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The AIH Transcript for May 12th, 2022

HELEN MANN: Hello, I'm Helen Mann.

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

[Music: Theme]

Prologue

CH: Tonight

HM: Home away from home. A hotel owner in Hay River Northwest Territories tells us a lot of people have already fled her town due to flooding. But for now, she's staying put -- and housing other evacuees who are waiting to see what's next.

CH: Pick of the litter. A cleanup effort results in 11 metric tons of junk being pulled out of Lake Tahoe. And some of that junk was especially interesting, according to our trash-talking guest.

HM: An impossible choice. In the face of a nationwide shortage, a mother in California says she's been forced to feed recalled baby formula to her daughter, whose rare genetic condition left her with no other option.

CH: It's all a blur. A Canadian scientist tells us about the moment the room erupted in applause today when the first image of our galaxy's supermassive black hole was revealed -- seemingly fuzzy focus and all.

HM: A hero's welcome. We may not know her name, but we should. And now that a new statue of an abolitionist who was active in the Underground Railroad has been unveiled in Windsor, Ontario, we will.

CH: And… learning curve. After five years of training to hold Scorpion pose, a handstand where you bend your back until your feet are over your head, a yoga enthusiast shatters the world record without shattering any vertebrae.

CH: As It Happens, the Thursday edition. Radio that sees no need to get all bent out of shape.

[Music: Theme]

Part 1: Hay River Hotel, Recalled Baby Formula, Black Hole Photo

Hay River Hotel

Guest: Jane Groenewegen

CH: It was late -- and very dark -- last night when the call went out that it was time for everyone in Hay River to leave. So whoever was left packed up what they could and left their homes behind. When the sun came up this morning, you could see that water and ice had blanketed huge swaths of the community in the Northwest Territories -- even areas that don't normally flood. Jane Groenewegen had a bird's-eye view of the damage. She owns the Cambridge Hotel in Hay River, and she's staying there, along with some evacuees. That's where we reached her a bit earlier today.

HM: Jane, you're one of the people who are still in Hay River. Are you feeling safe?

JANE GROENEWEGEN: I am feeling safe. We're being very cautious. So, we will be ready to go if need be. And right now, things are all quiet. But that doesn't mean they will stay that way.

HM: You are on an upper floor of your hotel. Describe what you see from there?

JG: I am standing in a suite on the fourth floor of our hotel, and I am looking out at a river packed with ice from shore-to-shore. And as far as you can see, north and south, it is ice packed and no movement whatsoever.

HM: How does that compare to what you would normally see at this time of year?

JG: That's what we've been seeing. Perhaps the level is a little bit higher, but that's what we've been seeing for the last several days. It's been the most protracted, strange breakup because usually, breakup comes, you know, with some gusto. This has been eerily quiet until last night. The water did come rushing in at places where we would never have expected. I should say that the evacuation actually started with Baillie Island last Friday night, in the middle of the night. So that took a lot of people off of Baillie Island, which is traditionally more subject and prone to flooding. What's very unusual about this year is the breach of the banks within the new town, which was specifically built in response to a flood, a major flood in 1963. And that's why it's called the new town because the old town remains where it was, and it was supposed to kind of wind down after the flood of 63, but it's still a fairly bustling economic and residential area. The other thing that's unusual and absolutely unprecedented and heartbreaking is that there is a small community south of here called Paradise Valley, Paradise Gardens, a lot of young families into market gardening and raising livestock and all kinds of things. That area, earlier this week, was, for lack of a better description, mostly obliterated.

HM: Oh dear!

JG: And that is, very, very, very sad for the people out there. There is much, much lost out there.

HM: Yeah. Now, you mentioned the slow break up of ice. Is that part of the problem?

JG: No. Part of the problem, I believe. And like I said, I'm not an expert. But part of the problem is that the river, the lake and the water table around here have been at record and unprecedented levels leading up to this spring. And then the snowpack in northern Alberta, the water basin from which everything drains this way, the snowpack has been measured to be double what is normal. So that's why, you know, we're hearing about places like what used to be Rainbow Lake, now called Chateh. There's a thousand people evacuated from there right now. And also a small Métis settlement called Paddle Prairie also evacuated. Those are waterways that directly feed into our water basins. So, the fact that they're flooding there is not good news for us.

HM: Right. Now, you own a number of rental properties in Hay River. When that alarm was sounded last night telling people to go, what did you and others do?

JG: Well, we had an obligation to come to our buildings in the downtown because some are permanent tenants, some are hotel guests, and pretty much full. Because when the evacuation order went out last Friday night, a lot of the people that were on Baillie Island moved uptown into… into accommodation such as ours. So our hotel, apartment-hotel, was basically full of people who had already just evacuated. So, we had to get to them, talk to them, tell them that there was an evacuation order. People were asked to go and register at the community hall. There was people there to greet them. There were school busses waiting to take them down the highway to a little community called Enterprise. And so, everything was in place to assist people. So, if you had your own vehicle, a lot of people would drive themselves. But if people hadn't prepared by fueling up, that would be difficult, too. So last night, there were long lineups at the card lock and the commercial pumps in town, people trying to get fuel so they could get going. And I've heard of people who've gone left and gone as far as Calgary, Grand Prairie. We felt we had to come here and warn people to go. But, on the other hand, we are four floors up.

HM: It sounds like a real mess and a real cleanup ahead as well. When people return home, I mean, they must being so far away, wonder what they're going to see when they get back there. What are they going to find?

JG: I think that it's been fairly significant damage in some of the residential areas. Like I said, the people in Paradise Valley are already well aware. We've had a couple of young people that are in the photography business that have done some really extensive drone footage over some of those damaged areas. And so, people have been sharing on Facebook, on social media.

HM: But people basically are able to kind of sign onto Facebook and see what's happened to their property if the drones or anybody else managed to get a photo?

JG: Um-hmm. Yeah, yeah, they can sign on, and most of the posts are shareable. So I… I've been sharing a lot of them just to be a conduit for information for people.

HM: When will you know it's time for you to leave?

JG: [chuckling] Well, it'll come quickly when it does. That's a kind of scary part. Like, when people were leaving their properties, there were some people that got tangled up in the really deep water and had to be actually rescued. So, we're keeping a really close eye on it. Our vehicle is full of fuel, and it's pointed in the direction away from this property. But we do, as landlords, have an obligation to keep our tenants informed. And, like, we have CBC National, all the staff are staying here. We've had two locum physicians. One of them just signed off and took off because there's… they need them over there more. So, you know, to some extent, I guess you could say that we are accommodating essential people that, you know, helicopter pilots are going to be coming in. They're booked here with us. You know, so we can't just sort of turn the key and walk away and say, okay, everybody's on their own. We do have some corporate responsibility to look after people as well.

HM: Right. Probably a sense of moral responsibility, too?

JG: Absolutely. Yeah, yeah.

HM: Jane, thank you so much. It's been good to talk with you. I hope that this stops soon and it doesn't get any worse.

JG: Yeah. We should know within the next few hours here whether we're going to get another what we call push or wave. Thank you very much.

HM: All right. You take care. Bye-bye.

JG: Yeah. Bye-bye.

CH: Jane Groenewegen is the owner of the Cambridge Hotel in Hay River, Northwest Territories, and that's where we reached her.

[Music: Indie rock]

Recalled Baby Formula

Guest: Darice Browning

CH: Darice Browning is one of thousands of American parents who are trying desperately to feed their babies -- in the midst of a formula shortage that's making it very difficult. According to CNN, 40 per cent of baby formula is out of stock in more than 11,000 stores across the U.S. It's the result of pandemic-related supply chain problems, panic buying, and the shutdown of Abbott Nutrition's Michigan factory in February. That company is one of the few that produces formula in the US. The company had to recall several major brands after four babies suffered bacterial infections and at least two babies died. Investigators are looking for answers, but the company says no formula it distributes has been linked to those infections. Darice Browning's 10-month-old daughter Octavia has a rare genetic condition that makes it impossible for her to digest dairy proteins. We reached Ms. Browning in Oceanside, California.

HM: Darice, how many cans of formula do you have left for Octavia?

DARICE BROWNING: I have four cans of EleCare, and I just opened one of the cans this morning for her feed. Well, now she's on her second feed currently right now.

HM: So how many meals will that give her? How long will that last?

DB: It'll go for typically about two and a half weeks if I stretch it enough.

HM: And how are you stretching it?

DB: Um, so, Octavia is… she has a G-Tube due to her… some of her disabilities. So whatever she can take by mouth during the day, that's fine. I make smaller bottles. And then, for her to gain weight, I run it through her feeding tube at night.

HM: So, this is also, as I understand it, one of the formulas that's been recalled?

DB: Absolutely. It's the EleCare Infant.

HM: But you feel you still have to use this formula?

DB: Yes, I… it's either I need to feed her. [chuckle] It's either I feed her this, and I possibly run the risk of her getting sick and possibly passing. And if I don't feed her, she doesn't get any nutritional value from anything else. So she passes away from malnutrition and failure to thrive.

HM: You mentioned that Octavia has a G-Tube to be fed gastrically. What kind of health issues and what kind of dietary restrictions does she have?

DB: My daughter has Angelman Syndrome, which is a neurogenetic syndrome. For Octavia, and my other daughter, Tokyo, they were born with a complete dairy allergy to all dairy proteins, which means I don't have an alternative. I can't go to the store and find, you know, like, say, Nutramigen is a known hypoallergenic formula. It has a dairy protein in it. She can't have it.

HM: What would happen if either of the girls did ingest a dairy protein?

DB: Both of the girls have already experienced GI issues. And the worst that we have gotten to is they will vomit blood, and their feces will start to show signs of trauma and blood as well. Octavia is on oxygen. We are weaning her down. But if she were to have any sort of dairy, her chronic lung disease will start to flare up and make it hard for her to breathe as well.

HM: Are you turning to any alternative… alternative sources? I mean, are you going online? Trying to source it from other parents, that sort of thing?

DB: I have gone to Amazon; out of stock, or it takes 9 to 15 days to ship, and I don't have that time. You know, I'm running low, and it might last… the EleCare might last me two weeks. And I call the insurance company every day, in the morning when they open, and right before they close, and ask, do you have Alfamino infant formula? And they'll… they always say the same thing. No, we don't. We don't have it in stock yet. It's still on backorder. And I ask all the time again, do you have an estimated time of when you'll be in stock? And off-the-record, someone had said they can't give us customers estimated times because if they tell one person an estimated time, they might get the whole backorder for that specific formula.

HM: So you've got supply issues. You've got the factory having shut down production for some time there. You've got panic buying. It sounds like it's just the perfect storm?

DB: Absolutely. And to add to it, I think to stay out of the hospital, the last-ditch effort that I have is to re-lactate. I will do it... my best ability to stay on a strict diet for my girls so that they can eat, so that we don't have to spend months again in the Ronald McDonald House, being fed by tubes, and on oxygen, and finding the right formula.

HM: So you're trying to pump milk or breastfeed, but also make sure that you're not ingesting dairy?

DB: Yes, it is a very… it's a very hard thing to do because you don't think that there's dairy in most common things, but you have to read the fine print of all of these proteins. There's over 50 proteins that I know of off the top of my head that I have to look for when I was breastfeeding. And I just couldn't do it. It just wasn't possible for me to stay healthy.

HM: This sounds absolutely exhausting. I am just thinking, as a mother who's just trying to feed her baby, what has this been like for you?

DB: It's scary. And I told my husband, you know, when I was starting to get low, and the nutritionist and GI specialist didn't have any answers other than go to the E.R., I was sitting on the floor crying. And he came home, and he said, what's wrong? And I just feel like a failure because I can't feed my children and provide the necessities for them. [a baby cries] And it's… it… it breaks my heart. And I say it again. It makes me emotional every time I say it out loud.

HM: The FDA says they're working to get this production back up and running at that plant in Michigan, but that it could take a couple of months before the products are back on the shelves. In the meantime, what would you like to see done at, you know, I guess, a higher level? At the FDA, state authorities, that sort of thing? Is there something else that can be done to help you?

DB: Quite honestly, as a side note, [clears throat] as I… I can't... I... I want to say that I feel for the parents of those babies that were hospitalized because of the recall and to the parents of the children that have passed. You know, I don't know if people are going to trust this company, this plant, this… this brand anymore. It's scary. And, I… sorry, I'm getting emotional. [chuckling]

HM: No, it's. It's perfectly understandable. I just… it's… it's a terrible situation.

DB: No, it is. And, like, there are people in worse situations than me. Like, yes, of course, Octavia has Angelman Syndrome, and she's on a G… she's got a G-Tube and on oxygen and a pulse ox. Like, that's not the worst it can come to. And I don't know who to contact. I don't know who to blame. The FDA says six to eight weeks or whatever. But we need to contact politicians, state officials. I'm trying to get in touch with the White House. My mom has spoke on my behalf, and sent a letter to try and get their attention. And I need answers for my children. And I need to be the voice for the children with disabilities and typical children as well. Because I'm in the media now, I have to try my hardest to get it out there.

HM: Darice. It's… it's a terrible situation, as I said. I feel for you so much, and I wish that this resolves itself very quickly for you, your family and everyone else who's affected.

DB: Absolutely. Thank you.

HM:: Okay, bye-bye.

CH: Darice Browning's baby requires speciality formula, which Ms. Browning can't find due to a shortage in the U.S. She was in Oceanside, California. The White House issued a statement today, saying that the President is working with manufacturers to get formula on the shelves as quickly as possible, and is working to import formula from elsewhere.

[Music: Electronic]

Black Hole Photo

Guest: Sara Issaoun

CH: To my very untrained, unscientific eye, it looks like a blurry picture of a glowing doughnut. Maybe sour-cream glazed. But to Sara Issaoun -- whose eye is much more trained and much more scientific -- the picture is extremely clear and represents years of work by hundreds of experts around the world. Today, the global research team she's a part of -- called the Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration -- revealed the first image of the black hole at the heart of our galaxy. Sara Issaoun is an observational astronomer at Harvard and the Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. She's in Munich right now for one of the simultaneous news conferences today.

HM: Sara, at the Washington press conference today, the room broke into applause when this image was first revealed. What was that moment like for you in Munich?

SARA ISSAOUN: Oh, it was about the same. The moment the image appeared on the big screen, the room erupted into applause. And I saw every member of our team with big smiles on their faces. It felt like a moment of great joy and also a relief to finally be able to talk about this secret we've kept for so long. We've spent a little over two years now working fully on the Sag A star data for this image, and Sagittarius A star has been a real pain to deal with, honestly. Much, much harder than the first image of the black hole that we revealed back in 2019. And so, finally, getting to the end of these challenges and being able to finally present what it looks like, I think, was a really special moment.

HM: Well, let's just explain what Sagittarius A star is?

SI: Yeah, so Sagittarius A star is the supermassive black hole at the centre of our Milky Way galaxy. So we think there are supermassive black holes at the centre of most galaxies. And they play a vital role in the formation and evolution of galaxies. And today, we're seeing our black hole for the very first time. We had an idea that it existed from Nobel Prize-winning studies of stellar orbits in our galactic centre that won the Nobel Prize back in 2020, that saw this kind of orbits of stars in the centre of our galaxy that seemed to hint that they were orbiting something dark, hidden and very massive. And today, we were finally able to reveal that this object is actually a black hole. Today is really the first direct evidence that it's a black hole. And we're seeing it for the first time.

HM: That previous black hole, the one that was revealed back in 2019, it was 1,500 times more massive than this one. You say that this one was so much harder to work on. Why?

SI: Yeah. So the M87 black hole is... is much larger than Sagittarius A star. It has a mass of about six and a half billion solar masses, compared to Sag A star, which is about 4 million solar masses. Much, much smaller. And so, because M87 is so big gas around it that travels near the speed of light takes a lot more time to go around it. So it takes over a few days or even weeks to go around the shadow of M87, the black hole. And because of that, when we observe it with the EHT, over a few hours, the black hole and the gas around it doesn't change much. And so we can reconstruct an image pretty easily. It's like taking a long exposure of an adult waiting to get his portrait taken. But for Sagittarius A star, because it's a much smaller black hole, gas that is moving at the speed of light around it is taking only a few minutes to orbit around Sagittarius A star, which means over the few hours we look at it with the EHT, it's constantly changing. And so, it's basically like taking a long exposure of a toddler frantically running around at night.

HM: [chuckling] Now, what are we actually looking at in this image? That black hole we see, what is that? Is… is that the actual hole or is it its shadow?

SI: Yeah. So it's not the actual black hole. The actual black hole is really, really inside the dark region. What we see is the shadow, which is a little bit larger than the event horizon. The event horizon is this point of no return, where light… once light crosses that, it cannot come back out. And what happens is that because of the black hole's gravity, it essentially puffs up and pushes light rays out. So some light rays will fall into the shadow and into the black hole. And some light rays that go around it will manage to circle around an escape. And because of this geometry, it creates… it casts this shadow of darkness where the light rays that come too close fall into the black hole, and the light rays that manage to escape form this bright ring of light.

HM: How many people and telescopes had to work together to get this image of Sagittarius A star?

SI: This image comes from our 2017 EHT observations, where we had eight telescopes at six different geographical sites going from the South Pole, to Spain, to Arizona, Mexico, Hawaii and Chile. This also needed not just international facilities to create a telescope the size of the earth, but also an international collaboration of people. And so, we have over 300 scientists and engineers working in the EHT from over 20 different countries and regions. So, we're really a diverse team of people bringing in different expertise in different fields, working towards this one common goal of making images of black holes.

HM: And because I'm in Canada, I should point out some of those scientists are Canadian.

SI: That's right. I myself am. [chuckling]

HM: There you go. We know black holes gobble up stuff. We've been told that for a long time. One of your colleagues compared this particular one to what it would be like if it was a person eating a single grain of rice over a million years. What does that mean?

SI: Yeah. So, Sagittarius A star is known to be a very low-accreture, so it eats gas very, very slowly. It's basically starved compared to other black holes. And the interesting thing is that we think that the amount that black holes feed also powers these powerful jets that we see in these amazing astronomical images. You know, these… we see these big streams of light and gas coming from centres of galaxies like the one in M87. And we think that black holes that eat more are able to power more powerful jets, whereas Sagittarius A star eats very little. And so, the accretion rate, the amount of gas that Sagittarius A star eats if we were to scale that to a diet for a human. So, we take the mass of Sagittarius A star, we scale it to a human mass. You would basically end up eating about one grain of rice every million years if you ate at the same diet of our starved… [chuckle] our starved Sag A star black hole.

HM: Sara, it is very interesting and very informative to talk to you. Thank you so much.

SI: Thank you very much for having me.

HM: Okay, bye-bye.

CH: Canadian Sara Issaoun is a NASA Einstein Fellow at the Harvard & Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. She's part of the team that released an image today of our galaxy's supermassive black hole. She was in Munich.

[Music: Folk]

Yoga Record

[sc]

WOMAN: Then, begin to drop your chest and lift your head up as you create that backbend simultaneously with the leg coming over.

[/sc]

CH: Okay…. Okay, like… coming over… yeah.

[sc]

WOMAN: Then, bend the straight-legged toes towards your head.

[/sc]

CH: Bend the toes.

[sc]

WOMAN: And as you bring that bent leg overhead,

[/sc]

CH: [straining] Um-hmmm.

[sc]

WOMAN: Continue to lift your head up towards your toes.

[/sc]

CH: Okay, yeah.

[sc]

WOMAN: Bring your big toes to touch.

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CH: [hardly audible] Toes to touch.

[sc]

WOMAN: And really reach your toes towards your head.

[/sc]

CH: Okay. Got it! This is easy! I'm going to beat the record for sure! Ah yeah, this is…

[Sound: bones crack]

CH Ow! My spinal column! And all the rest of my bones! Whoa, lost my balance!"

[Sound: Something crashes to the ground]

CH: The preceding was a dramatization. I would never attempt to do scorpion pose. Just watching that instructional video in my ergonomic chair, I suffered several injuries to my vertebrae. So, if you think you could set the world record for longest-held scorpion pose, I have two questions. First: do you have the strength, the flexibility, and the focus? And second: do… do you even know what it is? Like, have you seen it? Have you… seriously, have you seen it? Sorry, that second question was three questions, but honestly, scorpion pose is not for the faint of heart. Or bones. You do a handstand. And then you bend your spine until your feet are over your head. It looks impossible. But Yash Moradiya made it look easy. Recently, Mr. Moradiya went for the Guinness World Record for holding scorpion pose. Which stood at an astonishing four minutes and 47 seconds. And he beat it. By staying in that muscle-straining, back-breaking position for 29 minutes and four seconds. He told a Dubai newspaper that he'd practiced three hours a day for five years. And to those of us who sometimes lose our balance sitting on the couch, it's a relief to know that he had to bend over backwards to bend over backwards.

[Music: Hip-hop beat]

Part 2: Lake Tahoe Garbage, Windsor Underground Railroad Statue

Lake Tahoe Garbage

Guest: Colin West

CH: Lake Tahoe --- situated on the border of California and Nevada --- has a lot of nicknames. Locals call it "Big Blue" or "Lake of the Sky"... or, if they’re feeling fancy, "The Jewel of the Sierra." And this week, the lake may especially be living up to those glittering nicknames. After a year of effort, a non-profit has completed its cleanup of Lake Tahoe's 115-kilometre shoreline -- having pulled more than 11,000 kilograms -- or 25,000 pounds -- of garbage out of the water. Colin West is the founder and executive director of the group, which is called "Clean Up the Lake." We reached him in Incline Village, Nevada.

HM: Colin, If I were to go diving just off the shores of Lake Tahoe today, how different would it look compared to a year ago?

COLIN WEST: I would hope that you know, just off the shore of Lake Tahoe, in that zero to 25-foot zone, is a fair bit cleaner than… than it was 12 months ago.

HM: Was the… the pollution there? Was the garbage visible to even people walking along the shore?

CW: Some litter and garbage definitely was and is visible from the shoreline underneath the surface. I think especially for people like kayakers or paddleboarders, you can look down and… and see a tire or some cinderblocks and illegal buoy moorings or beer cans that are shining and glistening in the light. And, you know, that might be 15 or 20 feet down. A typical person wouldn't be able to get them, but those are the kinds of things that our dive team picked up around the 72 miles of the circumference of Tahoe.

HM: What was the most common kind of trash you found?

CW: The most common types of trash, I'd say we definitely found a lot of aluminum cans. Beer and soda cans. We found a lot of plastic water bottles and plastic Gatorade bottles and things. Definitely, a bit of material like construction materials or some of those, like, plastic sidings and… and wood and things of that nature from, you know, either construction or falling off docks and structures that are near to… near shore.

HM: What did all that tell you then about who's doing the polluting and how the litter got there?

CW: A lot of people really feel that you know, when they hear what we've done, they think about individuals that are always intentionally littering. And they… you know, the amount of comments I've even seen on some Instagram posts in the last 24 hours that had people saying how disgusting people are. I can't believe people do that to the lake. And I think what a lot of these individuals don't really realize is that as human beings, we really have a significant impact in the places that we live. I can promise you that the 280-plus pairs of sunglasses, or the dozens and dozens of hats or shirts or beach towels or cell phones were not intentional. So. I would say a majority of the litter that we pulled out of Tahoe is either accidental, just from us being here. We're part we're part of this problem. And so, I think everyone needs to be part of the solution and not just go to blaming those people that intentionally litter, which there are those. And we did find intentional litter for sure. But I think it's really sending out that message that you know, we simply have an impact on this planet that we live on.

HM: Now, I know you've found some unusual things as well. What were some of the most unique objects that you recovered?

CW: You know, we came across like a… see, we came across a geocache, which was kind of interesting. At first, it was this box that was closed, and we're like, oh, my gosh, like, what is this? And I'm like 20 feet down. And I open this, like, kind of ammunition-style box up, and this blue bottle shot out at like 50 miles an hour right past my head. And I'm like, holy crap! We come up, and someone's like, says, they found this, like, you know, blue kind of water bottle that was filled with air. And we're just pulling it out like, oh, my gosh, I hope it's not like a letter to a loved one or like, [both chuckle] what is this? And we open it, and then we find it's a geocache or it's these… you know, these kinds of boxes and things that people hide in the environment for others to come along and, like, leave something behind. And, you know, we pull out that bottle, and it's a list of the people who found the geocache and signed their name. And, you know, we signed cleanupthelake@72milecleanup, and we went and hid it back down there for someone else to find. And again, that was made out of metal and was, you know, something that was put there, and it has, you know, less of a detriment to the water quality.

HM: Right. Those littler things, I guess, weren't so hard to get up. But what did you do when you came across things like big heavy tires at the bottom of the lake? How did you get them up to the surface?

CW: Oh, great question. So, you know, back in 2020, when we were doing some of our first cleanups, we were still figuring out what we were doing. On one dive in the 72-mile cleanup, we came across 20 tires. And I guarantee you, no matter how skilled you are at scuba diving, you don't want to be going up and down 20 different times from, you know, 25 feet to the surface as your ears are going to more than hurt. And so, what we did was we ended up building a kind of weighted rope system. And we actually call it the rock rope because it's just so technological. We've literally duct-taped a rock to the end of a rope. [both laugh] And we drop it down, and then we could loop that through tires, wrap it around back on itself, anchors, whatever. And it honestly works pretty well. It's quick, efficient. And in the last 24 months, we've never been… never been described any system that works better than our rock rope.

HM: How much of the stuff you pulled up is… has ended up in landfill?

CW: The first thing we do is we try and reuse anything that we can. So, say I've got a… let me put my sunglasses on. There we go! Sunnies on, a pair of sunglasses that the lenses were still good. You know, they were dropped in the lake, and we'll reuse anything, you know, that we can. And so, we've found fishing poles. You find cones that we use at events sometimes. [chuckling] Like, anything that is still useful, we reuse. And then the second thing we do is if some of the litter is kind of set up or effective enough in a way to be used in an art installation, we save as much as we can for art installations. Then we recycle anything we can recycle. And the last stop for us is, you know, waste facilities where we properly dispose of anything we can't use in those other ways.

HM: This was such a huge group effort. More than 100 volunteers at this for like a year. What kept people so motivated to… to pitch in and keep going?

CW: There was definitely some moments that were tough, you know, for volunteers and for people like, you know, when you're in, you know, 5 to 25 degrees Fahrenheit or, you know, below... below zero Celsius in the negatives, it's… it's a chilly ride across the lake. And we just kind of kept the spirits high, and we pushed through some of the cold this winter and had the dry suits and everything we needed to stay warm underwater. So, it was kind of a fun adventure. And the spirit of adventure is definitely alive in the Tahoe Basin.

HM: Sounds like you've been doing some great work. Colin, thank you so much for telling us about it.

CW: Thank you so much.

HM: Bye.

CW: Bye.

CH: Colin West is the founder and director of "Clean Up the Lake." We reached him in Incline Village, Nevada.

[Music: Instrumental]

FOA Pickleball Lawsuit

CH: A Sharpie and a passion for pickleball have cost a Denver man thousands of dollars. In March, Arslan Guney faced a felony charge and time in jail, after he used a marker to re-draw faded lines of a public gym's pickleball court. That reaction to his attempt to re-establish the bounds felt way out-of-bounds to a lot of people. So now, the city and the man have reached a settlement. The criminal charges have been dropped and Mr. Guney will pay just over $4,500 to have his Sharpie lines removed. In March, guest host Gillian Findley spoke with Mr. Guney's lawyer, Hollynd Hoskins.

[sc]

HOLLYND HOSKINS: Mr. Guney was traumatized by having to turn himself in, get arrested, booked, sit in jail for 10 hours

GF: Well, walk us through how we got to this point. How did he come to have that black marker in his hand?

HH: Denver Parks and RECs, they actually assigned Mr. Guney the job of drawing a diagram that would show where the yellow markers should be placed each morning to set up the pickleball courts. So on March 14th, after everyone played pickleball, about 50 people, Mr. Guney was looking at the gym floor to do his diagram, and he was looking at the pre-existing X's that were made with a black magic marker, a black Sharpie. And he saw that some of them were fading, and he went upstairs to ask for a black Sharpie, and he simply put an X or a box on where… on some of the pre-existing marks. He thought he was helping. He thought he had the permission, and that was a big mistake.

GF: So, for those who don't know, tell us a little bit about pickleball. You're at… you're at a tournament right now, I understand?

HH: Yeah, I'm in Scottsdale, Arizona, going to play a large national pickleball tournament this upcoming weekend where there are professionals and there's professional leagues. And I really think this is going to be an Olympic sport. So… so what Pickleball is, it's played on, like, a miniature doubles tennis court. And it's a mix between what you would think of tennis, table tennis, badminton. And it's just such a great sport that the national… the number one player is 18 years old, the male, and the woman is 15 years old. And you can play it with seniors. You can play it with the family. It's very quick, fast-moving and it's also really a social sport. Everyone loves pickleball, and everyone's addicted to it.

GF: It sounds like Denver is going to have to get with the program here, but what about your client? Do you think this whole experience is going to sour him from… from playing the game?

HH: No, Mr. Guney, as soon as I was able to bond him out of jail, he just went to the city of Aurora, which is not far from Denver, and was also volunteering, continuing his volunteering to teach pickleball. And he… he really wants to go back to the Denver Parks and Rec, wants to make amends and wants to get back out there volunteering and teaching people the game he loves, pickleball.

[/sc]

CH: That was lawyer Hollynd Hoskins speaking with As It Happens guest host Gillian Findley in March. Ms. Hoskins' client, Arslan Guney, has reached a settlement with the city of Denver that will see him pay a fine rather than face criminal charges for re-drawing faded pickleball-court lines on the floor of a local gym. And you can find more on that story on our webpage: www.cbc.ca/aih.

[Music: Sixties Brit-pop]

Windsor Underground Railroad Statue

Guest: Irene Moore Davis

CH: You know the names Martin Luther King, Harriet Tubman, and Viola Desmond. But Mary Ann Shadd Cary's name is less familiar. Despite her involvement in the Underground Railroad. And the fact that she was the first Black woman in North America to edit and publish a newspaper. Those are monumental achievements. So it's fitting that Ms. Shadd Cary is finally getting an actual monument, which was unveiled today in Windsor, Ontario. A life-sized bronze statue, looking across the Detroit River at her homeland. Irene Moore Davis is the President of the Essex County Black Historical Research Society. She's also Mary Ann Shadd Cary's great-great-great-great-niece. We reached Ms. Davis in Windsor.

HM: Irene, when you look up at that brand new statue, what is the first thing you think about?

IRENE MOORE DAVIS: Oh, I'm just so thrilled that Mary Ann Shadd is finally receiving the recognition that she's due. The way that Donna Main, the sculptor, has sculpted this wonderful figure, she is holding her Provincial Freeman newspaper, she's got a determined look on her face, and her skirts are blowing in the wind like she is walking against the resistance that was put up against her. And, I mean, anyone, even if they go by that statue and don't understand what the real story is about, they will seek some kind of inspiration from just that figure moving against the wind.

HM: Mary Ann Shadd Cary was your great-great-great-great-aunt, and as she was born in the U.S. into a family that was already active in the Underground Railroad Movement. How is it that she herself ended up coming to Canada?

IMD: So, she was already very much involved in the anti-slavery movement, as you've said, and she was certainly a teacher who was very interested in teaching Black and white children together. She believed in integration and people working together in allyship. She attended the North American Convention of Colored Freemen at St Lawrence Hall in Toronto in September of 1851. And there, she was convinced to make a permanent home in Canada West, but to come down to Windsor and establish a school here. So, she made that decision as a single woman in her twenties to come down to Windsor and start up a school. And she did that, and she did many more things after that. She was certainly a very determined individual.

HM: You mentioned that in the sculpture, she is holding the newspaper that she founded. It's called The Provincial Freeman. What did it cover?

IMD: So, she was determined to create her own space, her own narrative in the Black press, and to talk about certainly how people of African descent were faring once they got to Canada, to encourage people to come here, whether they were free people of colour from America or formerly enslaved people. She talked about what the crops were like, what the climate was like, what the social or political climate was like, how to get the vote, how to seek property so you could become enfranchised, but also women's issues and ethical issues and the importance of staying away from alcohol, and just all of the things people would need to not only survive, but thrive in this environment and this new settlement.

HM: And beyond the accomplishments you mentioned, you know, regarding the Underground Railroad and her feminism, she did a lot of other things, too. She was very prominent in so many areas. Can you just give us a sense of some of the things she did?

IMD: Mary Ann Shadd Cary, once she arrived in Windsor, she established Windsor's first integrated school, which was incredible. She taught Black and white children in the daytime. She taught Black adults at night so they would get their literacy and numeracy and be independent. As I've mentioned, she was the first Black woman publisher of a newspaper in all of North America. She became a Civil War recruiter. She was a frequent lecturer or orator on the evils of slavery and the importance of abolitionism. She published a wonderful publication called A Plea for Immigration, which encouraged African-Americans to move north and gave them all the reasons why. She eventually became a teacher and principal in Washington, D.C., after the Civil War, and was the first black woman enrolled at Howard Law School. Graduated, but her degree was actually delayed, so she ended up suing the university for sex discrimination in terms of delaying her degree. And she founded many organizations through the years, including a Black women's investment club. So far ahead of her time.

HM: Given all of that, do you think Canadians know her story well enough?

IMD: I don't think that we do. I mean, she's certainly been the subject of a number of short documentaries and various websites and pieces like that. She is a person of national historic significance in Canada. She's also in the U.S. Women's Hall of Fame, and her Washington home is a national historic site over there. And what I find very frequently is that new Canadians learn about her when they're studying for the citizenship test. But many people who were born and raised in Canada don't know her story. And I think that recognitions like this new sculpture by Donna Main at the University of Windsor can really help to tell that story. And make her more palpable to people.

HM: What about our American neighbours? You mentioned that she is acknowledged a bit more there than here. Do you… do you think that they're more aware of her contributions?

IMD: I think that like a lot of figures who were very involved in the anti-slavery movement and all aspects of Black history, you know, they're well-known to people who really study Black history, academics and people who are deeply involved in it. But if you were to ask the average layperson, they would not know her story. It was so heartwarming when she received a Google Doodle last year on her birthday. It was so heartwarming when The New York Times decided to kind of make a do-over obituary for her, as they've been doing for a number of people they missed through the years. And she's certainly observed and commemorated in a number of very key museums like the Smithsonian Museum of African American History or the Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati. But there's still a lot more work to do to make her widely known. I would love to see her be truly a household name because she was amazing.

HM: I understand that there is only one known photograph of Mary Ann Shadd Cary, and it's not a very good one. So, how did the sculptor, Donna Main, determine what she was going to look like?

IMD: Donna Main did a tremendous amount of research about her personality, her narrative voice, but she also literally met with a variety of Shadd descendants such as myself, but many others, measured our faces, got a sense of what the Shadd bone structure is like even after all these years and incorporated that into her work to make sure that the three-dimensional Mary Ann was much more vivid than that single photo we have.

HM: So, as people walk by that statue unveiled today, what are you hoping they're going to be thinking about?

IMD: I hope that they will wonder who this Black woman is, who is standing there holding a newspaper and looking so determined? And that if they don't know about her, they will stop and look at the plaque that describes her life and that, better yet, they'll Google her and share those stories. It's so wonderful that she has come to life in this piece of public art at a major intersection in downtown Windsor. And we're just so thrilled that people will be able to see her and be inspired by her every day.

HM: Irene, it's a real pleasure to speak with you. Thank you so much.

IMD: Thank you.

HM: Bye-bye.

IMD: Bye-bye.

CH: Irene Moore Davis is Mary Ann Shadd Cary's great-great-great-great-niece. We reached her in Windsor, Ontario.

[Music: Instrumental]

Non-Verbal Valedictorian Speech

CH: As many as 31 million people around the world have non-verbal autism -- meaning they tend to speak very little or not at all. Elizabeth Bonker is one of those people. She has not spoken since the age of 15 months. Nevertheless, Ms. Bonker was one of five valedictorians at Rollins College in Winters Park, Florida. And the four other valedictorians voted unanimously to have her give the commencement address. Here's Elizabeth Bonker delivering that address, through a text-to-speech computer program.

[sc]

ELIZABETH BONKER: Today, we celebrate our shared achievements. I know something about shared achievements because I am affected by a form of autism that doesn't allow me to speak. My neuromotor issues also prevent me from tying my shoes or buttoning a shirt without assistance. I have typed the speech with one finger with a communication partner holding a keyboard. I am one of the lucky few non-speaking autistics who have been taught to type. That one critical intervention unlocked my mind from its silent cage, enabling me to communicate and to be educated like my hero, Helen Keller. Personally, I have struggled my whole life with not being heard or accepted. A story on the front page of our local newspaper reported how the principal at my high school told a staff member the retard can't be valedictorian. Yet, today, here I stand. [cheering and clapping] Each day, I choose to celebrate small victories. And today, I am celebrating a big victory with all of you. Today we commence together. But from here, we will choose our own ways. For me, I have a dream: communication for all. There are 31 million non-speakers with autism in the world who are locked in a silent cage. My life will be dedicated to relieving them from suffering in silence and to giving them voices to choose their own way. What is your dream? How will you rise up to meet the unprecedented challenges of our time? Whatever our life choices, each and every one of us can live a life of service to our families, to our communities, and to the world. And the world can't wait to see our light shine. We are all called to serve as an everyday act of humility, as a habit of mind, to see the worth in every person we serve. For to whom much is given, much is expected. God gave you a voice. Use it, and know the irony of a non-speaking autistic encouraging you to use your voice is not lost on me. Because if you can see the worth in me, then you can see the worth in everyone you meet. Be the light, Fiat Lux. Thank you.

[/sc]

CH: That was Elizabeth Bonker -- who has non-verbal autism -- delivering the valedictory address at Rollins College in Florida, through a text-to-speech computer program.

[Music: Fiddle!!!]

Part 3: Crypto Crash

AB Road Rage Death

CH: On Tuesday night, police in Calgary were called about two vehicles driving erratically. It appeared one was chasing another, and they were exchanging gunfire. Bullets hit at least two homes. And then, at an intersection, those two vehicles crashed into two other vehicles. One of them was a van driven by Angela McKenzie, a mother of five. She died at the scene. Svene Stuwe learned the news the next day from Ms. Mckenzie's mother. In an interview with the CBC this morning, he remembered his friend.

[sc]

SVENE STUWE: My wife and I met Angela through the school that our kids went to. Her twin daughters were both going… started school about the same time our son did. And we started getting to know her through the volunteer work that we did with the school. We were fortunate enough to have a flexible schedule to be able to volunteer. And we saw Angela there more often than not, volunteering as well, and we got to know her. And over time, that… that relationship deepened. We started having a coffee together and spending time together, and having the kids over. And… and we really developed a really strong bond with her. She was such… a such an incredible positive force, and always looking at the good in people, and… and helping others. And… and was such an incredible light.

DAVID GRAY: Those five kids also recently lost their dad, I'm told, to an unrelated circumstance in the spring.

SS: Yeah.

DG: So… so, what now?

SS: Right now, they're staying with their grandmother. She's watching over them and… and taking care of them, and maybe into the foreseeable future. And… and, you know, she's… she… of course, she's struggling with that. As much as she loves her kids, she's also retired. She's on a very fixed income. She doesn't have a lot of money. And so, there's concern about how would she be able to raise these kids as such? But for now, she's their… their stability. She's their… their… their foundation to make sure that they know that there’s family there caring for them, watching over them, making sure that things still get taken care of on their behalf.

DG: Police are calling this a road rage incident. Like everyone else, I don't understand it. There’s two new vehicles racing down a road, people shooting at each other. We're told that Angela did nothing wrong. She was just minding your own business. How do you try to explain something like this to her kids?

SS: [sigh] You know, I… I haven’t had a chance to talk to her kids, but I know I've had a chance to talk to our son. And there's really no way to explain this. I would love to find meaning in it. I would love to find a reason why this happened. But sometimes, it is… there is no reason. Sometimes, there's no meaning to it. And you can't explain it. You can't… how do you explain that someone chose to get angry. Two people chose to get angry, maybe three, I don't know, decided to pull guns, get into… start chasing after each other and not consider the consequences of their actions. How do you explain that? You can't. But what I have talked to my son about is that our… our words and our actions do have consequences, good or bad.

[/sc]

CH: That was Sven Stuwe, a friend of the late Angela McKenzie. He was speaking with David Gray on the Calgary Eyeopener today. The Calgary police are investigating.

[Music: Sad piano]

Crypto Crash

Guest: Henry Kim

CH: To the uninitiated, the baffling mystery of cryptocurrency and the blockchain seems scary. But now, the news is full of stories about how crypto is crashing and erasing billions of dollars from the digital and possibly non-digital wallets of the people who've invested in it, which also seems scary. The downward spiral continued today with some measures showing the total value of all cryptocurrencies together, having dropped by more than half since November. That sounds pretty alarming, especially if you don't understand what's going on. But Henry Kim does. He's an associate professor and the director of the Blockchain DOT Lab at the Schulich School of Business. He joined us from Toronto.

HM: Professor Kim, given what you do, I am sure that you're getting asked this question a lot. But should people who don't invest in cryptocurrency be worried about what's happening on that market right now?

HENRY KIM: I don't think so. There's nothing that it hasn't done before. Cryptocurrencies are inherently quite volatile, so if you're a crypto person, this isn't anything new. If you're completely non-crypto, I wouldn't recommend getting in on it right now.

HM: Can you give us a sense of how much value has been erased during this crypto crash?

HK: [deep breath] I think we're probably at about maybe $500-$600 billion has been wiped out.

HM: That sounds like a lot of money!

HK: It is. But I mean, having said that, that's the equivalent to how much Apple and Microsoft have experienced down in the last two weeks.

HM: It's not unique to crypto, is what you're saying?

HK: No, no. It's incredibly correlated with what's happening in the stock market. Very much correlated with what's happening there.

HM: And is that why it's happening? What is the main reason?

HK: Mainly that. There's actually also something sort of odd happening in the crypto market to do with something called stablecoins.

HM: In simple terms, what's the stablecoin, and what's this connection?

HK: So, there is… there are other, more complicated blockchain-based cryptocurrency products. And one of them is something called Terra, which is a digital currency, which is a cryptocurrency that's meant to be pegged to the U.S. dollar. So, you know, it doesn't move around so much. So it's nice to be used as a stable currency, which is called a stablecoin. It's not the U.S. dollar, but it moves as sort of stably as the U.S. dollar, hence the term stablecoin. But what's actually happening with Terra is that because of all the volatility in the stock market and the cryptocurrency market, it's lost its peg to the U.S. dollar. And there's sort of a technical reason why. So, what the founders have had to do is buy a whole bunch of bitcoins to say, hey, we have all these reserve currencies; we could back up our currency. And that's actually meant that there's someone actually selling like billions of dollars worth of bitcoin. And that's actually been a drag on the bitcoin market.

HM: I thought the whole point of cryptocurrency was that it wasn't tied to the U.S. dollar?

HK: Bitcoin, the predominant ones aren't. But those things are so volatile that people can't really use them to pay for short-term things. What people have needed is what's called stablecoins that they can still use that actually functions, and you don't have to worry about the volatility of it. Most people hold cryptocurrencies for speculation and appreciation, but there are other uses for it as well, which are, like, more like for payments and stuff. And stablecoins are much better for that. In fact, an old student of mine was actually getting paid in a stablecoin as opposed to a Canadian dollar.

HM: Cryptocurrency seems to have gone more mainstream lately. You see these ads with celebrities fronting purchases of cryptocurrency. They're… they're everywhere. We're hearing it in political debates. Traditional banks are involved. Is what's happening right now going to slow that momentum down?

HK: No, what's happening there is a result of factors outside the cryptocurrency market. What's happening there is, you know, the U.S. Fed and the Canadian Central Bank are trying to fight inflation by raising interest rates. That's the predominant reason why that's happening.

HM: Yeah. But you say this isn't something that people into cryptocurrency haven't seen before. But I'm seeing a lot of people who have invested pretty panicked about the losses that they've taken in the last week or two.

HK: So, I heard somewhere that drawdowns of 80% in the cryptocurrency market, in bitcoin, have occurred like a dozen times. So people that are in cryptocurrencies, that have been in for a while, and I've been aware of this market for the last six years, this isn't something they haven't seen before. But again, if you're a regular investor and you invest in something, and there's a risk that it can go down by 80%, that scares you a lot.

HM: Well, it should scare you, shouldn't it?

HK: It doesn't scare me so much. Again, if I… you know, if I just bought $10,000 worth of it a time, it would scare me a lot, I suppose. It doesn't scare me a lot because there's nothing that is behaving right now that alarms me.

HM: With the traditional stock market, serious investors buy when the market is low. Is that what's going to happen with cryptocurrency, do you think?

HK: You have to look at what's actually going to happen in the stock market and the economy. But I think as soon as the U.S. Fed stops or slows down their interest rate increases, then I think crypto's look attractive. But until then, it probably is not going to look attractive.

HM: Hmm. Do you think that this big drop in value-changing cryptocurrency markets themselves might be leading to more regulation?

HK: There actually is a lot of regulation already, right? And the drawdown in the cryptocurrency market isn't something that the regulators could do something about. In fact, if you talk to a lot of people in the crypto space, they want to be more legitimate. They sense regulations or some means could better educate them about the risks. I think people would welcome that.

HM: So who's responsible for doing that now?

HK: I think one of the issues is that because it's new in it and there's not as much regulation as regular financial institutions, you can't just walk into your bank and buy bitcoin. So, I think what might happen is that if there is greater adoption, if there's some stability in the pricing, I think that always helps. If there's wide adoption and if traditional financial institutions like banks are able to get bitcoin-like products to their customers, then I think those folks would be able to better inform and educate as much as if I went to my bank and wanted to buy a mutual fund or ETF. The people selling it to me would actually do a pretty good job of telling me about it.

HM: Professor Kim, thanks for talking to us.

HK: Oh, you're welcome.

HM: Bye-bye.

HK: Bye-bye.

CH: Henry Kim is an Associate Professor and the Director of the Blockchain DOT Lab at the Schulich School of Business. We reached him in Toronto.

[Music: fast-paced instrumental]

Pet Surrenders On The Rise

CH: In the early days of the pandemic, a lot of people took on all kinds of pet projects. Including actual pets. While working from home, families adopted an unusual number of pets from animal shelters. But now that people are returning to the office, they're becoming pet UN-owners. The Prince George Humane Society says it's seen a surge of people surrendering their pets over the last few months. Angela McLaren is the Executive Director of that Humane Society.

[sc]

ANGELA MCLAREN: We took some comparisons from the previous year and kind of looked where we are this year and we see a substantial increase of animals being surrendered to the shelter. And a large majority of those have actually been pregnant mums and just kicking some puppies. And you know, I've kind of been looking at, you know, what… what has contributed to these changes. And obviously COVID has really been a big part of that. But there has been a veterinarian shortage. And that has deeply impacted the ability for people to spay and neuter their pets. So we're seeing a lot of accidental litters and those have been surrendered to shelters. So, you know, in comparison to previous years, you know, we’ve got 33 puppies at the moment. And that's very unusual for us to have.

CAROLINA DE RYK: My goodness! What a… what a lot of significant issues. And what kind of burden does that place on the Humane Society?

AM: The challenge is just, you know, the public can't get veterinary care in general. That doesn't change it for us as rescuers either. Our access to veterinary care has also changed and deeply impacted our operations in Prince George. And we've actually had to look at alternative solutions to, you know, being able to get our animals in for spaying and neutering a lot sooner than we did previously in the past. It used to just pretty much be we brought in an animal into the shelter and a month later, we could have it spayed or a spay/neuter equipment. And now, we're looking at 6 to 8 months in order to get an animal fixed, which means the animals are staying in our care a lot longer than they usually should be.

CDR: Hmm. So. So take me through this a bit. You have people who are surrendering their animals. In some cases, those animals are pregnant because people haven't been able to access those… those spay and neuter appointments through the vet. What do you do then when you have all of these animals that also need to wait a long time to be spayed or neutered? Is there a risk of more puppies and kittens being born under your watch or how do you deal with that?

AM: Yes, there's actually a couple of ways we're looking at it. We looking at what we would call foster to adopt. So what we do is we allow people to foster animals until spay or neuter is done and then we finalize the adoption. That has become challenging for us as an organization because if we continue to do that, we have hundreds and hundreds of adoptions we have to process at one time. So we are doing… we’re we actually adopting animals out, but we are having all the appointments for the people that were adopted from us, ensuring they're going to those appointments and then following up that those appointments have been made.

CDR: How long do you expect this surge of pet surrenders to continue?

AM: You know what? I think it's going to be a couple of years before we actually figure out… figure it out. I mean, the veterinary shortage is deeply impacting northern B.C. I know it has… impacts B.C. in general. But we're seeing… you know, we're seeing a significant challenge in Prince George. And until we get more veterinarians into the… into the town, I think we're going to continue to see some of these challenges. So, you know, it's going to be an easy fix. I don't think it's going to be. But I'm sure over the next couple of years we'll start to see some kind of improvement.

[/sc]

CH: Angela McLaren, the Executive Director of the Prince George Humane Society, speaking with Carolina de Ryk, host of Daybreak North.

[Music: Yokel?]

Youngest Law Grad

Guest: Haley Taylor Schlitz

CH: When she walks across the stage at Southern Methodist University tomorrow, Haley Taylor Schlitz will make history. Once she receives her diploma, the 19-year-old will be the youngest law student ever to graduate from that university. And according to her family's research, possibly the youngest Black law school graduate in the history of the U.S. Not only that, but her achievement comes at the end of a dizzying academic journey that saw her speed through middle school, high school and a college undergraduate degree. We reached Haley Taylor Schlitz in Keller, Texas.

HM: Hi, Haley. First of all, congratulations.

HALEY TAYLOR SCHLITZ: Thank you so much!

HM: How are you feeling just one day out of graduating?

HTS: I am so excited. I've been telling people who were asking me earlier this week I didn't even believe that law school was over. It just didn't feel that way. But now, it feels real and I'm really excited.

HM: You have had a unique journey through the education system going back to your elementary school days. You started homeschooling at age 11. Why did you leave the public school system?

HTS: It was multifaceted, honestly. One of the reasons that we left the public school system was because of the racism that we were facing. There were a lot of microaggressions by the teachers and my peers. When we were learning a lesson on slavery, the other students would look over at me and say, If we lived back in that time, I would own you. And of course, as a 10-year-old girl, what do you say to that? Why are they at 10 years old, 11 year olds saying that? And then, I think the straw on the camel's back was when my mom asked if I could be tested for the gifted and talented program, and my teacher said no. And then she actually… she actually thought I would need to be held back. And so she went to the principal and she asked if I could be tested for the gifted and talented program. And they said, no, you can only take it in kindergarten. I was born in Los Angeles, and we didn't move here until I was in second grade. So, of course, that wasn't an option. So, she's like, there's no way I can do worse than this and pulled me out. [laughing]

HM: Wow. So, what did you and your parents find the advantages of homeschooling to be once you began doing that?

HTS: Absolutely. So I think one of the biggest advantages of homeschooling is the personalized education it provides. Not only did it cater to my exact needs of, you know, where I need to be to stay engaged, my accelerated level. But also, in my weak points, we were able to really focus on that and develop them. So I became a very well-rounded student overall.

HM: Now, in the years since you began homeschooling, you've become something of an advocate for the issues that many students, but especially nonwhite students, face when it comes to navigating those gifted and talented programs that you mentioned in the public school system. What are the key issues you see there? And what is the kind of advice that you give?

HTS: Oh, so some of the biggest issues that I see in public schools, specifically relating to gifted and talented, dual enrollment, AP and honours courses is, you know, advancement is equity and access. There's really not a lot of diversity in those programs. And also, there are a lot of schools that are lower socioeconomic status or more racially diverse or even a higher percentage of just black students. And they do not have gifted and talented programs. They… like, they're less likely to have gifted and talented programs. And naturally, that makes the students harder to compete against those students who did have gifted and talented programs. So, when you're able to take an AP course in biology and you're applying to college, that looks better on your resume, on your transcript, on your GPA than an non-AP course does, but your school didn't even offer AP. So, that's really not okay, obviously. And how I like to, like, demonstrate or paint the picture for anybody who's listening, it's I should be able to be a law school graduate at 19, even if I stayed in the public school system and I would not have been able to. And what we can't do is have part of our country moving forward and part of it not able to because of the education that they were provided.

HM: You finished the requirements of high school at 13. You… you got your undergraduate degree at 16. There's no doubt about your maturity. We can hear you in your thought processes. [HTS chuckles] but, you know, you were significantly younger than your classmates throughout university. What's it been like for you?

HTS: It really wasn't, I don't think, what people like to imagine it was like. Number one, they didn't know that I was younger than them. I don't know if I just didn't look it or they just would never have imagined that I was 13 and they're 23. When they did find out it was still a non-issue. They were impressed. But ask questions. Ask how I did it, ask what it's like, all those great things. And then we would get back to our group project.

HM: You are such a dynamo that I understand you don't even plan to take the summer off because you're studying for the bar.

HTS: Yes!

HM: What… what are your plans after that?

HTS: Immediately after I'm done studying and taking the bar, I want to go into educational policy. That's just obviously where my passions lie, as you can tell. And that has a lot of routes that you can go about exploring that field. You can work for a school district, you can work for an elected official, you can work for a nonprofit, you can work for an education law firm. I definitely feel called to teaching, too. My undergraduate degree was an education at Texas Woman's University. I like to think of it as two major ways to impact the education system. Of course, there are millions of ways, but two major ways. One is from inside the system, being that teacher of colour, being that good influence. And one is from outside the system, being somebody who changes the nuts and bolts and foundation of the educational system. So that way the teachers in the system can do just that.

HM: As we mentioned, your graduation is tomorrow. How are you planning to celebrate?

HTS: So we have a couple of things planned. Right after graduation, my family and I are going out to dinner. We're so excited for that. It's just going to be, as you can imagine, a really emotional and intimate time. We're having a graduation party on Sunday, and I'm really excited about that, too. So many other people in my village are going to be coming to that and it's just going to be a fantastic time.

HM: So much of what's happened to you is because your mom recognized early on that, you know, your boredom was not because you weren't a good student, it was because you were a fabulous thinker. I just…. tell me about, just before we go, your parents thoughts and role in all of this and just how they're feeling right now?

HTS: So my parents have done a lot for me in this process. They have seriously invested in me, as you can imagine, as you know. They really saw the vision, obviously, before I did as a kid. But they really saw it. You know, they saw the outcome. They saw the tangibility of it. They had a drive and passion and really, really invested that into us as well. And it wasn't just time, energy or money, it was their whole life energy was poured into me and my siblings. And not only did they help us realize what we wanted to do in our lives, not tell us, obviously. But help us grow into our best selves. But on top of that, they provided the opportunities for us to do so, the foundation for us to do so. We… none of us could be where we we’re at, where we are now, if it weren't for their actions.

HM: Haley, I have the feeling that we are going to hear your name connected to some pretty great things in the future. Thank you so much. And once again, congratulations.

HTS: Thank you so much. Thank you!

HM: It's been a pleasure to talk to you.

HTS: Thank you. You, too.

HM: Bye-bye.

HTS: Bye.

CH: That was Haley Taylor Schlitz. We reached her in Keller, Texas. And you can find more on her story on our webpage at: www.cbc.ca/aih.

[Music: Folk]

FOA: National Lymeric Day

CH: When anatomy lost its appeal / A teacher responded with zeal / Instead of a test / She chose to profess / That limericks would help her class heal. And so they did. Jackie Carnegie is a professor of medicine at the University of Ottawa. Ten years ago, in 2012, she tasked her students with creating limericks about human anatomy. And in celebration of National Limerick Day, we're going to revisit some of their efforts, and one of hers -- which she shared with students to help get their creative juices flowing. From our archives, here's Professor Carnegie.

[sc]

JACKIE CARNEGIE: Three cheers for the pyloric sphincter. Hooray! It knows that acid besides cells should not stay. So it opens just a mite, then closes up fast and tight, keeping damage to the duodenum at bay.

CAROL OFF: [laughing] That's quite… it's catchy.

JC: It's all right. Although, I have to say the students did… some of them wrote really limericks that were quite a bit better than that, but.

CO: It puts a whole new meaning to the term bawdy limericks.

JC: Yes.

CO: Meaning B.A.W.D.Y., so --

JC: Yeah.

CO: Well, you know, talking about sphincters is perfectly in tune [laughing] with the traditions of limericks as well. Now, how did the students react when you asked them to do these limericks?

JC: They were really quite enthusiastic. I think, because they're used to taking so many courses where it's… it's… it's just learning and learning and learning and memorizing and then spitting that information back on midterm exams that they were pretty excited to have an opportunity to do something where they could be a little bit creative and have a little bit of fun with the material.

CO: [laughing] Can you give us an example or two?

JC: Yes. So the first one begins. Atlas and axis are king and queen. Thoracic and lumbar are in-between. The sacrum is next. Your disks help you flex. Your spinal column is curvy and lean.

CO: laughs. Well, that's pretty… even I can understand that one. But mostly because I just had a massage today. So… and that's what they were massaging. [JC chuckles] so what is but atlas and axes are king and queen? What is that?

JC: So those are the specific names. Atlas is the name of the first vertebra in your vertebral column. So right up in the neck region. And the one right below it is called axis. Those are the only two that really have special names. After that, it's just the third cervical vertebra or the second thoracic vertebra. So they've put in the names of those two to help them remember those two. And then they're just taking us in order down the length of the vertebral column, giving us the names of the different groups of vertebrae as they go down.

CO: Okay, another one then.

JC: And the other one goes back to the digestive system. There were quite a few digestive ones [CO laughs] because that was the topic we were working on at the time when the assignment came out. So this one begins. Our gallbladder is the bile’s favourite place to hide. Its green and yellow colour gives it a lot of pride. Through the cystic duct, it goes past the ampulla it flows, causing big droplets of fat to break up and divide.

CO: [both chuckle] Actually, to tell you the truth, I don't want to tell me what that one means. [both laugh] It sounds really gross.

[/sc]

CH: University of Ottawa professor Jackie Carnegie, speaking with Carol on As It Happens in 2012 about her students' bawdy limericks. Spelled however you prefer. As you already knew, today is National Limerick Day, in celebration of the birthday of English poet Edward Lear. He helped popularize the art form in his 1846 Book of Nonsense, which included such classics as There was an Old Man with a nose. You know the rest.

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May 12th, 2022 Episode Transcript

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