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The Current Transcript for October 5, 2022

Host: Matt Galloway

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

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Now, 30 feet gone. It's basically a 40 year. Sometimes it's three or four feet.

MATT GALLOWAY: For generations, the coastline of Atlantic Canada has provided beauty and a way of life that's changing for storms like Fiona literally wash away the shores of P.E.I. and Newfoundland in 30 minutes. What a future with the ocean at your doorstep looks like and how coastal erosion is being accelerated by climate change. Also this morning.

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We all want the story of, you know, the Afghan refugee coming with the Canadian flag and doing really well. But, you know, the vast majority of refugees who come are suffering economically and mentally. And it's tough, but we craved that perfect little narrative.

MG: The award winning journalist, Michelle Shephard, had what she thought was the perfect story. Her readers agreed. Lives were changed. A new documentary explores what happened when she learnt there was more to the tale and she was initially told in an hour how correcting the record made her rethink her own role in the narrative that journalists tell and why the perfect story is more elusive than it may seem. We start, though, with the anger on the streets in Iran. Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway and this is The Current.

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Protests continue in Iran, despite violent crackdown

Guests: Maral Karimi, Karim Sadjadpour

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They had guns, they had paintball guns. They had batons. It was a war zone and there was blood everywhere.

MG: This year, school began with violence at Sharif University in Tehran. Earlier this week, hundreds of student protesters were attacked by Iranian security forces. Videos posted online by protesters allege police fired shots, made violent arrests and trapped students in an underground parking garage. But these clashes have done little to deter more students at other universities from joining the protests.

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[Chanting]

MG: Students chanted, this isn't a protest anymore. This is the start of a revolution. It has been nearly three weeks of anti-government demonstrations in Iran. At least 154 people have been killed nationwide, according to the Norway based NGO Iran Human Rights. Maral Karimi is the author of the Iranian Green Movement of 2009 Reverberating Echoes of Resistance. She's a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Toronto and is with me in studio. Good morning.

MARAL KARIMI: Good morning.

MG: How surprised are you to see Iranians still out on the streets given the violence by security forces?

MARAL KARIMI: I'm more in awe of their courage than surprised. I'm the violence is real on the streets. You heard the batons, the the young. The security forces are shooting at young children, men, women, indiscriminately. And but this is something that has been coming for a long time. So economic decay, severe political repression, corruption, you name it has been mounting. And this is not just I mean, my own research is on formula formulating these protests. So and I had kind of predicted at some point that these cycles of protests are going to keep coming back. So in that sense, not really.

MG: Is this still a youth led movement? We heard the students earlier, young protesting. Is this still youth driving what we're seeing right now on the streets?

MARAL KARIMI: At this point? I would say to a large extent, yes. But it if it's going to gather more momentum and go further, then we would need more, other segments of the society to join in. Last week we saw the Teachers Association, which is the largest nationwide kind of syndicate and it's the most organized, calling for two days of strike. Last Monday and last Wednesday and it went really well. Slowly other segments of the society — celebrities, artists, athletes and so many other people are joining. But it is led by some of the things that these youth are not willing to put up with anymore.

MG: This started. I know that there were, as you said, other factors that perhaps were simmering in the background. But what we're seeing right now, the catalyst for it was the death of Masamune, a 22 year old who died after being detained by the morality police. And we have seen women and girls burning their jobs, cutting their hair. Very visible demonstrations of what's going on. And people have said that this is a feminist protest. Is it? Is that how you would characterise what we're seeing right now?

MARAL KARIMI: I mean what we do see. Let's let's get this out first. The women were the biggest losers of the 79 revolution. So essentially for the past 43 years women have been living and men under a gender apartheid system. So what we do see is, yes, there are a lot of women there in some instances taking the lead, but we still see more men on the street than women for obvious reasons, because this is a deeply in sections, deeply traditional society, that there is still rampant sexism that's institutionalised and promoted by the state over the past 43 years. So I think it has strong feminist and gender equality aspects to it, but I'm not entirely convinced that it is as of yet a feminist and completely feminist movement. I'm not sure if that's possible, but that doesn't mean what's going on, on the street in the protests is not legitimate or doesn't have the potential to to go there.

MG: People are looking and I ask you this because you've written about it. People are looking back to 2009, what was called the Green Movement, a pro-democracy movement in Iran marked by mass demonstrations, civil disobedience, and then a very violent crackdown. Do you see similarities to 29? Do you see this as as as a continuation of what was happening there?

MARAL KARIMI: Definitely. I see that as a continuation of what started to go back a little bit at the beginning of the 20th century with the constitutional revolution. And, you know, the flash forward 79 revolution, the Green Movement and the 2018 and then to 2019 and now this one. Yes, there are similarities with 2009 in terms of, you know, class orientation. It's largely a middle-class and also urban movement, very similar to 2009. There there are differences. While I have you know, I mentioned that it's largely urban, but there are segments of the periphery that are joining, the ethnici... the various minoritized ethnics are joining in, specifically Kurdistan. That's where this whole movement started.

MG: What does that tell you?

MARAL KARIMI: That it has the potential to be all encompassing.

MG: So when you heard those students at the beginning saying this isn't a protest anymore, this is a revolution, is this the start of a revolution?

MARAL KARIMI: Theoretically, we can never say if it's a revolution until it's concluded. But in in in the sense that it's it's unprecedented in that it doesn't have leaders to a 2009 movement had leaders that were within the regime that were insiders that kind of tried to contain the protests. And that's partly I theorise in the book that that's partly why the crowds demobilised because they could tell that this is not going to go towards a Democratic alternative right now, that that kind of impediment doesn't exist anymore. Those insiders, the reformists, the lobby is not there to prevent them. So, yeah, it definitely has that potential.

MG: What is it then? I mean, what is what is this at its heart? What do you think this is about right now?

MARAL KARIMI: This is an eruption against 43 years of repression. Iranians have for the past over a century been. Looking for self-determination, for democracy, for citizenship rights. And I go back to this above all, self-determination. This is a definite a very pronounced movement, kind of it's a manifestation of that quest for self-determination.

MG: How much of a threat is it, do you think, to the Islamic Republic of Iran? What we're seeing right now.

MARAL KARIMI: I mean, from the forces of repression, we can see that they're quite scared, and they should be because this is the this is the generation that the that has never seen anything other than I mean, the previous my generation. Many of us are also similar. We haven't seen the previous regime, but at least, you know, some of us could leave the country, see other countries bla bla. But this generation specifically was born and raised in this regime, and they've done anything and everything to indoctrinate them within the ideology of the regime. And that hasn't happened. And they're lucky that they have. The previous generation, us as parents, to support them, to push them towards this eruption.

MG: Just before I let you go, what will you be watching for in days ahead?

MARAL KARIMI: I'm I'm watching for more and more segments joining for the workers unions, especially in oil and also other ethnics that have not joined yet. And, of course, the lower strata. This is largely a middle-class movement, again, the lower strata of the society. I'm looking forward to seeing them join, to see themselves reflected.

MG: What about further violence from the state? Are you. How worried are you about that, that that as these protests continue to grow, the leadership of the country will will return and will impose further restrictions. And that could come through violence.

MARAL KARIMI: Violence has always been the regime's first, you know, first method of repression. And so, yes, definitely violence. It goes without saying, we're all worried. We're watching and I expect violence. To be honest with you, Matt, I expect violence to get far worse before it gets better.

MG: I'm glad to have you here. And we'll talk again perhaps. Thank you very much.

MARAL KARIMI: Thanks for having me.

MG: Maral Karimi is the author of the Iranian Green Movement of 2009 Reverberating Echoes of Resistance. She's also a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Toronto. Karim Sadjadpour is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. His focus is on Iran and U.S. foreign policy toward the Middle East. He's in Washington, D.C. this morning. Karim, good morning to you.

KARIM SADJADPOUR: Good morning.

MG: You heard those students again saying that this is not just a protest. This is the start of a revolution. Is this, from your perspective, the start of a revolution?

KARIM SADJADPOUR: Revolutions are only predictable in hindsight, but make sense. Meaning when we look over the last four or five decades, including the Iranian Revolution of 1979, the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Arab uprisings of 2011, it is impossible to predict where this is going to go because you're trying to understand the psychology of one individual, usually a dictator, and the collective psychology of very angry, disenfranchised societies. But as Morell said, whether or not we can't predict the endgame, but it's very clear that the sizeable majority of Iranian society doesn't believe that they live under a regime that can be reformed. And I would argue there's probably no nation in the world with a greater gap between state and society than the Islamic Republic of Iran. You essentially have a regime which resembles North Korea, and you have a society which really aspires to be more like South Korea.

MG: We mentioned the roots of this and what we were seeing in terms of women removing and burning their hijabs. How much if you take a look at that action in particular, how much of a threat does the regime view that action?

KARIM SADJADPOUR: The burning of head jobs and women's removal of the hijab, in my view, does pose an existential threat to the Islamic Republic of Iran, because the mandatory hijab is one of the three remaining ideological pillars left of the 1979 revolution. The three pillars are death to America, death to Israel and the veil. And it's more than just symbolic, because, you know, if that pillar is destroyed, the leadership in Iran fear, fear that it's going to embolden protesters to ask for even more. And the Iranian supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is 83 years old. He's really obsessed with the collapse of the Soviet Union. And he believes that what hasten the collapse of the Soviet Union was Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev's attempts to try to reform the system and so on. Khamenei's worldview You should never compromise on your ideological principles because it's like taking a sledgehammer to the pillars of a building. It's not going to actually reforming the Islamic Republic would not prolong its shelf life. It would hasten its collapse. And for that reason, they're loath to make any compromises on the issue of mandatory job.

MG: And so the world is watching these protests and watching the reaction of the regime as well. Earlier this week, Canada imposed sanctions on, what, 34 Iranian officials and entities, including the Islamic Revolutionary Guard. The Biden administration imposed additional costs on those responsible for the violence. How effective are those moves, do you think?

KARIM SADJADPOUR: The sanctions, which in the past have been most effective toward Iran, are essentially inhibiting Iran's ability to export its oil. Those were the sanctions that forced Iran to sign the nuclear agreement in 2015. Now, these other sanctions on human rights abuses and things like that, they're certainly symbolic and the more countries that do them, the more powerful. But we're essentially dealing with a regime which is largely isolated. So sanctioning individual Iranian officials from visiting Canada or visiting, you know, the United States or the West. Well, they don't really leave the country all that much. And so my view is that those sanctions, Magnitsky sanctions, are important. Iranian publisher who's friend of mine has written very eloquently about that in the Canadian papers, the importance of Magnitsky sanctions against Iranian officials. But I think what is even more important is technical support, which would inhibit the Iranian regime's ability to throttle the Internet and prevent Iranians from communicating with the outside world and with one another. And I think that Western countries, the United States, Canada, Europe can certainly be helpful in that respect.

MG: Tell me more about that. You've written that this should permanently alter the way that the outside world interacts with Iranian officials. But you've also called for much more direct support, I think, for those who are protesting. So what what could that look like from from the outside world?

KARIM SADJADPOUR: Well, as I said, my my view is that the most important support we could provide would be to inhibit the Islamic Republic from cutting Iran off from the rest of the world, cutting Iranian society off from the rest of the world. And the template here that I think is useful to think about is the approach that Ronald Reagan took towards the Soviet Union in the 1980s. So my argument is that we should shun any diplomatic contact with Iran.

MG: So that would mean stopping efforts to perhaps revive the nuclear deal.

KARIM SADJADPOUR: Not in my view, although I would say that that should be on a pause, because obviously Iran's officials themselves are not able to reach an internal consensus on anything given that they're trying to quell a national uprising. But Ronald Reagan did negotiate arms control deals with the Soviet Union, while at the same time denouncing them as an evil empire and voicing support, not only moral support, but there was a lot of things that the United States did to empower dissidents and democracy activists within the Soviet Union. And I think that's a very useful template to think about in the Iranian context.

MG: And so when you say that it's time for the Biden administration to champion the aspirations of Iranian people to live in a free society. Aside from words, are there other actions, I mean, protecting the Internet or protecting the integrity of the Internet? But are there other actions that that the U.S. administration could take so that those protesters on the streets of Iran feel as though the U.S. and the rest of the world has their back?

KARIM SADJADPOUR: You know, When, as a government, you open up that conversation there are dozens of things that one could think of to do to to provide support. But when you haven't yet opened up that conversation. It will be a self-fulfilling prophecy to think, you know, we can't really help people inside Iran. So as I said during the Reagan administration, that was a U.S. strategic policy. Let's try to help people inside the Soviet Union to fulfil their aspirations of living in a free society. I don't think that that has become a top tier priority for the U.S. administration.

MG: In the last minute or so that we have this is the question that I asked earlier to morale as well. Where does this go? What are you going to be watching for in the next few days and weeks as these protests continue to grow?

KARIM SADJADPOUR: So what I will be watching for is whether we start to see fissures within the Iranian regime. You know, we know that to to actually change an authoritarian regime, it doesn't only require popular unrest and pressure from below, but you also need divisions at the top. So that's one thing. Second, we've already started to see strikes amongst students, and that was an important factor in the 1978 revolution. But we also want to see if we start to see strikes from other facets of society, namely the merchant classes, the bazaar, oil workers. We haven't yet seen that, and that will be important to watch for.

MG: Do you think that's likely?

KARIM SADJADPOUR: It's difficult to say. I do think that there is a desire for wholesale, wholesale change in Iran, but we're dealing with a very brutal regime which doesn't have any option. B It's not like the Shah's elite in 1978 that they could remake their lives in Los Angeles or London. The Islamic Republic of Iran is one of the most isolated countries in the world, and I think for the leadership, they may feel that it's either rule or die.

MG: Karim, this has been very helpful. Glad to speak with you this morning. Thank you very much.

KARIM SADJADPOUR: Thank you so.

MG: Much. Karim Sadjadpour is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a contributing writer to The Atlantic. The CBC News is next. And then.

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You know, right now it feels like we're just alone and waiting for our coast to vanish.

MG: Some of Canada's eastern coastlines have been left unrecognisable in the wake of post-tropical storm Fiona. For people who call these areas home, though, the storm has just exposed a problem that has been building for years. In a moment, how we go about saving this country's coastlines. I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current on CBC Radio One. Back in six minutes. Stay with us.

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Tracking erosion along Canada’s coasts

Guests: Stephanie Arnold, Ashley Smith

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

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MG: Still to come, years ago, the investigative journalist Michelle Shephard heard a powerful story from a young man in Somalia. She told his tale to the world. But it turned out that not all of his story was true. Michelle Shephard takes a hard look at her own past work and the stories we tell, in just under 30 minutes. But first, the vanishing coasts.

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MG: Fiona has left its mark all over Atlantic Canada, particularly along the coastlines on Prince Edward Island. The famous sand dunes have essentially been flattened on the North Shore. Joel Warren and his family owned a cluster of rental cottages that face the ocean.

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Speaker 2: Over the last six years. The erosion has been getting slowly worse. We noticed it that we've been losing quite a bit, so we've been trying to prevent it by growing shrubs just along the edge and putting fence posts in, just kind of tying it off so nobody goes there. No one's walking there. Basically, it took all of that preparation that we've done. Any means that we've put in to prevent erosion have been destroyed in just one, one single day.

MG: Long before Fiona Joel and his family have watched the coastline in front of their cottages essentially just disappear.

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You can really see the devastation year after year. It's just an ongoing battle for us. There was a road that went right from the top of our cliff, right by our our office building. It goes right down to the beach. And when I was younger, probably around ten years old, that started to erode away. So that was about 18 years ago. And we've lost significant amounts since then, about another 20, 25 feet in some areas. You know, these are people's livelihoods. A lot of islanders depend on the coast for their livelihood and especially living right next to the coastline, for generations like mine, you know, my grandparents, my parents and now us. So I would love to raise our kids here, but it might not be possible if I had asked my grandfather, you know, what, what he thought. You know, if he's seeing the damage done to the coastline right now, he would be blown away. Now, 30 feet gone in. Just it's basically a 40 year. Sometimes it's three or four feet.

MG: Scientists on Prince Edward Island are trying to track just how much of that island is eroding and how much worse it will get in the years ahead. Stephanie Arnold is a researcher at Climate Research Lab at the University of Prince Edward Island. Stephanie, good morning.

STEPHANIE ARNOLD: Good morning, Matt.

MG: A typical is what Joel is describing in terms of the amount of erosion that's happening on Prince Edward Island right now.

STEPHANIE ARNOLD: I don't think you'll find any islanders who are surprised to hear those rates. Obviously, there are some places where erosion is not quite a quick one for a year, but then there are other places where it might be more significant. But overall, I think most islanders will tell you that our coasts are our island is shrinking.

MG: And what are you seeing? I mean, you're on the north shore in North Rustica, which was one of the areas that was really badly hit by Fiona. What have you seen there?

STEPHANIE ARNOLD: Yeah, it's it's a combination of the just the intensity of the storm, taking away the sand dunes of the national parks at Northwest Go and the surrounding areas, but also the massive flooding that came along with the storm, too. And so it's just the two things to deal with. And it's. Really obvious that some of the measures that people have put in place wasn't really able to keep up with the intensity of the storm.

MG: What is it like to see that just personally? But we'll talk about professionally. But Joel was talking about the connexion that people have with the shoreline. And that's that's, you know, business. But it's also life and livelihood and the way that people have lived for generations. As you see, part of your island disappear. What is that like?

STEPHANIE ARNOLD: Maybe it's something that's when it's a steady sort of year after year erosion. It's almost maybe like a feeling of resignation that this is going to be ongoing and that's not going to end. But I think it's maybe much more abrupt and disheartening when the efforts that John mentioned. I have neighbours who have their families have been that area for 30 years and they have been trying to preserve their coastline for 30 years and all of their work of all the conservation work that they've done disappeared overnight. I've they've told me that they couldn't go back on another walk and face it because it was just too big of a mental stress to them.

MG: What is it that makes P.E.I. so vulnerable to this sort of erosion?

STEPHANIE ARNOLD: Their supply is unique in that you can imagine us as a giant sandspit in the water because we're made of sandstone. That's sort of what our land base is built on. It's very irritable. If you pick up a sandstone in your hands, even if it's dry or wet, either way it can crumble in your hands. And so even larger rocks that are sometimes used as armouring, as protection, those where over time and just basically disintegrate as the wave keeps coming in and out, whether it's through a storm or even just daily tides.

MG: One of the things that we've heard in the wake of Fiona coming through is that, yes, there was a lot of erosion, but the dunes are always moving that this isn't a permanent thing because of the fluid nature, if I can put it that way, of the island itself. What do you make of that?

STEPHANIE ARNOLD: Yeah. So Jews are certainly a big part and a prominent part of our coastline. There are dunes at some areas of the coastline, but not at others. And the dunes are always moving. And we've already known that. You know, even Parks Canada have had to consider whether or not closed certain roads because the dunes have migrated over those roads. So rather than try to plough the dunes off the road and make it passable, they've sort of just let it take its natural course. And this is dunes have faced these types of storms, you know, for millennia. And it's just maybe more new to us than it is to the dunes themselves.

MG: How are you trying to track and measure the changes in the coastline? Again, what you can see, what you can see. But you're doing more than that.

STEPHANIE ARNOLD: Yeah, that's right. Yeah. There's two different ways that our our climate lab is tracking it. There is a good old fashioned way that we've picked up that have started a few decades ago where we make measurements along the ground. So we put monitoring pins, we hammer rebar into the ground, we put caps on that, and we go back to the sites every year and measure the distance from these pins to the coastline and track their changes. And so these are measurements. Maybe each site might have five or six of these pins. But we've recently started in the last few years added to that programme by using drone imagery that gives us the entire stretch of the coastline as opposed to five or six spots within a problematic site. And so with these coastlines, after we take the pictures. We use a computer software to draw the coastline every year and you can see the lines change. In some areas. They might be accretion where they're growing because of sediment left here with from the water. But in most areas, we're noticing erosion and you're able to measure more precisely along a whole coastline how that's changing from year to year and really visualise and show the homeowners and decision makers. I was changing over time.

MG: What have you learnt in that that surprised you in using that technology?

STEPHANIE ARNOLD: But it's a very dynamic process, right? There might be some years where an area could lose a foot or two that maybe in other years there might not be any change. And so I think we have to remind ourselves that this is not just one or two year process that we cause. Oh, well, we can kind of figure out and get our sense on what that changes. Like we really have to have long term monitoring because the trend is going to be increasing that we expect the coastal change to increase at a rapid rate. But it's really difficult to extrapolate what that looks like just from one or two years worth of study.

MG: Yeah, I was going to say, I mean, I was guessing like are you able to predict what that's going to look like? But you said that it's a really dynamic situation.

STEPHANIE ARNOLD: Yeah. So the one way that we can make maybe a broader generalisation over a longer time period is we've also made use of aerial imagery from decades ago. And so we can see the coastline, maybe not at a high resolution like you would with a drone, but we can see the coastlines from aerial images of the whole island in the past decades. And so we can make maybe broader generalisations of what it's been like over the decades, but maybe not precisely at the property level.

MG: Part of this is about letting people know what's happening in a very real and granular way. And so you have this tool that, as you said, lets people kind of visualise what the future might look like on their properties. When they see that, what is their reaction when they see what you're kind of looking into the future and showing them?

STEPHANIE ARNOLD: Yeah. I've mentioned the word resignation before. I think it's often sometimes it's a confirmation of their fear and their concerns and they understand. And surprisingly for us, sometimes they tell us that, oh, I think it's going to be worse than what you even think, because sometimes we don't want to be seen as fearmongers. It's kind of telling people these are these terrible things are going to happen. We try to be as realistic and confident in what we show, but oftentimes property owners tell us that we think it's going to be worse. And so there's never a disbelief. It's just sometimes maybe seeing a visual image of your property either underwater or maybe your property going to be part of the ocean. It's a very emotional reaction and it has brought some to tears.

MG: Emotional reaction.

STEPHANIE ARNOLD: Yes. I think seeing your house in an aerial imagery and then seeing it covered in blue because of sea level rise or seeing an erosion maybe that erosion coastline being behind your house on the landward side, I think those are very difficult truths to imagine. And put your put you're in a position to sort of imagine there's.

MG: This idea that the ocean always wins. I mean, and that's you're kind of seeing that firsthand.

STEPHANIE ARNOLD: Yeah. And we've seen some structures that have been put to try to protect and hold the line for ail with the storm. I mean, you can make your best efforts, but there's nothing quite as strong as Mother Nature.

MG: What has been done to try to protect the coastline on P.E.I.?

STEPHANIE ARNOLD: Yeah. So from a protection point of view, particularly around a lot of property owners do that for their homes or even for governments. They do that for really essential infrastructure like certain access roads or even our hospitals. There are a lot of areas of our coastlines are armoured and so we use stronger materials to basically let the waves hit that as opposed to the natural coastline. And some of these materials vary from a rock brought in off island but thought to be, you know, stronger and tougher than the sands and that we have locally. But sometimes when people can't afford to have an engineer look at it and have it done properly, sometimes they use miscellaneous materials like pieces of concrete as well, although that is the practise is discouraged and that's become regulated.

MG: We heard from Joel Warren earlier. He was trying to figure out what to do. Take a listen to the dilemma that he is trying to work through when it comes to the coastline that's right in front of his cottages.

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My thoughts now are that we're going to have to do what we can to try to move some of the buildings away from the coast and reinforce them. If we ever hear of another storm coming, we have to put up our windows and things like that. But I think what it really comes down to is that I think the current policies need to be reviewed to allow more action and more funding. You know, right now, it feels like we're just alone and waiting for our coast to vanish.

MG: What should the government be doing now? Do you think?

STEPHANIE ARNOLD: While I know that there are policies being draughted because we do have a renewal of the adaptation plan for the province. And so I expect that that will come with updates to sort of where you can build and how far back you must build or and maybe the standard of housing. There's always, always work done on trying to improve the the decisions and helping property owners make decisions about where to build, where to develop, where to buy as well. For people that are new looking to buy a place, if they are aware of certain flood risk areas, for example, then you'll know not to go. There are erosion risk areas and you know not to build there. So even currently when you go undergo a fairly major project, you have to go through an assessment to see what the risk areas are so that you can make informed decisions or maybe triggers certain rules that you have to follow.

MG: I guess just finally, the big picture of this is, is people have said in some ways this is an existential issue for the island. What do you think is at stake here?

STEPHANIE ARNOLD: I think it's a struggle between where what the future is and what the present is, and just hearing. Sometimes we focus too much on protection because we can't sustain our current lives. Currently, we can't sustain we want in our house in a certain location and try to protect it and keep it there. As I said, Mother Nature will always win. And so sometimes we struggle. How do we transition from where we are to where we need to go? Because it might not be where we need to go, but either we proactively figure out how to ease the transition or Mother Nature is going to do it for us. So I think that's where a lot of islanders, particularly those along the coast, are at that nexus and that decision point now.

MG: Stephanie, I'm glad to talk to you about this. This is really important. Thank you very much.

STEPHANIE ARNOLD: Thank you.

MG: Stephanie Arnold, a researcher with the climate research lab at the University of Prince Edward Island with P.E.I., as she said, is known for its sandy beaches. The Newfoundland is famous for its rocky shores. Even that coastline, though, is vulnerable in the face of sea level rise and stronger storms. Ashley Smith is a climate action consultant and civil planner and the managing director of Fundamental Inc. It is a climate consulting company and Harbour Maine, Newfoundland and her company has been working with communities all along the coast to help prepare for what the future will bring. Ashley, good morning to you.

ASHLEY SMITH: Good morning.

MG: We spoke with a lot of people in Port of Ask last week. They said essentially the ground beneath their homes was just washed away. From what you have seen, how badly was the shoreline of your province damaged by the storm.

ASHLEY SMITH: In specific areas along the west coast, in the area of Puerto Basque and that southwestern shore, the damage was catastrophic, almost unimaginable until you see the pictures.

MG: What was it like to see that? I mean, as you looked at the southwest shore?

ASHLEY SMITH: Heart breaking, tragic, nausea, inducing, laughing, I suppose inappropriately. But there's I mean, when you when you see what happens, you can only imagine, you know, if that was you and we, you know, the people that were impacted. Like it's just your your heart ends up in your throat and you kind of want to throw up a little and then, you know, you just do what you can to help.

MG: I mean, that's understandable given the scale of the destruction, but I think the people might not understand. We're talking about PEI and the fact that it's got Sandy Shores and that that would perhaps be more conducive to erosion. What about Newfoundland and Labrador? How is that coastline changing? How practically and physically is that changing?

ASHLEY SMITH: So like we have more diversity around the coast of Newfoundland and Labrador than I believe P.E.I. does. Like we have areas that are Sandy and like Cheesman Beach, which is very near support to Basque, you know, like Lost, I don't know, close to a metre of sand. Like you can see Piers sticking out of the water and some things are just falling over because like the land is just gone. In other instances, like the ocean has so much power that it takes rocks from the ocean or sometimes breaks them off the coast and we'll like pitch them up into people's yards. So when you have storm events of the strength of Fiona, that also happens and the topography of Newfoundland especially, is that like you, you have a lot of communities that are located in what amount to like valleys, right? So they're right down by the water at sort of the lowest point in in between because historically you you came to these communities by water. So it only made sense at that point to build your home very close to the water. But, you know, that was where you were and you're living. That was it made sense to be close to that. And so the reality of that now is that the communities are sitting at like one and two metres above sea level. And then with the greater intensity of storms that we're seeing, they're having all of that storm water flow down the like the higher contours surrounding them into that space. And so then when you start to combine those situations, so if you have a heavy storm combined with a high tide and potentially a storm surge, depending on which way the wind is blowing, like you end up in a situation where the water has got nowhere to go. Right. And so, you know, it just fills up like any tub like shape does. And you get you get the flooding that comes with the with the heavy storm.

MG: And so what are you doing through your company to help those communities deal with and prepare for, I suppose, what's coming?

ASHLEY SMITH: So we we've been working with communities since about 2015 and in total like somewhere between 25 and 30 communities over those years. And so we, we work with them to create climate action plans. And so those climate action plans cover both mitigation so that they can start activities and develop policies and put a climate lens on organisational decision making to stop contributing to climate change. And then we help them work with their residents like Log the lived experience as part of the evidence base. We do data collection, so we work with Memorial University and the provincial climate projections and we work with the Provincial Geological Survey who's doing flood mapping and like tracking coastal erosion and coastal impacts. And so like we pull that together as the evidence base to to help them understand what their vulnerabilities are and then work with them to develop strategies to address those vulnerabilities.

MG: What about Justin? We only have a few minutes left, but I mean, part of this is about where people live as well. We're speaking with the Premier last weekend. Yeah, Furey and he talked about how some so much of the identity of the province and you've hinted at this is wrapped up in that idea of living right by the shore, that this is a livelihood, that this is a lifestyle. Do people need to think differently about where they're living?

ASHLEY SMITH: I the the concept of managed retreat, which the lovely and clever woman from P.E.I. was talking about, is something that we've discussed with communities, because there's a number of small communities where, you know, the majority of their assets and built infrastructure is at. 1 to 2 metres above sea level like there, you know, there's one road in the community and it sits like right beside the ocean, one metre above, you know, in their town hall is right beside the where the main river comes down through. And so we've talked to them about managed retreat. So proactively moving away and talking to their residents about also doing that.

MG: How do people respond when you talk about that again, given what is wrapped up in being that close to the sea?

ASHLEY SMITH: Well, it's always tricky. We have we've run the gamut of emotions. So we've had people laugh. We've had people just sit there with their face turned white. We've had people say, well, that can't be true. Like we if there's the reaction to have, we've had it in talking to councils and stuff. And so like we sort of borrowed from the medical profession because like when we were delivering that information, like there's anxiety to tell someone like, you know, we're pretty sure in eight years your house is going to be leased every spring underwater.

MG: It's like a doctor telling somebody bad news.

ASHLEY SMITH: Exactly. And so we bought, like, we reached out to colleagues and asked, like, you know, how do you manage this? How do you deliver bad news? Like, how, you know, because there's so much emotion wrapped up in this is people's homes. And I mean, financially, it's their home is genuinely the largest investment that any individual like really makes. Right. And so you're looking at everything associated with the stability of their livelihood now being at risk and so having to work through like, well, what do we do about that with the town and with the individuals?

MG: I mean, let you go. But I mean, do you see Fiona as a wake up call for this conversation?

ASHLEY SMITH: Yes. I feel like we've had lots of wake up calls, but we don't want to use ignored because we feel like that's like an active effort. I think we sort of put it like next. It's like it's adjacent to the most important things, like you.

MG: Push snooze on the wake up alarm or something like that.

ASHLEY SMITH: Exactly. Yeah. Because there's other things that are very pressing and there's always tension where you have to, you know, spend money like, you know, there's always limited resources with things. And so I do think it would be prudent and practical of us to start to address the conversation at this point where there's been extensive damage. And I mean, in the US and Florida there was quite significant loss of life. I think we have to take a moment here and say, okay, like, you know, this, this doesn't have to we don't have to like throw the chessboard up in the air and rejig all the pieces, but we do have to start moving some of them.

MG: Ashley, thank you very much for this.

ASHLEY SMITH: Thank you.

MG: You. Ashley Smith, managing director of Fundamental Inc. It's a climate consulting company in Harbour, Maine, Newfoundland. If you're living there, we'd love to hear from you in terms of that existential conversation that people are having or are you thinking differently but living by the shore? You can email us thecurrent@cbc.ca. Want to give you a heads up about something we're talking about tomorrow on the programme. This is what's being called a biodiversity crisis that's been overlooked nearly three billion fewer birds in Canada and the United States than there were 50 years ago. That's a loss of 30%. The fall migration is underway and you can see this firsthand right now. Brian Pomfret is one of the people trying to keep track of the numbers of birds in Canada. He bands birds at Ruthven Park National Historic Site in southern Ontario.

SOUNDCLIP

My first experience with bird banding was in the mid-seventies. I was a member of the Hamilton Naturalists Club. I was ten years old and I was allowed to let go of Brown Creeper, still remember it? And I said, Wow, I want to do this. And the second bird I got to release was a sharp shinned hawk. They stuck it in a bag with a little talent of a stabbing my hand, but I could care less. It was the most exciting thing I'd ever been through. It was just absolutely fascinated me. And I could count the days until I could get a licence and do this for real.

MG: The health of birds means a lot for the health of the planet. And you'll hear more about this and what we as a society can do to turn those numbers around. That's coming up tomorrow on The Current. Well, coming up, after your regional update, the harm of perpetuating the so-called perfect story, the journalist Michelle Shephard explores her own role in telling these sorts of stories and what happens when people don't fit the ideal narrative. She has made a documentary about this and you'll hear from Michelle coming up in 90 seconds. I'm Matt Galloway. And you're listening to The Current on CBC Radio One. Stay with us.

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Michelle Shephard on her new documentary The Perfect Story

Guest: Michelle Shephard

MG: Hello again. I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current. Ismael Abdulle was just 17 years old and he had a powerful story.

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After 25 days, that's when they caught me along with three other people. And they took us to the stadium. And they said right hand, left foot should be cut off. I was the first one.

MG: Ismael Abdul said the amputations were punishment for refusing to join the Somali militant group al-Shabab. He was the centrepiece for a series of reports in the Toronto Star by the award winning journalist Michelle Shephard. But in her new documentary, The Perfect Story, Michele reveals the truth is a good deal more complicated. Michelle Shephard joins me in studio. Michelle, good morning.

MICHELLE SHEPHARD: Hi, man. Nice to see you. Nice to see you.

MG: How did you meet Ismail?

MICHELLE SHEPHARD: I met him on a reporting trip, so I'd been going to Mogadishu since about 2006, after the Civil War. In 2010, I was back. The situation there security wise, was still pretty rough. So I was quote unquote embed embedded with the African Union forces, which just meant that I needed them for security to drive around. And at a contact in Toronto, who had said, there's someone you need to meet. So someone who used to be a journalist here, a Somali Canadian, had moved back as the director of communications for the president's there at the time. He said, Can you get here? I got my escort to drive me to the government compound. And that's where I met Ismail and four other three other boys. And the four of them had had, as you heard in the clip there, their hand and their foot cut off in a stadium by al-Shabab, which is the the group that later joined forces with Al Qaida.

MG: Tell me about the photo that you took of him.

MICHELLE SHEPHARD: Oh, the photo is heart wrenching. I mean, the problem with when you do that kind of reporting where security is so precarious is that you're really limited in what you can do. So I had about, I think, all in maybe 90 minutes with him, which is not a long time before the escorts were kind of screaming at me to go, we had to get back before curfew. So of the four boys, I started to ask questions and Ismail just immediately started answering, talking so quickly, you know, the Somali translator couldn't quite keep up. And I said, can we can we take a picture? And he jumped up right away, went over to the window where there's better light, sat down. And he just struck this unbelievable pose where he just, you know, took off his prosthetic arm, crossed his leg over, and then stared with such intensity at the camera. And, you know, I'd been in national security for a while. I'd seen a lot of places and a lot of places. And I just remember I was, you know, sweating and crying and trying to focus the lens. And it was just it was just heart wrenching and just hard to look at a young boy and had that done to him.

MG: Why do you think you had that reaction given, as you said, you'd seen a lot of things. You'd be in a lot of places.

MICHELLE SHEPHARD: Well, I guess I never really I never got desensitised to it, thankfully. I mean, I don't I hate seeing journalists when they do. A lot of stories did impact me, but I think especially Somalia was a country that I went to often and it was just it was one of my favourite places to report. So beautiful. I had so many good contacts and friends, but also so frustrating because it seemed every time there was a little bit of recovery, you know, ten steps forward and then 25 steps back. So it was just a frustrating story and it was a hard story to explain to people. Nobody was really paying a lot of attention to Somalia, you know, at the time we by then was a little bit later. But earlier we'd had, you know, the Afghan war, the Iraq war. There was other news. It was it was pretty under-covered. And I was just frustrated and being able to bring what was happening there back to people and explain it and get them to care. And I guess I'm not sure if I was thinking all this at the time or I'm, you know, now putting these thoughts in my head back then. But but I do think there's a sense, like, nobody's even going to care about this, you know, that I didn't feel desensitised, but I felt the public had been.

MG: People cared when the story. And I remember when the story came out and I remember the reaction that people had. How would you describe the response that you got when when the story was published in the start?

MICHELLE SHEPHARD: It was it was overwhelming. So I was surprised because as I said, I guess I was getting a little cynical by that point. But I had so many calls, predominantly from the Somali diaspora here in Toronto, which is a very powerful diaspora. It's it's it's one of the largest Somali diasporas outside of Africa. And many members of the community here have gone back to Mogadishu to help rebuilding. I think I've interviewed over the years two, if not three prime ministers and presidents of Somalia who were also Canadian. So they really rallied. They they came together. They said, what can we do? How can we help? And they started a group called Project Ismail, got together, raised some money, brought in some, you know, immigration lawyers who were going to help pro-bono. And then Sahal Abdul, who is a friend and an incredible Somali Canadian journalist, he was working for Reuters at the time or he had been working for Reuters by that point. He was on a break. He called me he was living in Nairobi then and said something to the effect of I can't save Somalia, but I think I can save him. And he really worked hard to get Ismail out of Mogadishu.

MG: And you kept in touch with a smile. I mean, as he got out of the country, then he goes to eventually to Norway.

MICHELLE SHEPHARD: That's right. So Sahil managed to get him out of Mogadishu to Nairobi about nine months later. And I went. Back and we did a story on how he made it there, but he still wasn't safe there because Shabab had a presence. And then, you know, Sahil said, okay, let's settle in and see where we can get them refuge. And then just three months later, he calls me. I remember I was in the newsroom in Toronto. He's like, Are you sitting down? Yes. He said, we got Ismail, you know, refugee status and it was amazing. Where's he going? And I was hoping Canada was like, no, no, it's Norway. So well, that's great. And he's like, well, it's harsh that Norway and I pulled up a map and it's 200 kilometres north of the Arctic Circle. And so three months later I was on a plane with Sahal and Ismail and we were flying up to our start and it was wonderful. I mean, it was just this wonderful welcome there. He was incredible, you know. And in the months and years after that he learnt Norwegian fluently, went to school, he, his story just kept going and going. Other news outlets picked it up and he seemed to be doing quite well.

MG: How would you describe your relationship with him at that time?

MICHELLE SHEPHARD: Well, it's hard. I mean, I, I don't I want to use the word friends because that's I felt like what we had become. But, of course, you know, we're we're countries apart, you know, years and age apart, culturally apart. But I cared for him, you know, I was kind of like a friend or an older sibling.

MG: You describe yourself in the film as almost feeling like an older sibling.

MICHELLE SHEPHARD: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we were just, you know, whenever I'd go over to Norway, I'd visit him. I did. Do, you know, stories, updates. But sometimes I'd just go see him. We would send each other stupid, you know, videos, cat videos and stuff. But we definitely kept in touch. And, you know, for me, it was just you don't get a lot of stories like that and it just it felt like a feel good story. And he had actually, over the years talked about wanting to make a documentary. In fact, I had a documentary, Guantanamo's Child, on Omar Khadr that I screened in Oslo. And he came to that as as a guest. And he actually, you know, stood up. And I acknowledge him afterwards because a lot of people in Norway knew him. And that's when he started talking about like, could we do a documentary? And I was excited to, you know, it was one of my favourite stories. TV show got behind it at the beginning, was wonderful. And then NFP and we just started making the documentary about him.

MG: This is not the documentary, presumably that you had thought you would make about him. It wasn't in part because many years later he tells you that what he had, the story he had told you all those years ago was perhaps not the whole story. What did he tell you?

MICHELLE SHEPHARD: Well, we we had been filming for a while when we felt he became a Norwegian citizen. We filmed that. And part of the film was going to be going back, bring him back to Mogadishu for the first time. And I knew that was going to be a difficult trip. We did that. We went to Mogadishu with him, and even while we were still there filming, I could see a change was happening in him. Something is really agitated and even before that he had been, you know, I'd worried about PTSD with him and his mental health. He stayed on in Mogadishu much longer than we expected. He was only supposed to stay for about a week or two. Everyone thought he couldn't stay longer because he was so high profile and still could be at risk. And he ended up staying a few months. When he came back, he he said that. He said, you know, I think I have to talk to you. Something I told you ten years ago, nearly ten years ago isn't true. Obviously, what happened to him in terms of his hand and foot being cut off is the truth. And there's photos of him being in a stadium when the Shabab does this. But the story you told me was that the reason that happened was that the Shabab wanted to recruit him and he told them no, he wanted to stay in school. And then they kidnapped him. They did this to him. They held him hostage afterwards, and then he escaped. What he told me now was that he that hadn't been the case, that he had actually been robbing people in the market trying to get by. And he one day he was in the market, he had a pistol on him, a gun. The Shabab came up and said, Can I see your gun? It was a friend of his brother's. He knew him. He said, sure gave it to him. They turned the gun on him and said, You're a thief. And under Sharia law, we are going to take you for punishment. The rest of the story is true up until the point when he said he was in their custody and then kidnapped. In fact, what he said had happened is they held him for a while till, you know, his wounds had healed and then they returned him home. I think it was like $50 or something with some money. His his quote unquote sentence was done. And then, you know, what happened was he it's kind of remarkable and I'm not excusing the lie at all or what he had done before, you know, it being being a thief. But, you know, at 17, he and a double amputee in, you know, generally Shabab controlled area, not a lot of prospects. And he just thought, you know what, I'm not nobody's gonna have any sympathy for me if they know the truth. So I'm just going to change my story slightly. And he made his way to the protection of the government, the transitional government. At the time, they believed his story. They took him in. And then, you know, as serendipity would have it, I happened to be on a reporting trip, you know, and this contact him. I knew him and that. How, you know, he told me the story and then it spread from there. But it was just so interesting. I mean, this is part of what the film is about, because the film at that point turned into one not about his story as much, but about journalism and the stories we tell and why and and what the public expects.

MG: What was your reaction? And I mean, you talked about him being feeling off and seeming off before he kind of spills the rest of this to you as he's telling this to you. What was your reaction as you're learning the bigger picture?

MICHELLE SHEPHARD: Part of me wishes I could say the journalism, you know, oh, my gosh, I broke the cardinal sin here of printing something that wasn't wholly true. I printed it in accuracy, and I knew I'd have to correct the record. But my my first thought was, you poor thing, you know, that this it was it was kind of conservative for him. And then a guilt, really. I thought I sure I didn't know you were lying. I, I printed this story, but because I printed it and it and it spread. You then had to live with that story. You had to keep telling it over and over and over again. You were kind of trapped there. And and I and I felt a responsibility to that.

MG: Do you think you would have written the story if you'd have known the truth from the beginning?

MICHELLE SHEPHARD: I would have. I definitely would have. I mean, it was still absolutely barbaric what happened to him. And to put it in context, the story definitely. I mean, that picture ran huge in the newspaper. It started and ended with him. But it was a much larger story that was about the Shabab's, you know, influence that was still there at that time. So I think it was a good way to illustrate their control and what they were doing.

MG: Do you think do you think you would have found the same support? I don't know. With that with that full picture, if people have known that the amputations were punishment for a robbery.

MICHELLE SHEPHARD: That's the thing that I don't know. And that's what and that's what makes me sad and that's what gives me pause and has made me think about, you know, journalism and what we do as foreign correspondents and what the public expects. I don't know if they they would have, because we all kind of whether we like it or not, we all kind of crave these simple narratives. You know, in Canada, we've had influx of Syrian and Afghan refugees. And, you know, we all want the story of, you know, the Afghan refugee coming with the Canadian flag and, you know, posing as such and then opening the restaurant in Queen Street West and doing really well. And those are important stories to celebrate. But, you know, the vast majority of refugees who come, you know, are suffering economically and mentally, and it's tough. So I think sometimes, you know, the nuanced stories, every story's nuanced, but we crave kind of that that perfect little narrative. That's why we called it the perfect story. So would there have been that reaction? I'm just not sure.

MG: I just wonder what our what we risk when we go after the perfect story. Because that's, as you say, you wrote about this. Everyone loves a fairy tale. The story in some ways had a fairy tale ending. When we chase the fairy tale, what do we what do we risk?

MICHELLE SHEPHARD: Yeah, I just think the the greys in life, I mean, what life really is, we we live we miss the we miss the larger themes. It raises kind of expectations that aren't realistic. You know, the part of the story could have been true. This actually could have plausibly been the reason that the Shabab would do this. I'm sure they were, you know, kidnapping people who wouldn't join in punishing people anyway. But I just think, you know, it was more his his belief that there wouldn't be sympathy, that. So it's not just it's not just on journalists. It is on journalists in terms of stories we look for. But it's it's sort of all of us, you know, that we we want this simple narrative and life isn't simple. And right now, especially in journalism, I mean, it's hard to find the room and space for for nuance stories. And they're just, you know, never more important than now, really.

MG: You talked earlier about taking that photo and your reaction and how you were incredibly emotional when you were taking the photo because you're not cynical, because, you know, you haven't lost the humanity that the average person has. When you develop a relationship such as it is with the person that you're talking about and you end up describing yourself as an older sibling, what happens then? Because because again, there's this idea that I'm going to tell the story, you're going to be the subject. And that's just classic idea of of of the sense of distance, right? So what happens when that distance shrinks or completely disappears?

MICHELLE SHEPHARD: It's it's such a tricky question because, of course, you know, when you go to journalism school, you're taught to be completely objective. You're taught not to get too close to your subjects. And, you know, now, 20 some years into journalism, I don't really believe that anymore. I don't think we all bring lenses to a story. We all bring our past experience. And I don't think there's any truly objective journalism. And and I'm not sure that's a bad thing, really. I mean, I think to some degree, it can obviously be taken too far, but it's also impossible sometimes when you're on a beat or you have a. Such as this, not to get too close. You do get too close. And I did get very close with him. But I also saw how it's problematic because not just for me, but at one point when we're in the film, when we're doing sort of an interview and he's it's a really fraught interview between the two of us. It's really uncomfortable. You know, the whole film is kind of uncomfortable to watch, which is not, I guess, a great selling point for the film. But it's an important it's important film. And it was uncomfortable to make. But it's you know, at one point he says to me, Do you want me just to tell you what you want to hear? And it really struck me because I thought, oh, gosh, you've been doing that for so many years. So it's tough on those that you get close to as well.

MG: Do you think you were looking for something that you wanted to hear or were you. Do you.

MICHELLE SHEPHARD: Know what? Yeah, I do. I do. This has been the reflection because I always sort of prided myself on doing the complicated national security stories. You know, the Omar Khadr tale, for instance, was years and years of a story that people hated and and some loved. And it was really controversial. And it was so, so complicated. So I, I wonder, you know, at that point of my career, being frustrated with people, not kind of understanding Somalia did I did I want to find a really simple narrative. So did I. You know, I don't know if there's anything any differently I would have done in questioning that he you know, I could have brought out the truth or even any fact checking. I don't think there was anything I could have done. I did my due diligence, but I definitely was drawn to this this simple narrative.

MG: There's a real sense of humility in making a film like this. You could have stopped the film, right? Like you could have said, thank you very much. I'm not doing this. Why was it important for you to make a really uncomfortable film that is about your role in this story, not just the story itself?

MICHELLE SHEPHARD: There are a lot of times we thought about stopping it, to be honest, and I think it was just because it was the medium that we started telling the story in. And I think, you know, obviously we had to correct the record that that is important to me, that even though I feel like the details of his story that weren't true are not enormous, it still had to be corrected. But I just think sometimes film can can hit people in a in a powerful way. And seeing him, he's such an incredible character, is such an incredible man. So seeing him on camera in a way that doesn't go through the filter of me necessarily writing it, I thought was important, but it was a tough one.

MG: The public editor for the Toronto Star, Donovan Vincent, wrote that he was unsettled that you learnt of the lie in 2019, but you're only coming forward now to talk about it. Why didn't you tell the Star earlier?

MICHELLE SHEPHARD: I definitely thought about it. I mean, I actually did reach out to- I wasn't at The Star anymore. I left in 2018 to go independent, but I had thought about it. I did talk to my former editor who was at The Star, no longer at the Star as well, and we talked it through a little bit. I always knew I was going to correct the record and I would correct the record in The Star first, because that's where the story had been written. But I was so worried about Ismael's mental health at that point, you know, after he had told us, we actually put the film on hold for for quite a while, because really the impact of this truth coming out was going to be on him mainly. And I wanted to make sure he he saw the film first, which normally would never do in journalism, right? You would never have somebody hear a story first. But in this case, I felt it was important for him to see it and be prepared for it. And he did, and he was okay with that. But that took a long time. And also I knew that there wasn't any immediate impact from that. The facts that weren't true being out there, nobody was giving money. Now, there was no there was nothing larger out there that would be you know, if you didn't correct the record, right, then the damage would continue. The damage really was just to him and to journalism and to to, you know, the truth and making sure it comes out. So I didn't feel that there was harm in waiting until he was ready.

MG: When you say the damage to journalism, to the truth, what should audiences think in hearing the story and watching this film at a time when that whole idea of truth is is fraught? Now people look at journalism in a very different way, but suspicions perhaps have always been there from different corners, but right now are heightened and people are questioning what they're reading, questioning what they're listening to, questioning what they're seeing. What should the audience take from from what you have gone through in this?

MICHELLE SHEPHARD: Well, I can tell you first what I hope they don't take from it. I mean, one of our our fears is that, you know, in a xenophobic world that they look at this film and think, oh, yeah, of course, all refugees lie. You know, it just adds fodder to the racist claims. And equally, when there's these cries of fake news, I don't want people to, you know, look at this and think, see journalists journalism shoddy. If anything, it's the opposite, because here's a story that went on for 12 years. Nobody was challenging his story at all. We wouldn't know these details if he hadn't come forward. And as you said, why don't you just stop the film? I mean, there was sure there was that temptation at one. Some point, you know, just do a small little correction in the star. Hey, a story we did, you know, 12 years ago wasn't entirely correct and move on. So I think, you know, the important thing right now, of course, we're going to make mistakes in journalism, of course, especially when you're reporting in a conflict zone and situations like that. But you have to own up to it. So for me, that's that was important.

MG: Do you understand now why he came forward to correct the record?

MICHELLE SHEPHARD: He I don't want to put words in his mouth, but I just sort of quote what he said in the film and told me, which was that he just he just really couldn't live with it anymore, that it was just it was too much. And I think that was, you know, adding to his mental well-being. So, you know, at the end, when he does sort of come forward, I ask him how he feels and he says, you know, freer. I feel a lot freer.

MG: How does how is he doing?

MICHELLE SHEPHARD: Yeah, I was going to say he's still struggling, though. I mean, it's really it's tough. It's tough. Norway's, of course, a wonderful country. He's been given a lot there and he's really appreciative of it. But it's you know, he's not working. It's it's tough to be there. He's lonely. I think he has faced some racism over the years. And he does struggle with, you know, the mental health, as you can imagine. And, you know, as a teenager, having this happened to you and then just being, you know, displaced from your family for so many years.

MG: You say in the film? I mean, and this is as true now as it ever has been, that some stories change the way we look at ourselves. The stories that we tell are about that story, but also us telling the story and us being involved in that story can change us. How has telling this story changed how you see yourself?

MICHELLE SHEPHARD: I don't even think I can answer that yet because I'm still kind of working through it. It has made me rethink a lot of, you know, what we do as foreign correspondents. And it's not that I didn't feel this before, but it is really difficult to to go to countries and pick this snapshot and and go away. I remember I always used to joke that I was a terrible journalist insofar as I would always be in trying to convince people to talk. I'd always say, we don't have to talk to me. It's probably not going to make a difference. You know what? I was there to prepare people for the realistic expectations of what there might be, because people have put such hope in you and so many of these stories just sort of land and nothing happens with them. So I think it you know, I think there's some great trends in journalism now insofar as local journalism partnerships are are more important. You know, citizen journalists are out there and and I just hope we lean more and more on that.

MG: But these stories matter and the work that you've done. You're the opposite of a terrible journalist. The work that you have done and stories like this matter, they do make a difference.

MICHELLE SHEPHARD: Yeah, I hope. And I still do believe that. I still do believe that. I just I think I think just in terms of the stories you choose and what you look for somehow and I'm not I'm not even Arctic I'm sorry. I'm not articulating it well. But it's it does has changed my my outlook a little bit in how I'm going to tell stories and and I hope for the better.

MG: This is a really and not not a story I think that you would have wanted to tell or certainly not one that you would have expected to tell. But it is a really, really powerful story. Michel, thank you.

MICHELLE SHEPHARD: Thanks so much.

MG: Michelle Shephard is an award winning journalist and filmmaker and sometimes a guest host of this programme. And her new documentary, The Perfect Story, is screening in Toronto this evening. If you're in Ontario, you can watch it later this month on TVO and starting on the 1st of November, you'll be able to stream it right across the country for free at NFB.ca. That's The Current for this Wednesday. q is up next on CBC Radio One. The great KD Lang will join Tom Power to reminisce about another legend. Country music star Loretta Lynn. Loretta Lynn died yesterday at the age of 90. Coal miner's daughter from Kentucky changed. Country music helped pave the way, as I'm sure k.d. Lang will talk about for generations of women in that industry. When you think about what Loretta Lynn was writing about the gamut in many ways, but also some of the most personal songs you could imagine. She wrote about poverty in Appalachia, to birth control, to cheating husbands, to revenge and to divorce. She once told The New York Times that the more you hurt, the better the song is, which is a pretty tough way to live, but managed to come out in the music that she performed. And so we'll leave you this morning with some Loretta Lynn, a hit from 1971. This is called You're Looking at Country. I'm Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening to the current and we'll talk to you tomorrow.

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Wednesday October 5, 2022 Full Transcript

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