 wedding anniversary is coming up. Are you going to be getting your wife a gift or is this good?

MS: Oh, she can do whatever she wants with this. Another gift will definitely be on its way.

CARTER NOBREGA: You're a good husband.

MS: Thank you. I have a beautiful wife.

HM: Michael, it's so nice to talk to you. Thank you so much.

MS: Ok.

HM: Bye

MS: All right. Bye, bye now.

CH: That was Michael Spressler, who found a pearl in the clams he and his wife ordered at a restaurant recently. We reached him in Brick, New Jersey.

[Music: piano instrumental]

Pop Tarts

CH: There are so many enormous things happening in the world that we can't control, which is why some of us become hyper focussed on little injustices we might be able to solve. For example, recently I've been fixated on the fact that humour has a 'u' in it and is six letters long. Just thought that might interest you, Wordle. Maybe that idea, the idea of fixing one small thing is what motivated Stacy Chiappetta's quixotic campaign against Kellogg's over its non frosted strawberry Pop-Tarts. On the box, there's an image of a strawberry alongside an image of a toaster pastry oozing red goop. However, said pop tarts contain less than two percent dried strawberries. The rest of the group is dried apples, dried pears, red dye and, you know, whatever else is lying around. So Ms. Chiappetta Took Kellogg's to court. Unfortunately for her, an Illinois judge dismissed her lawsuit. He wrote, "no reasonable consumer could conclude that the filling contains a certain amount of strawberries based on the packages, images and its use of the term strawberry". I mean, you could argue that's exactly what the use of the term strawberry could lead you to conclude. But even Ms.Chiappetta probably expected this ruling. She must know that this is a small thing, and in these stressful times, it was just the strawberry that broke the camel's back.

[Music: electric guitar instrumental]

Part 3: Slavery book reissue, Leopard coin found

Slavery book reissue

Guest: Erica Williams-Connell

CH: In the late 1930s, Eric Williams submitted his book "Capitalism and Slavery" to a British publisher. He probably knew its central thesis that the slave trade was abolished not for moral reasons, but economic ones would shock some people. But he didn't necessarily expect to be brushed aside and told by a man who routinely put out revolutionary works that publishing it would be contrary to the British tradition. A few years later, the book would be published in the US, and in the mid 60s it was finally published in the UK. It was clear at the time that Mr. Williams, a black man who would become the first prime minister of Trinidad and Tobago, was ahead of his time. But it's even clearer now because decades later, his "Capitalism and Slavery" has just been republished in the UK and it's a bestseller. Erica Williams-Connell is the daughter of the late Eric Williams. We reached her in Miami, Florida.

HM: Erica, what does it mean for you to see your father's book not only republished, but hitting the bestsellers list?

ERICA WILLIAMS CONNELL: Well, it's... The fact is that the book was published in 1944 in the US by the University of North Carolina Press, and it's never been out of print. It's actually now in its third edition. And between the second, which was just a few years ago, and now and the third, it's sold 40,000 copies. So it's been translated into nine languages: Turkish, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Russian amongst them. And its 10th language is in process Dutch. It's going to be published this year, so we're not surprised. But apparently the British have just discovered it, even though it was published in the UK by a small but very notable press in 1964. It had a few reprints, but it's been out of print in the UK for decades.

HM: Take us back to how your father came to write this book in the first place.

ERICA WILLIAMS CONNELL: He won a scholarship. My father came from a, you know, a sort of disadvantaged family in Trinidad and Tobago. 12 children. He was the oldest of 12 children. His father was a postal clerk. His mother was, you know, obviously a homemaker. He won a scholarship to Oxford University, and this was his doctoral dissertation, which he tried to get published in the UK. He went to the leading publisher of revolutionary texts who had published all of Stalin and Trotsky. And he refused. He said, Are you trying to tell me that slavery and its abolition were for economic rather than humanitarian reasons? And my father said yes, and he said I would never publish such a book because it would be contrary to the British tradition. So there we go.

HM: So his thesis was that this was not altruism. This was for pure economic necessity. Did he say what inspired him to write that?

ERICA WILLIAMS CONNELL: Well, first of all, he did give the abolitionists a lot of credit. There was no question, but he said the abolitionist... And there's an article in a UK magazine called The Critic, it just came out. And the person who wrote it made very many references to the fact that there was, for example, an incident 24 years before [inaudible] the actual date before the abolition, where 133 slaves were thrown off a ship because they didn't have enough food and water. So where were the abolitionists then there was a big hue and cry, but where were the abolitionists then? So they definitely made a difference. But you know what he was trying to say is that the British planters were short of labour and they tried prostitutes, they tried Australian convicts, they tried indentured labourers and eventually they settled on slave free and cheap. So when it started, the British Industrial Revolution was, you know, ongoing because of the slave trade. And once it started to be mechanised, they found that this was just not a profitable means of capitalism. So what he was saying is that it was then that they decided to abolish the slave trade.

HM: You say the book was published in 1944 in the U.S., and it's been republished numerous times. What did your father think about the refusal of this U.K. publisher to publish the book? I mean, I know you said it was published by a smaller but prestigious press. But what was it about the U.K. that was unwilling to accept his premise?

ERICA WILLIAMS CONNELL: Well, it wasn't published until twenty years later in the U.K., and this is the leading publisher at the time in 1944 of Revolutionary texts. He published all of Stalin and Trotsky. But what he basically said this was so controversial because the British had sort of self congratulated themselves for the abolition of slavery, saying it was on moral grounds. And so my father said, Yeah, it was, you know, the abolitionists had a lot to do with it, but it was economic grounds like, you know, Bill Clinton always said it's the economy, stupid. So that's what he showed and so he left England, got a teaching appointment at Howard University, and I guess he started... He then revised his dissertation and that became "Capitalism and Slavery", the book. And I suppose I'm sure you went to many different publishers, but the University of North Carolina press took it on, and the rest is history again, it has never been out of print.

HM: Why do you think the book is so popular now?

ERICA WILLIAMS CONNELL: Well, in the UK, as I said in the US, it's never been. Out of print, and it has been translated into, well soon, 10 languages. In the UK, you have had this sort of sudden social and racial justice awakening. You would have heard about the Colston... I believe it was in Bristol, who took down a statue of Colston and threw it in the river. And they were charged and the trial would pretty much just happen, and they were acquitted because they were charged by the government of defacing public property. But their lawyer, you know, his position was that this is history. This is history that they are righting the wrongs of history, and they were acquitted. So I think this is happening in Britain. And all of a sudden Williams has become like, you know, this prescient almost sort of fortune teller telling the people what they apparently are now interested in hearing.

HM: So it's the right time for his message.

ERICA WILLIAMS CONNELL: I think so. I think so. And you know, I think all the George Floyd racial and social justice, the movement here has spread to other parts of the world, and Britain is not... has not been immune from it. But the interesting thing about Eric Williams, I think, is that his research informed his leadership of Trinidad and Tobago.

HM: What do you hope that the younger generations who are now reading this for the first time will take from it?

ERICA WILLIAMS CONNELL: I think they will take from it an understanding of their past, an understanding that history can be whitewashed, and they must delve deeper into the issues in order to find the truth because the whitewash would have been... the abolitionists and, you know, their moral rectitude again, not taking anything away from that, but you've got to delve deeper to find that slavery had become economically unprofitable.

HM: Erica Williams-Connell Thank you very much. It was a pleasure to speak with you.

ERICA WILLIAMS CONNELL: Well, thank you so much, Helen. I'm so appreciative of the publicity for the book.

HM: All right. All the best to you. Bye bye.

ERICA WILLIAMS CONNELL: Thank you. Bye bye.

CH: Erica Williams-Connell is the daughter of the late Eric Williams, author of the book "Capitalism and Slavery". That book is now a bestseller after being republished in the UK by Penguin Random House. We reached Ms. Connell in Miami, Florida.

[Music: calm beats]

Painted sunflowers

CH: We're still nearly three weeks from the official start of spring, but recently, despite the subzero temperatures, a flower garden sprouted up outside a home in Manitoba. A garden of sunflowers, which you wouldn't expect to bloom until mid-summer. But Karen Hiebert couldn't wait. So she painted sunflowers on the towering snow banks in front of her East St. Paul home to cheer up her neighbours and stand with Ukraine.

KAREN HIEBERT: Like most Winnipeggers, I've been watching the snow pile up all winter and the snow banks lining my driveway just were getting higher and higher and almost so high they were becoming this beautiful white vertical plain. And all through January, I kept thinking, you know, this is going to take a long time to melt before we get to see the green stuff again. I would love to maybe dress that canvas up with something that would remind me of spring and maybe make the neighbours smile. So I was pondering that, but then waiting for the weather to warm up enough that I could do it, and that didn't happen until as, you know, just last weekend.

MARCY MARCUSA: How did you settle on sunflowers? I'm looking at what you've painted and along the row if people imagine it looks like you've got probably 30 sunflowers painted, you know, side by side blues and yellows. Tell me about your choice.

KAREN HIEBERT: Yeah, I was thinking, of course something floral. But then the idea for the sunflowers came to me, probably on Thursday night after the news that, you know, Ukraine had been invaded. And then the viral videos we were seeing, especially that elderly Ukrainian woman who confronted one of the soldiers and told the story of the sunflower seeds and asking him to put them in his pocket so that sunflowers would grow. And then I became aware that sunflowers were the national flower of Ukraine, and I thought, Oh, of course I have to do sunflowers. And I chose some water soluble, non-toxic watercolour paint that comes in tubes so I could get, you know, some bright colours and mix those really heavily diluted with water, put them in some Dollar store or spray bottles. And then I made some stencils just from Styrofoam plates, so I had the pedal shapes and some leaf motifs, and I did some practice runs in the backyard. And then, yeah, I had my pattern and my idea down and went to the front and probably took me about half an hour and my neighbours were already coming over asking me what I was doing and some dog walkers as well.

MARCY MARCUSA: Half an hour. You're fast then, because I would have been all day trying to paint all this.

KAREN HIEBERT: No, once you get spraying. So it just came together quite nicely. And plus my hand was getting cold and a little bit sore from spraying so much. But yeah, it didn't take me too much longer than that.

CH: That was Karen Hiebert speaking with Marcy Markusa, host of Information Radio about painting sunflowers along the snow banks and her neighbourhood of East St. Paul, just outside of Winnipeg.

[Music: calming water sounds]

Leopard coin found

Guest: Andy Carter

CH: It takes dedication, expertise and a superhuman capacity for boredom to be a metal detectorist. You have to scour through odd, remote, often mucky places. You're more likely to discover year old beer bottle caps than ancient artefacts, and people give you weird looks. But for true devotees, the searching is its own reward, although of course, so are the actual rewards. Andy Carter has been at it for more than two decades, so he knows all about the ups and downs. And recently he got a huge up. A rare 14th century coin that he found just over two years ago is going up for auction next week and is expected to fetch a tidy sum. We reached Andy Carter in London, England.

HM: Andy, describe this coin you found.

ANDY CARTER: Well, it's a gold... It's called a gold leopard. It's about 2.4 Centimetres or something like that, and it's made of nearly pure gold, 23 or 24 karat gold, and it was minted by a King called Edward the third. And the unusual thing about it is that it was only circulating for a few months of the year 1344 before it was withdrawn because of several reasons. But one of the reasons is that they didn't agree that the amount of gold in the coin represented the face value of the coin. So it was unpopular because of that. And another reason was that it wasn't a multiple of a pound. It didn't divide into a pound easily, so it was a failure and people refused to use it. So after about seven months it was, they were all withdrawn by royal proclamation and they were all melted down.

HM: Obviously, not the one you got your hands on.

ANDY CARTER: Not the one. So almost all of the ones. In fact, probably all of the ones that have been found, which is only six, were almost certainly lost in the first seven months of the year 1344.

HM: So how many are there?

ANDY CARTER: Well, there are five intact ones and a further one that was found more recently that was very badly plow damaged. So it's about three quarters of a coin with a hole in it. It's a bit mangled, so there only... mine is the fifth intact one.

HM: Wow.

ANDY CARTER: So quite rare.

HM: So I'm assuming there's a cat on it. Why is it called the leopard?

ANDY CARTER: So there were actually three coins in the series. The highest denomination is the double leopard, and at the time that was worth six shillings or 72 pence, and that had the king's head, and he was flanked by two leopards heads. The leopard was the badge of Edward, the third. Unusually, because most other English monarchs had the lion as part of their badge. But Edward the third is unusual in having the leopard.

HM: How much is that expected to sell for at auction?

ANDY CARTER: Well, it's going to start at about 100,000 pounds. How much it eventually reaches is almost anyone's guess. It really depends on how many rich coin collectors there are there on the day.

HM: Wow. Well, walk us through how you found the coin in the first place.

ANDY CARTER: Well, there was... There were 30 of us in this field. It was... we were at what's called a rally. Normally I go out on my own or with maybe just another detecting friend. But on this particular day, there was a rally. So there were about 30 of us and we're all in the same field and we'd all pay fifteen pounds and that all goes to a charity. That was the only condition that the landowner allowed us to go on his land. The field actually wasn't very good. There were very few signals, very few finds. And by 3:30 in the afternoon, almost everybody had given up. And in fact, by 3:30, there were only myself and two other people in the field. I looked over. I just happened to be at the far end of the field. I looked back at everybody, I could see everybody was packing up and getting in their cars. Oh, well, I'm here now. I'll just go to the far corner and then back again and give up as well. And so I just turned in the opposite direction within a few feet. I got this faint signal and it was a signal that just a metal button usually gives. It was not out of the ordinary at all. And I thought, oh another button, so I dug down. And about 10 inches down there was this folded gold coin at the bottom of the hole staring up at me. And so then I did the gold dance, which is kind of obligatory.

HM: Can you describe the gold dance?

ANDY CARTER: Well, it's kind of a personal thing. I've been asked that many times. Luckily, the other two people detecting in the field didn't see me do the gold dance. But the thing is, it's really bad luck if you do it.

HM: Oh, I didn't know that.

ANDY CARTER: It's kind of a dance around the hole, really, I'm of a certain age and younger people that I know would probably call it dad dancing, if you understand that expression.

HM: OK, I get the idea. So you saw that it was gold. Did you know pretty quickly what it was beyond that?

ANDY CARTER: At the time from its size I thought it was a much less rare half noble is about... So the nobel was the next series of gold coins that was minted after this leopard series failed. And so from its size, I thought, Oh, it's a half noble. And then I brush some soil off and saw this leopard's leg, hind leg of a leopard. It's sort of a fury, you know, you can imagine a cat's paw with some fur hanging down from the back. And I thought, well, that can't be a leopard because of course, they're rare as hen's teeth. It must be some foreign coin because foreign coins from France and Italy circulated in this country because they were good gold, so people didn't really mind where they came from. And then I brushed off a bit more soil and saw the letters EDW, which are the first three letters of Edward's name.

HM: But when you sell it, I have to ask, is it all yours or does the landowner get some?

ANDY CARTER: No, I have an agreement with the landowner and the landowner gets 50 per cent and I get 50 per cent. And that's the standard arrangement really for everything found by metal detecting.

HM: The landowner must be very thrilled. Tell me, tell me what you're planning on doing with the money once you've sold it.

ANDY CARTER: A lot depends on how much it goes for. I have to say that very soon after we realized it was worth a lot of money, new kitchen catalogues appeared magically on my coffee table. I'm getting rude looks from my partner here, so a new kitchen could be in it. We're in a very small house, so if it fetches a bit more, it could be an extension. And if it fetches even more, it could even be a new house. I mean, this is a tiny gold coin, and it's funny to think it could be worth a house.

HM: Can I just say congratulations and thank you for talking to us about it. I wish you a very successful auction.

ANDY CARTER: Thank you. It's next Tuesday, so keep your fingers crossed.

HM: We'll keep our eyes open too to see what happens. Thanks again, and it's nice to talk to you.

ANDY CARTER: And to you. Thank you.

CH: Andy Carter is a metal detectorist. We reached him in London, England.

[Music: techno]

Grand Forks hunter saves deer from frozen river

CH: Earlier this week, Marty Thomas got a phone call from someone who told him a deer had fallen through the ice of the Kettle river. It was close to his home in the Grand Forks, British Columbia area, so the 63 year old got in his car and headed to the water to help. Here's Mr. Thomas describing what happened after he got there.

MARTY THOMAS: I had an idea to go up past the deer and walk out onto the ice, which I did, and as I'm going out there, I've got a stick and I've got a diamond rope. And 10 years ago, my dad actually fell out of a canoe when he was 78 and he drowned and he was a great guy. So I'm thinking about this, of course, right? And going out on the ice and poking the ice and it's OK, it's OK. I can see a couple water spots right in front of me, right? No, this is not good. So I backed off the ice and they holler to the guys down with the canoe and I says, bring the canoe up the road and we'll take it out here. So five minutes later, they're up and on the road. We bring the canoe down the bank. And now Corey was going to come with me out and push the canoe out on the ice, and I talked him out of it because I said, You know what, if the ice breaks two of us by the canoe is not good. So we start... so he stayed onshore. I started pushing the canoe across the ice and I'm still 50 yards away from the deer yet and the ice breaks under my feet, and I thought it would be able to hop in the canoe right away if it started to crack. But it gave way so quick. I just went straight down to my waist.

SARAH PENTON: Oh my gosh.

MARTY THOMAS: And of course, the canoe tipped. So I got a little water in the canoe, but I jumped up and into it. So now I am in the canoe, so I went through that water where the ice had broken, and then I get myself and I'm back on the ice now on top in the canoe. And of course, you can't paddle on ice. So now I'm chipping holes with the paddle and pushing, chipping, pushing, chipping, pushing...

SARAH PENTON: But what was the deer doing? Was the deer watching you, was it trying to get away?

MARTY THOMAS: It was just standing there and now I don't know if he was standing. He was right up, his back underwater, his neck and head are over, and I don't know if he's actually swimming under there or if maybe he can touch there. I'm not sure, but anyway, so I'm going along the ice and then I get right down close to him. He let me come right up to him. Now I had this diamond rope that I brought with a nice canvas cinch on the end of it, and I had it like a big collar and I flipped it over his head. He let me do that, and now I have to back the canoe up and around him and get into open water with it. And I did that, and then I started paddling and pulling him, you know, just like a dog on a leash. And he just followed me like, no problem. It was great eh, my wife got this on video. So we went downstream to this open channel and then back over to the south side of the river, where everybody was waiting and watching and all that and I got him to the edge of the ice and there's still 20 yards of ice to get to the bank. And the water was only about a foot deep there and the deer, a young buck about a three year old buck, he could not even get up there. He was so hypothermic.

CH: That was Marty Thomas speaking with CBC host Sarah Penton on the program Radio West yesterday. After the rescue, Mr. Thomas took the deer home and warmed it up with some blankets. The animal stayed for hours, but in the middle of the night, the deer wandered off.

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March 03, 2022 Episode Transcript

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