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The Current Transcript for February 15, 2023

Host: Matt Galloway

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

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SOUNDCLIP

We are trying our best not to leave anyone under the rubble. I assure you that we will rebuild in one year.

MATT GALLOWAY: When massive earthquake struck parts of Syria and Turkey last week, many buildings didn't simply collapse, they disintegrated into dust. And as rescuers continue to search for survivors, anger is growing over why those buildings, some only a year old, weren't able to withstand the tremors. In 30 minutes, how corruption, politics and poor enforcement of building codes contributed to a staggering death toll in Turkey. Also this morning.

SOUNDCLIP

Fungi seem harmless enough. Many species know otherwise because there are some fungi who seek not to kill, but to control. Viruses can make us ill, but fungi can alter our very minds.

MG: As if we didn't have enough to worry about. The hit TV show The Last of Us depicts a post-apocalyptic future where much of humanity has been wiped out by a massive fungal infection. Must-see TV, but also perhaps not as far fetched as you might think. In an hour, the rush to better understand and protect us from a fungi fueled zombie pandemic. We start, though, with the high cost of food and a renewed push for a national school lunch program in Canada. Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway and this is The Current.

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SCHOOL FOOD PROGRAM

Guests: Celina Stoyles, Debbie Field

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FIRST CHILD: One of my favourite lunches is the pierogies.

SECOND CHILD: My favourite lunch is grilled cheese.

THIRD CHILD: Probably the mini pizzas that they give you.

FOURTH CHILD: My favourite lunch is also the mini pizzas, especially the pepperonis because the pepperonis are giant. Like I'm talking giant, like bigger than two eyes put together. And it's all in one cheesy, good crust pizza. Sometimes some people don't get to eat that much food. So it basically just keeps our stomachs full and helps us go back to class nice and energized. And not to forget about juice boxes. Everybody loves the juice boxes.

MG: These amazing fifth graders at Winnipeg's West Grove Elementary School are served lunch every day. Principal Shannon Shields gets dozens of paper bags delivered to her door before lunchtime.

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Today, we're having a hotdog. So they separate the bun and the wiener to keep the bun from being too soggy, which I think is just darling. A nice, crispy, fresh apple, a juice box and some ketchup on the side because most kids love ketchup on a hot dog. Every school has hungry students. There is a huge need to feed children and it just seems to be a systemic issue that's growing. It's awful seeing kids that are hungry. It's also forcing parents who are struggling and who are coming and saying, you know, I'm waiting for this or there's a reason that I'm not able to provide for my child right now. And as a mother myself, it's quite heartbreaking because we know everybody is doing their best. So why is this such a prevalent issue in the schools that I've been in?

MG: Every school day, volunteers from Oasis Church drop off more than 100 meals both here and at the nearby middle school. Tom Cooney started his project in 2019 with donations from the congregation.

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TOM COONEY: I really wanted to start this because it's unfortunate, but there's children that go to school every day and are hungry. Over the last two and a half years, we have provided in excess of 50,000 lunches. When we started, there was a cost per lunch just over a dollar a day. Today, costs have doubled.

MG: Higher food costs and greater needs are being felt right across this country. Celina Stoyles is executive director of The Kids Eat Smart Foundation, Newfoundland and Labrador. It has 275 clubs across the province that provide free food to children at school. Celina, good morning.

CELINA STOYLES: Good morning.

MG: Tell me what you see when you go into the schools that you serve.

CELINA STOYLES: Every school day, we're serving 40,000 meals, you know, every day to school age children in Newfoundland and Labrador. And we're known as the breakfast clubs. And what we are seeing and I guess what we are hearing is that, you know, every school food feeding program struggling to maintain and support are existing programs. And speaking from a Kids Eat Smart perspective, the cost of food and the increase of children coming to our program to date has increased by 100%. And, you know, in Newfoundland and Labrador, one in four children under the age of 18 lives in a food insecure home or a home without food.

MG: If it's one in four, I mean, it's worth stressing that this is not just one particular demographic, right? Like if it's one in four, that would spread right across in many ways different swaths of the population.

CELINA STOYLES: Absolutely. You know what? It used to be that we knew the vulnerable neighbourhoods and the schools within them. But that's not the case anymore. It could be any child, any youth anywhere. And I know in Newfoundland and Labrador, we're hearing a lot about hidden hunger. And the fact that many families, like food is the last thing on their monthly budget list. And there's just not enough money to go around. And, you know, when we think about that, we try and paint a picture because these issues are multilayered. You know, we had the pandemic hit. And what we saw from that was, you know, the awareness of food insecurity. And it came to the forefront that families were struggling. Now, we have the increase, you know, the inflation, the cost of food, with no emergency funding from federal government, which is what organizations like us depended on during the pandemic. But the need is still great and it's growing and, you know, we're reaching more children. And again, the cost to our program, it's increased to date by 100% from this time last year.

MG: How have you adapted to that? Not just the increased cost, and we'll talk more about that in a moment, but the need. If the need has got up 100%, how is your program adapting?

CELINA STOYLES: Do you know what? We at Kids Eat Smart, I guess we not only manage and operate and serve 275 Kids Eat Smart clubs, but from a program perspective, we also fundraise. So support from our donors and partners. They've stepped to the forefront to help financially support us and our provincial government. Our Kids Eat Smart clubs, our breakfast clubs are very unique in that not one person is paid in our program. It's 100% volunteer run. So as a registered charity. And the support on the ground in every city, town and community in Newfoundland and Labrador, that's how we're managing it, because our foundation has no choice but to pay higher food prices for items regardless of the availability or the quality, you know, especially when it comes to fruits and vegetables as we serve those to our children in our provincial school food feeding program.

MG: What does that mean for you, the increase in the cost of food? We're all feeling this when we go to the grocery store. But when you're serving, as you say, 275 of these meal clubs across the province, what does that mean for you?

CELINA STOYLES: You know what? It means that more funding is needed in order to sustain our program. You know, as a result, you know, with the inflation and everything that I just shared, families are adjusting to cope with, you know, coping with these rising food costs. And what we're hearing is that families are skipping meals. They're either, you know, reducing their meal size, sometimes even eating, you know, less healthy food. But what they're doing is they're obtaining food or meals from community organizations and school food programs like Kids Eat Smart. So when you consider that next year, the expectation is that the overall food prices are going to increase by 5 to 7%, we are going to need support. And, you know, we're talking about the federal government because children have to come to school. And food is a basic right. We all need to ensure that children have access to food at school at no cost to the child or their family.

MG: I don't know whether you're able to break it down in terms of how much it costs to make an individual meal. But do you then when the cost goes up and the need goes up, have to try to figure out how to stretch those meals further?

CELINA STOYLES: We have to. We have to. You know, our provincial school food feeding program is universal. And that means we do not stigmatize any child or youth who is experiencing food insecurity or who don't have food in their home. So as a foundation, our goal is to ensure that every child and youth has access to food at school. And we will continue to do that. And we will continue to reach out to our donors and our partners and our provincial government. And we will continue to advocate to our federal government for a national school food feeding program. We are the only country in the G-7 that does not have a national school food feeding program that's supported and funded by the federal government. And, you know, we live in Canada, one of the best countries in the world. And to know that our children are not being supported by school food feeding programs on some financial level from federal government is where we need to get.

MG: We're going to talk more about that in just a moment. But before I let you go, why do you think that is? Why are we the outliers when it comes to food? You said something about how it sounds obvious Food is a human right. But do we not understand that here in a different way?

CELINA STOYLES: You know what? I think we're getting there. And I have to applaud the government of Canada for making, you know, the National School Food policy a priority. And, you know, that's going to help strengthen the programs across the country. You know, when I think about Canada and I think about, you know, school food feeding programs, there are so many amazing food programs like Kids Eat Smart and our breakfast clubs. And we call it like a patchwork quilt across Canada. And we're all doing such amazing work to feed children. And I think the federal government are listening. And I think we're at a point now where this is a critical time where, you know, it has to happen. We need to invest in it. And I think that they understand that families are struggling and children have to come to school. So I think we're at a really good place right now.

MG: I hope you're right in that they're listening. Celina, thanks for telling us about the work that you're doing.

CELINA STOYLES: Thank you so much.

MG: Celina Stoyles is executive director of the Kids Eat Smart Foundation in Newfoundland and Labrador.

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FIRST CHILD: I don't like broccoli. I don’t like asparagus. I don't like tomatoes.

WOMAN: Did you know that you're eating most of that stuff right now?

FIRST CHILD: I am? I like tomato sauce, but not tomato tomato.

SECOND CHILD: I don't like broccoli. I don't like cucumbers. I don't like carrots. I don't like most of the fruits and vegetables.

WOMAN: But you're eating lots of them.

SECOND CHILD: Huh?

WOMAN: Lots of vegetables in there.

SECOND CHILD: No, there isn’t. No, there isn’t.

MG: Actually there is. This is a different kind of school lunch program, this one in Nova Scotia.

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INDIRA PRASAD: It’s beef spaghetti with a lot of other goodness in it. Carrots. What else was on there? Squash. Tomato is really great because like especially kids love tomato sauce.

JULIE BOND: There's about 14 onions in there, about six pounds of grated carrots in there, about 50 cloves of garlic.

INDIRA PRASAD: Then squash. So we had a big fundraiser where we acquired a lot of squash. So we cooked it up and pureed up and it's got a lovely sweetness.

JULIE BOND: She puts vegetables in there that kids don't know about. For example, the squash. And also, we have cooked about 15 bags of pasta today to go with the meal. So.

INDIRA PRASAD: this is a whole grain pasta.

JULIE BOND: It's hearty, cooks easy. It's great.

INDIRA PRASAD: I am Indira, Indira Prasad. I'm the head cook here and the cheffy or the glorified lunch lady. And this is Julie Bond.

JULIE BOND: I'm the helper

INDIRA PRASAD: Lunch lady of 25 years. I'm going to start crying because this is nice and Very unique.

MG: We are at Kings County Academy in Kent Field, Nova Scotia. This is an area known for growing fresh produce. But even so, the child poverty rate is nearly 24%. This program is run by parent volunteers. They replaced a company that served more standard, less healthy cafeteria food. Only 10 or 20 kids a day were eating the food then, out of about 600 students. Now, the kitchen serves about 300 lunches a day. Dawn Hare is with the Parent Teacher Association, which is a key organizer of the new program.

SOUNDCLIP

DAWN HARE: It was a labour of love. We really wanted to make a lunch program that was going to benefit kids dramatically, right? And so it's been quite challenging. And there is a volunteer burnout component to programs like this. This program I think is showing what is possible. I mean, what a joy. Students are trying new things each and every day, which is just phenomenal. And for parents out there making lunches first thing in the morning, it’s a lot of work. And so being able to know that your kids are going to school and they're going to have a healthy homemade lunch is such a gift. And I think this program is part of a larger conversation around the Universal School Food Lunch program that is currently the topic of conversation right now. So our prices have stayed the same, $4 a meal for the lunches. And so all students are fed. So a majority of students are ordering online, paying online, but all students are fed throughout the day. So if anyone needs a lunch, they receive a lunch. There's no list at the cafeteria that you had to sign off to receive your lunch. You just get in line at the cafeteria and pick up a lunch. It's equal. It's inclusive and accessible to all students. This way, if you need a lunch, then you take a lunch.

MG: Debbie Field is coordinator of the National Coalition for Healthy School Food Canada. She's also an associate member of the Centre for Studies and Food Security at Toronto Metropolitan University. Debbie, good morning.

DEBBIE FIELD: Good morning, Matt.

MG: It's like if you build it, they will come. I mean, the success of these programs really is quite something. How much from your perspective, in terms of what you know, are children and families relying on these sorts of grassroots school meal programs?

DEBBIE FIELD: Well, I think your last story really puts it into the context where everybody listening can understand where we're going as a country, which is every child. So really, the answer to that is every family in Canada wants their kids to have a lunch like the one you just described.

MG: You and I have spoken a number of times about this, most recently just about a year ago when you were pushing the federal government to bring in this universal school meal program. What has changed since we last talked?

DEBBIE FIELD: Well, the great news, and again, Celina talked about it, we do have commitment letters. And we are really thinking, I know last year I said budget 2022, but I do believe that we will see a national school food policy in just a few weeks.

MG: Your belief is important, but I just wonder what the root of it is. We asked the Minister of Families, Children and Social Development, Karina Gould, to come on the program. She wasn't available. Her office reminds us that in the 2021 Liberal platform, the party pledged a billion dollars toward a national school food policy. Consultations started in November, but people have been talking about this for a long time. What's taking so long?

DEBBIE FIELD: Well, I think the consultations were an important piece to the puzzle. You know, you asked Celina and you asked me last year, why is Canada alone in the G7? What's our problem? How did we ever get to this problem? And primarily, it has been a jurisdictional problem, right? It has been this issue that education is seen as a provincial and territorial matter exclusively. But a lot has happened since I last spoke to you. First of all, the child care accords have worked. Parents all across the country are experiencing reductions in childcare costs. We're building new spaces. And I actually think one of the most optimistic things for school food is what's happened in the last few days, the health care accords. Look how fast they went and look how soon that money is going to start to flow. But those consultations had to happen. The federal government could not come in in Canada, with the historic tensions between provinces and territories, and with serious issues around making sure to consult with indigenous communities. And without having those consultations, I don't think they could have done it last year, but they have done those consultations. I went to a bunch of them. They were vibrant, complex meetings with a variety of stakeholders from across the country. So now, they've done the consultations. And they did an online questionnaire. I'm sure they've gotten hundreds, thousands of notes that say, please act now. Please put a billion dollars over five years in budget 2023, begin the negotiations with the provinces. You know, Nova Scotia has said they would sign very quickly, as has B.C. This could actually happen, Matt, that the money, a billion dollars over five years in budget 2023, and begin the negotiations to sign those agreements one by one, just like the health care accord we had a few days ago.

MG: If the individual programs are successful, and we heard that they're successful, maybe perhaps even too successful, they're being stretched in some ways, why do we need the national program?

DEBBIE FIELD: Because they are vulnerable and they are not completely universal. You know what's going on, the great news that Celina described in Newfoundland and Labrador there, they had a program that started with funding from the provincial government working in partnership with that charity to create many programs. But right now, two thirds of the kids in Canada will get up this morning and go to a school where there is no program. And there are so many volunteer-run programs which are beautiful and wonderful. But you can't run an efficient, sustainable school food program without staff, without embedding it in the schools. Parental involvement is very important. There'll be lots of space for that. There'll be lots of place for volunteering. But you have to have stability and you have to have standards and you have to do it everywhere in the country, which is not where we are yet.

MG: And so is your sense that part of this program would provide the funding so that individual communities wouldn't be dependent on their own fundraising, but that there would be some sort of floor that would ensure that those programs have the stability that you're talking about?

DEBBIE FIELD: For sure. And the great news is that every province and territory now puts in some annual funding. And one of my big messages today is that every province and territory needs to add a cost of living increase to that school food funding. So right now, the good news was there was an addition in Newfoundland, there was some in B.C., some in Manitoba, Quebec last year, but nothing in Ontario. There hasn't been a cost of living increase in Ontario in a really long time. So those programs who are doing exactly what you heard are going to the stores, seeing the increased prices that we're all seeing, need to get help now. The provinces have to send a clear message to Mr. Gould and to the prime minister that they're willing to accept the money and work in partnership and create basically standards, you know, following a healthy food guide and making sure no kids are stigmatized and having no marketing to kids. There's a lot of agreement between the provinces and territories and the federal government on this.

MG: We’re just about out of time. Is your sense that we can afford to do this at a time when, to your point, I mean, there's new money going out for health care, there's a childcare agreement. There are other priorities that governments are facing when it comes to spending the dollars that those governments have. Can we afford to do something like this at the scale that we're talking about?

DEBBIE FIELD: We can't afford not to do it. You know, there are so many reports that calculate that it's $13.8 billion annual cost of unhealthy food. And the crisis facing our children in terms of what they're eating is monumental. And you know that as a parent. You know, nine to 13-year-olds get 60% of their calories, 60% of their calories from processed, ultra-processed unhealthy food. Only a third of our children eat, you know, more than one or two servings of vegetables a day. And a school food program, as you heard from the Nova Scotia example, we heard Celina talk about it, all school food programs prioritize vegetables and fruits. And it's the only way we're going to save our kids from a fast food crisis which is really, really hurting their health. And we also know that COVID made that much worse, much worse, sedentary for kids and more junk food and more marketing of unhealthy food to kids. So a school food program can make a big difference in kids’ lives now, and it can save us billions of dollars.

MG: You and I will speak again. And perhaps, that program will be in place by the time we talk again. Debbie, thank you very much.

DEBBIE FIELD: Thank you. Take care.

MG: Debbie Field, coordinator of the Coalition for Healthy School Food Canada, associate member of the Centre for Studies and Food Security at Toronto Metropolitan University. Coming up after your CBC News.

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What we are seeing here is definitely telling us that there was something wrong in those buildings.

MG: Accusations of cutting corners and political corruption emerging in the aftermath of the earthquakes in Turkey. We'll talk about what this means on the ground in that country coming up in six minutes. This is The Current.

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TURKEY CONSTRUCTION

Guests: David Alexander, Asli Aydintasbas

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

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MG: Still to come, no, it's not just the plot of a new hit TV show. Deadly fungi are real and are becoming harder to treat. Spores that could shake you to your core coming up in just under 30 minutes. But first, rebuilding after Turkey's deadly earthquakes.

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IHSAN DALAR: The building company threw concrete pieces and coal ash inside. Construction, sand pile, that's it. These constructions were not supervised by the state. So many people died because of these actions, because there was no control.

MG: That's Ihsan Dalar trying to save people buried under the rubble in Nurdagi, Turkey. He and thousands of others have questions as to why so many buildings collapsed after last week's earthquakes. David Alexander is a professor of emergency planning and management at University College London. David, hello.

DAVID ALEXANDER: Good morning.

MG: We saw these earthquakes last week reaching upwards of 7.8, 7.6. They were very close to the surface. As you understand it, should that sort of intensity have led to the destruction of buildings that we are seeing?

DAVID ALEXANDER: Absolutely not. Let's remember that in Japan in 2011, there was an earthquake of magnitude nine, which is about 50 times more powerful. And buildings did not collapse in it because they were built to code. Now, Turkey has decent earthquake codes for building, and these have been revised five times in the last 55 years. Most recently in 2018. The problem then is not that. The problem is the failure to respect the codes.

MG: The ambassador to Canada from Turkey said the exact same thing in many ways, comparing the building codes in Turkey to the building codes in Japan. But you have written in many ways that the tragedy lies in nonobservance. Do you see that in the actual images of the destruction? We were saying earlier that these buildings haven't just crumbled. You use the word pancaked. In some instances, they've almost disintegrated, it looks like.

DAVID ALEXANDER: They have in fact in many instances both pancaked and disintegrated. Pancaked is a sort of jargon word that's often used in the field of earthquake studies where a building has totally collapsed. But if it does so and it still maintains a little bit of what we call structural integrity, then you might expect about 15% open spaces within the rubble in which you might find people still alive and capable of being rescued. What we've seen in many videos and photographs is buildings that have disintegrated into small pieces such that there are no void spaces in which people might be sheltering alive. And that is indicative of very poor quality concrete, very poor quality design, very poor quality construction, and failure to oversee the application of the building codes.

MG: What are the building codes in Turkey like? You mentioned that they have been updated five times in the last 55 years.

DAVID ALEXANDER: Well, there's plenty of expertise in Turkey, indeed in the academic engineering literature. There are some very good articles which explain how Turkish building construction is deficient. In other words, that there are common repetitive errors in it. Now, those might be the result of several things. Corruption might be one cause. Ignorance might be another or negligence. Failure to follow the rules might be a third. We don't know the relative mix of those. However, what we do know is that there are large areas of the country, and let's remember Istanbul as well, which is very much at risk of a future earthquake and an enormous city where the rules have not been observed.

MG: You wrote, this is a mixture of simple errors, lax procedures, ignorance, deliberate evasion, indifference to public safety, untenable architectural fashions, corruption, and failure to enforce the codes. That all sounds fairly deliberate.

DAVID ALEXANDER: Well, much of it is. I suppose some of that could be inadvertent, particularly regarding construction techniques. But I would reckon that most of that is the result of the desire to cut costs and maximize profits by building buildings that are really not likely to stand up in major earthquakes. You know, one of the things that is most diagnostic of whether a building will survive is acceleration, which is what the earthquake does to the ground. As we look at the accelerations around the area affected, if you look at the map of them, yes, there are some places where there's an enormously high acceleration which would have knocked down any building. But over the majority of the area, the accelerations were lower than those that you would build for under anti earthquake codes.

MG: There was an amnesty that was put into place in 2018 by the Turkish president that people have said led to some of the circumstances that we're seeing right now. How did that amnesty, as you understand it, work?

DAVID ALEXANDER: Well, actually, I believe there were about 20 different amnesties. You said 2018. I was thinking of 2016. But that is not compatible if there were lots of them. There is a tendency in seismic places in the world to say, Oh, well, that's it. The building is built, let's regularize it and get some taxes out of it and that sort of thing. But this does absolutely nothing for improving seismic safety when the next earthquake comes along. Unfortunately, also the building codes tend not to be retrospective. Now, Turkey did have a tax on mobile phones, which has existed for 20 years. And the aim of it was to provide money for retrofitting. Unfortunately, most of that money appears not to have gone into retrofitting. Indeed, some of it went into building extra storeys onto existing buildings, which worsens their seismic performance.

MG: You wrote about mosques and how mosques are inherently at risk because of the arches, the vaults and the minarets on a mosque, but that a Turkish architect solved the problem of having those mosques in areas that could be prone to earthquakes hundreds of years ago. Tell me how that worked and how it changed construction in Turkey. This is fascinating.

DAVID ALEXANDER: Right. If only it had changed construction. Mimar Sinan is one of the great architects of history. Sinan is an architect after which an architectural university in Istanbul is named. And he was well aware of the seismic risk. But he was particularly well aware that shallow arches, rigid domes and slender minarets are all especially at risk of earthquakes. And so he designed his minarets, for example, so that the stones fitted very closely together, and they had iron bars in them to stabilize them against simply disintegrating when the earth shook and they deformed. I couldn't really tell you exactly how successful that was, but I believe it was. It had a degree of success. And that is something that could be developed very easily and no doubt has been developed in modern anti seismic building techniques. But if you don't build to code, don't build to the right techniques, then things do fall down.

MG: And so what needs to happen now in the process of reconstruction? Again, people are still looking at, you know, rescuing those who can be rescued, dealing with the aftermath of those earthquakes. But when Turkey begins to rebuild, what has to be done to safeguard against future earthquakes?

DAVID ALEXANDER: Right. The processes for now, which are exceedingly complex, not least because something like in Turkey and Syria, 26 million people are affected. Firstly, the infrastructure has got to be rebuilt. The critical infrastructure, especially things like hospitals and town halls, roads, bridges and so on. And the president of Turkey has vowed to build thousands of new homes in the next year. I think that is a very bad idea. And the reason is that you need geotechnical surveys. In other words, where can you build it? Where should you not build? And you need urban planning, how to do this properly so that it fits together and integrates. And then you need respect for the codes. That means an inspection regime that actually functions. Now, there were places in the affected area where it did function, and there you didn't get collapses. Now, that was partly as a result of the configuration of the shaking and so on, but it was also very much the result of applying the rules that needed to be applied. And this has got to be done next time around.

MG: Do you think this will be a wakeup call?

DAVID ALEXANDER: Well, I hope it is. But I'm wondering because the last time out of the 12 or 20 earthquakes in Turkey, they may have been smaller, but they have had very similar patterns of collapse.

MG: And so if those steps aren't taken, you could see similar levels of collapse, to your point, in earthquakes to come.

DAVID ALEXANDER: I fear so. It's interesting to note that some researchers in the U.S. have found that if you take all of the possible causes of earthquakes as disasters, the one that comes out top is corruption. Now, that's a little bit suspect because it's impossible to measure corruption. If you go around with a clipboard and say to people, are you corrupt? You end up with your feet encased in concrete and pushed off the bridge. However, inasmuch as we have any measures of corruption, it is perhaps the determining factor in building collapse. And building collapse is exactly what kills people in earthquakes.

MG: David, thank you very much.

DAVID ALEXANDER: It's a pleasure.

MG: David Alexander, professor of emergency planning and management at University College London. And as he was saying, government policies allowing contractors to skirt regulations are being blamed in part for the damage of the earthquakes. The rebuilding efforts will undoubtedly be a focal point of the upcoming national elections in Turkey. And for more on the political fallout in that country, I'm joined by Asli Aydintasbas, a former journalist, now foreign policy fellow at the Brookings Institution. Good morning to you.

ASLI AYDINTASBAS: Good morning, Matt.

MG: You were in Turkey in 1999 during the last major earthquake. 17,000 people died in that earthquake. And you wrote about it. What was that like to be there in that moment?

ASLI AYDINTASBAS: Terrifying. I was living in New York at the time, but came to visit my parents. And it struck at 3 a.m. in summer, which I now realize was lucky in terms of people's ability to survive. Because one of the things that made this past earthquake, this recent one, I say more deadly, is the fact that it was freezing cold. But when an earthquake happens, we were not close to the epicenter, but nonetheless, there is not just gyrations, movement, but I was lucky my parents have a two-story home, but there is a terrifying hum, a sound that comes from underneath of the earth moving, deep inside its core.

MG: Hmm.

ASLI AYDINTASBAS: And I can only imagine how terrifying this must have been. But as David has explained to us, this did not have to be as deadly as it was. It is not only a terrible disaster, a catastrophe, but also clearly there are human errors. Lack of oversight, governance failure in responding, but all in all, a systemic failure that has led to tens of thousands dead. We don't know the full number, but we do know that 150,000 people at some point were thought to be under rubble. Whether or not the government can do a full accounting, will do a full accounting, we don't know. But it's made people very angry, both on the ground and in general across the country.

MG: In part because that earthquake in 99 led to calls for change, right? What happened to those calls for change?

ASLI AYDINTASBAS: Well, that earthquake essentially led to the prominence of a newcomer, a dark horse like Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who came out and said the state has collapsed. He was one of the key voices in criticizing the government response. At the time, of course, you had more media freedoms in Turkey than you do now. But Erdogan was effectively lobbying, saying the system has collapsed, which is very much shaping his response to this instance, very keen to control the message, very keen to monopolize through the government aid agency, all aid efforts, search and rescue, so as not to allow people to utter the same sentence that the state has collapsed. But because he's been so eager to control the message, I think he's made very severe mistakes not letting the military come in for rescue efforts early on, you know, trying to throttle all search and rescue efforts through the government's relatively new aid agency, trying to monopolize humanitarian aid. So what we have is essentially a system that is collapsing, but not wanting to admit that. And all of that is based on Erdogan's own personal story. He came to power through the 1999 earthquake, which was a systemic collapse.

MG: You wrote on Twitter, “it's not fate. It's human greed that kills people in an earthquake.” And people have been talking about these amnesties that the government gave out that would essentially allow the owners of buildings in some ways not to have to go back and retrofit those buildings that might have been, you know, at risk, vulnerable for another earthquake. Do you see that as corruption?

ASLI AYDINTASBAS: Well, corruption was also a factor, but the amnesties, there's been nine of them, I think, over the past 20 years. What it means is this. Your land because of where it is, the terrain and everything, this area is allowed a two-story. Somebody comes and builds a 10-story that is deadly, and the government declares an amnesty in order to raise funds or ahead of elections because it's a crowd pleaser. And your 10-story building, in return for a fee to government, is now legalized. Now, those are the areas where people had used this amnesty building on green space, building extra floors, building, you know, in ways. And that's one aspect of it. One other aspect, and these amnesties were used by the government in electoral cycles, particularly in these areas. The other aspect is Erdogan. President Erdogan is so worried about civil society, and so has been so in love with his construction driven economic model. And he often spoke about construction as being the motor. One of the things that the government has done is taking away oversight agencies, these semi-independent geologists and chamber of, you know, construction engineers who tend to be critical of the government. They have by law taken these oversight bodies that have to ratify, that have to sign off on a building, and instead privatize the whole process of signing off. That, of course, led to corruption on all levels. And also, this massive building boom that he's been very eager about as obviously led to a boom that was impossible to control. And that was a macro decision. It was a wrong decision from a macro-economic perspective as well, because a construction driven growth model means feeding your kids with chocolate cake only. It keeps things running, but it's an unhealthy growth. We're already seeing this in Istanbul. There are two major fault lines in Turkey. This was the one in the south. The other one is in the north near Istanbul. And we are all really terrified of what might happen there because construction is no less sturdy in Istanbul and the surrounding areas.

MG: And so when you see these images of, you know, people in the construction trades being stopped at airports when they're trying to board a flight out of Turkey, or the arrest warrants that have been issued in connection with the construction of some of these buildings that disintegrated, what do you make of that?

ASLI AYDINTASBAS: It doesn't make me happy. They're going after small town guys. What about the fact that the airport in Hatay, which is a beautiful city that no longer exists because of the earthquake, the airport in Hatay, you had geologists after geologists and chambers and everyone coming out and saying, this is the wrong terrain, you cannot build the airport here. It’s overrun by the government. And as a result, you had massive problems in runways that came down impacting relief efforts. And as a result, for the first 48 hours, no one could basically help Hatay. What about the problems in disaster management, the fact that government had essentially gotten rid of other NGOs. And its own official NGO did really poorly, something that everyone admits, even President Erdogan. So I think it's interesting. Nearly 100,000 people died. That's the figure that people are talking about based on the number of people who are underneath the rubble. We have not had a single resignation. We have not had a single person resigning. And that really is unacceptable even for a democracy that has its challenges and problems. And so I think that, you know, there is more than just small town contractors. This is a systemic failure. It's a governance issue. And the only way we can correct it is if we were to face it.

MG: We're just about out of time. We've heard a lot of that anger that you talked about here in this country, from the diaspora, obviously. In Turkey, there is fury as well when it comes to what has unfolded and why it happened. Turkey is scheduled to have general elections later on this year. There has been some talk wondering whether those elections will actually unfold. But given what you've said, I guess, just briefly, how vulnerable is the president and his party?

ASLI AYDINTASBAS: The president was already vulnerable before the election. And the opposition had United Party of six just like the anti-Orban opposition in Hungary, anti-Netanyahu opposition in Israel. So they managed to convince a large majority of the country that the system has to change. And I think that he faced an anti-Erdogan majority even before this, and this hasn't helped. The problem is, will there be elections? They were going to be held on May 14th. That date seems very difficult to meet. Official date is June 18th. And so that can be met. But increasingly, we're hearing from government circles, a desire to postpone elections by a year. That is unconstitutional. And it's just going to deepen, I think, the political and systemic crisis in the country, in part also because people want to have a say. And constitution very clearly says elections can only be postponed in wartime.

MG: And that anger that you're talking about, that's real on the ground.

ASLI AYDINTASBAS: It's real on the ground everywhere.

MG: Asli, we'll leave it there. I'm glad to talk to you again. Thank you very much.

ASLI AYDINTASBAS: Thank you, Matt.

MG: Asli Aydintasbas is a former journalist, now fellow at the U.S. based think tank, the Brookings Institution. A few days ago, a 15-year-old girl was found after being trapped under the rubble in Turkey for 99 hours. The rescue itself took something like 10 hours to get her out. And during that time, while she was trapped, while rescuers were trying to dig her out, she asked that one song in particular be played to keep her calm and conscious. The song is. A few hours later, the team were also able to rescue her 13-year-old sister. And both of those young Turkish girls are stable.

[Song: “Gül beyaz gül” [Akustik] by Yağız Yahu]

MG: Yağız Yahu and Gül beyaz gül. Coming up after your regional update, talking about a fungal infection is perhaps not something we would do in polite company. When we return, we will peek into the damp and musty world of deadly fungi. That’s coming up. I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current. We’re back in 90 seconds.

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FUNGAL INFECTIONS

Guests: Leah Cowen, Dr. Brian Yipp

MG: Hello again. I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

MAN: One gene mutates and an Ascomycota, candida, ergot, cordyceps, aspergillus, any one of them could become capable of borrowing into our brains and taking control not of millions of us, but billions of us. Billions of puppets with poisoned minds permanently fixed on one unifying goal, to spread the infection to every last human alive by any means necessary.

MG: Are you terrified? Yes, you should be. It's not real. This is a scene from HBO's new hit series The Last of Us. If you haven't seen it yet, it's about a fungal infection that takes over the world, turning humans into zombie-like creatures whose aim is to spread the infection. So yes, terrifying. And yes, science fiction. But real scientists are warning that although we probably won't turn into zombies, the global threat posed by fungi is very real fungal pathogens infect billions of people worldwide. Leah Cowen is a professor in the Department of Molecular Genetics at the University of Toronto, also co-director at the Fungal Kingdom Program at the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research. Leah, good morning.

LEAH COWEN: Good morning.

MG: Just to be clear, we probably won't turn into zombies?

LEAH COWEN: Well, you never know, but probably not this morning.

MG: Good to know. So this is a scene from The Last of Us. Have you seen the show, by the way?

LEAH COWEN: You know what? I actually haven't seen it yet because I've been kind of busy on a few other fronts, but it's top of mind as soon as I get a moment.

MG: Well, it’s top of mind for a lot of people because people are worried about not just zombies, but fungal pathogens. How real is the threat of these pathogens?

LEAH COWEN: Oh, fungal pathogens pose very, very real threat. They pose an enormous threat to food security by infecting and killing our crops. They also pose a very significant and growing threat to human health. And they're also the only organisms that are causing extinctions in real time, wiping out species of amphibians, just as an example.

MG: That sounds pretty serious.

LEAH COWEN: It is.

MG: People who have seen the show might have one idea. It looks kind of terrifying as it should on an HBO show. If you Google fungal pathogens, you'll get some pretty hairy images as well. Just describe what we're talking about here. What are fungal infections?

LEAH COWEN: So fungal infections are really diverse. There's, you know, millions of different kinds of fungal species out there and they cause different kinds of infections. So some of them you can acquire by inhaling spores that are widespread in the environment. Some of them are already inside your body and living there as sort of natural members of your microbiota. And so there's different kinds of routes of infection, and they can cause all kinds of different diseases ranging from superficial infections like things on your skin, which are less serious, but all the way through to invasive disease, which would be sort of disseminated through the bloodstream. And those are the ones that are really deadly.

MG: So superficial things like athlete's foot?

LEAH COWEN: Exactly. A glamorous topic for the morning.

MG: Yeah. Nothing like talking about that first thing. The more serious parts of this, I read that something like a million and a half people die of these sorts of infections every year more than malaria?

LEAH COWEN: Yeah, exactly. So it's been an area of public health that's been largely underappreciated. Less funding has been focussed on fungal pathogens, for example, and under-recognized. But indeed, they kill about 1.5 million people around the world and cause vastly more infections. They particularly prey on people who have some level of immune deficiency or weakness, which can be due to conditions like HIV, or it can be due to modern medical treatments, including, you know, chemotherapy or immunosuppressive treatments that allow us to do things like transplants. So we've created a context where there's a growing population vulnerable to these infections, and there's millions and millions of fungi out there in the environment, and also lots of fungi in our bodies that are ready to take advantage of weakened hosts.

MG: How are they spreading around the world?

LEAH COWEN: So they're spreading around the world in different ways, again, depending on the nature of the fungus. But there's a number of examples you could look at. So you could look at fungi that are causing disease in plants is a really clear example. And there's a fungus that causes a wheat blast, which is threatening our wheat crops. And we see that one originated in Brazil and we see it moving around South America. But then with trade, we also see it. And then it moved over to Bangladesh and is causing massive devastation in wheat everywhere around the world. We also see this with human pathogens. And there's some really interesting mysteries. So fungi where we don't really know the basis of how they moved around the world. An example is Candida Auris, which is an interesting pathogen that sort of first appeared on the map in 2009, and it emerged in multiple continents with really different organisms, different isolates. So that means they were genetically quite different. So they had sort of come from somewhere and an evolving diversity in time probably, you know, in the environment somewhere. They appeared across multiple continents. And again, we don't really know. We think it may have even been something like climate change that selected for the organism to be able to tolerate higher temperatures and therefore be able to infect human hosts which maintain this higher body temperature.

MG: At the risk of sounding zombie obsessed, can we just go back to that for a moment? And can you talk about carpenter ants? This is a fascinating part of what I was reading about fungal infections in terms of how they have been able to… Can you just describe what's going on with carpenter ants in particular?

LEAH COWEN: So with ants, that's a little bit further from my wheelhouse, but absolutely. So there's a large number of species, fungal species that infect insects. In fact, there's vastly more fungal species that infect insects than that infect mammals, in part because of this warm blooded high temperature, which sort of creates an additional challenge for fungi to survive at higher temperature. So it's almost a thermal exclusion, right? And we need that. And that's one of the reasons why, you know, fever is one of the most ancient responses to infection. So insects in general are quite vulnerable to fungal infections. And there are fungi, lots of them, that infect insects, including these cordyceps fungi, which is the inspiration for The Last of Us. And these fungi do infect and do essentially turn the ants into zombies in that they in fact ultimately go to the brain, and they cause the ant to sort of climb up to higher surfaces in order to sort of be a vehicle to spread the fungal spores. So the fungus will ultimately break through the head region of the carpenter aunt as an example, and use that as a mechanism to disperse the spores so that they can travel further than if the spores and the ants were at ground level.

MG: Is anything different happening now in the world of fungal infections, or is the emphasis and the reason that people are talking about this just because the show is out and people are terrified of, you know, having living through a pandemic right now, terrified of some other kind of pandemic coming down the road?

LEAH COWEN: Yeah, no, good question. I think it's probably a bit of both. So certainly, TV has an impact in capturing people's attention, and public interest drives cycles of what people are talking about, most certainly. So I think that's part of it. I also think, you know, with the pandemic, as you mentioned, there's a growing, you know, awareness of the potential impact of infectious disease and this sort of concept that what we don't know about can pose the greatest threat. So I think there's a huge piece of awareness. And then with fungi, they've been under the radar for so long despite, you know, causing this sort of growing impact not only on human health, but also on, you know, food security and biodiversity worldwide. So I think there is real tangible reasons why there's growing concern, because there's evidence that these fungi are causing more disease, they're spreading in their range, and we have very limited treatments in our armamentarium.

MG: What to you is so fascinating about them?

LEAH COWEN: Oh my goodness. I don't think we have enough time to cover that. These are totally amazing organisms. Again, there's a tremendous diversity in the fungal kingdom. They have fascinating biology and just really interesting potential. And maybe just to sneak it in there, I think it's not only about threats with fungi. So fungi also have tremendous potential and present wonderful opportunities for the planet. So without fungi, it's thought that land plants would not have colonized the planet. So they do tremendously important work in enabling nutrient flow and supporting our plants and trees. Fungi can degrade plastics, so that's a hugely important piece. By their interactions with plants, it's thought they can really accelerate carbon capture, helping our climate. Fungi make all kinds of really cool molecules, including the very first antibiotic, penicillin, and many other natural products that are used in modern medicine. Fungi can degrade all kinds of materials like plastics. So they really have great potential. So I think one of the interesting things about fungi is just the phenomenal diversity in the kingdom. So it really provides an amazing space to explore, you know, biological mechanisms. And also, they have great opportunities and also great, great threats. The other last bit that I'll mention is that fungi are actually closely related to humans. It may not look like it, but in fact it's true. They're closely related, which means that fungi serve as fantastic model organisms so that we can study the function of genes or biological processes in a simpler system and be able to learn what might be sort of relevant in the context of more complex organisms and human biology and disease.

MG: I'm really glad I asked that question. You just kind of leaned right into that. Let me bring in one more voice into our conversation. Dr. Bryan Yipp is a physician-scientist, assistant professor in the Department of Critical Care Medicine at the University of Calgary. Dr. Yipp, good morning to you.

DR. BRYAN YIPP: Good morning.

MG: You were recently involved in a study of one particular fungal infection. Can you tell me a little bit about that and what the roots of that were?

DR. BRYAN YIPP: Right. So we're studying Aspergillus, which is a spore which is in the environment. We breathe in spores every day. And pretty much it covers across the planet. These spores, generally speaking, don't cause any problems. But in the ICU, occasionally we'll see someone with a severe invasive aspergillosis or Aspergillus infection of the lung. And our sort of involvement in this process in studying severe lung infections in humans, as well as using mouse models, was the recognition in 2018, 2019 of patients that we saw who had severe life threatening Aspergillus infections in the lung, but who did not have the traditional risk factors that were mentioned before that would immunocompromise or immunosuppress somebody. And these patients died in the ICU. We were unable to save them by treating their fungal infections. And so in 2019, this really started off our research program to try to figure out why this happened, what was the cause of this loss of immune resistance. And an interesting finding was that influenza virus, so getting flu virus, and subsequently what we found is it's also true for COVID, suppresses a natural part of your immunity, which then predisposes you to severe infections like Aspergillosis. So that was really the genesis of how we got to where we are.

MG: I mean, it's quite alarming that the patient wasn't able to fight off that infection.

DR. BRYAN YIPP: Right. Yeah. And the patient, you know, the one patient in particular was a 40-year-old male who was otherwise pretty healthy, who unfortunately did develop influenza first and was at home for a little while, then came to hospital and then rapidly deteriorated and required life support in the ICU. And, you know, despite influenza itself being a bad disease, this patient just did not follow the normal course. They kept on getting worse and we could not get them better. And then we found Aspergillus in their lung, which at the time we weren't actually sure that it was contributing to disease because, you know, these kinds of funguses are all over the place. Occasionally, we will culture them out of the patient's lungs and they're more benign than pathogenic. And so, you know, we did treat this with the most powerful antifungals that we had. Yet, they pretty much did nothing and the patient still succumbed to the infection. And, you know, the unfortunate part is on the autopsy of that particular patient, the amount of widespread fungus in the lung, which caused the patient to die, looked untouched by the antifungals. I mean, they look like they did nothing.

MG: What are the implications of that in terms of if you were to see those sorts of cases again in future, how you'd go about treating those cases?

DR. BRYAN YIPP: Well, I think now worldwide, starting like, you know, after the 2009 H1N1 pandemic, as we're starting to see more cases of Aspergillus worldwide in people that shouldn't have Aspergillus and now seeing the same thing in multiple funguses in COVID, I think the one thing is recognition. It wasn't that many years ago where we would say, well, this person probably doesn't have a fungal infection because they don't have traditional risk factors. So this is kind of the identification of new risk factors that we should at least be worried about. So I think hopefully, we'll be able to identify people at risk, particularly in the intensive care unit that could get fungal infections. The second thing would be to obviously initiate early treatment as quickly as we can. And then probably the third thing is the recognition that antifungals alone may not be enough to get rid of this pathogen when it's, you know, deeply lodged into an organ. And so we think that immune based therapy, so trying to improve the immune system to do what it's supposed to do, which is eat all of these bugs in your lung, is probably the way to go. So it's sort of future targeted therapies using different types of immune manipulations.

MG: Leah Cowen, from your research, what have you learned about why it's so difficult to find new treatments for fungal infections? Part of this, as you said, is this has existed under the radar, but it seems like something else is going on here.

LEAH COWEN: Yeah. So I think there's a couple of factors at play. And one of them is certainly that fungi, again, are closely related to humans, which means that many of their core processes are conserved in humans. And so things you might want to go after as drug targets to inhibit to cripple the fungus are also really important, or they have a counterpart that's important in the human host. So it means it's difficult to develop drugs that will kill the fungus without sort of causing severe toxicity or damage to the host. So it's a real challenge. So part of it is investment. And then part of it is a grander challenge that makes it even harder in principle to develop antifungals than antibacterials.

MG: There has been a push toward creating vaccines that might prevent fungal infections. There are no vaccines right now that exist in that field. Karen Norris is a professor of infectious diseases at the Centre for Vaccines and Immunology at the University of Georgia. She is trying to change that. Have a listen.

SOUNDCLIP

KAREN NORRIS: Fungi are just a little more complex than viruses or bacteria. So first of all, it's a little harder to find a target. The other issue is that the individuals that are at higher risk for developing these fungal infections, they're at risk for developing multiple different fungal infections. And so a single vaccine to a single fungal organism won't be sufficient. The approach that we have taken is to target the top three at least, most common organisms that are responsible for most of the mortality associated with fungal infections. Those three organisms and others share a common target, and we have exploited that target as a vaccine candidate. And we have shown in some preclinical studies that immunization with that can be very effective in preventing the infection experimentally.

MG: Leah Cowen, what do you make of that, the idea of a pan fungal vaccine, if I can put it that way?

LEAH COWEN: I think it's really promising. It's exciting and there's really great work happening in that space.

MG: It's possible?

LEAH COWEN: So I think you should ask the expert on the call.

MG: Bryan Yipp, from your perspective?

DR. BRYAN YIPP: I mean, I'm not sure. I'm not an expert in developing vaccines. I think it's obviously a great idea. I mean, the utility of such a thing would be very promising. We have so many patients that are undergoing, you know, bone marrow transplant that have malignancies that are on things. So I think that giving a vaccine to those people would be very beneficial. Will it work? I don't know. But our research would say that antibodies themselves are very effective at helping the immune system get to those bugs.

MG: Leah Cowen, you mentioned just briefly climate change. And this is something that has come up a few different times in speaking about this. What has climate change done to the further spread of these infections?

LEAH COWEN: Yeah. So I think that's a really interesting area and we're really only beginning to understand. So I think we're at the beginning of that journey, but there's lots of different sort of potential effects. So one that I mentioned earlier was with Candida Auris, which was that species that sort of emerged in multiple continents almost simultaneously around 2009 and looks like it must have had some reservoir where there was diversity accumulating in the wild. So the organism somehow started being able to acquire disease in humans and didn't before that time. So the thought is it may well have been sort of climate change and increase in temperature that allowed the organism to adapt and be able to grow and survive at higher temperatures. And that’s sort of one critical step on the way to be able to cause infection in humans. So that's one example where we see selection for organisms that can grow at a higher temperature and therefore cause disease. Another is when we see extreme weather, we can see that that can change the distribution of fungi. So an example there is with a fungus called coccidioidomycosis, which causes valley fever. And for that one, when you have sort of extreme rain and then droughts, it can lead to, you know, bursts of fungal proliferation. And then with the drought, these production of spores that can actually survive in the soil for over 30 years and then can spread when there's dust. So we're seeing a huge expansion of the range of this organism and an increase in cases with climate change.

MG: We're just about out of time. But I mean, just briefly, outside of the, you know, alarmism perhaps of a hit TV show, what do you want people to be thinking about, Leah Cowen, when it comes to this?

LEAH COWEN: So I think part of it is, again, that these organisms are just incredible with amazing potential. So part of it is being aware of all possible threats, and part of it is also being able to think about how we can harness the opportunities and think about creative strategies that bring multiple diverse perspectives around the table to solve grand challenges like those presented by the fungal kingdom.

MG: Bryan Yipp, have you seen the TV show? Do you like the TV show? Do you like the attention that the TV show has brought to this subject?

DR. BRYAN YIPP: I only started watching the TV show after I heard about it from post research. I actually didn't know what it was about. I did start watching it. I'm kind of interested in it because it was filmed in Calgary here. So as I was watching it, I was picking out some places where I knew that they had closed down streets and stuff before and I didn’t really know why. So before that, I didn't know anything about it.

MG: If nothing else, aside from terrifying, is perhaps it'll get us to think more broadly about what we've been talking about and think deeper about it. Thank you both for being here this morning.

DR. BRYAN YIPP: Thank you very much.

LEAH COWEN: Thank you. Thank you very much.

MG: Leah Cowen is in the Department of Molecular Genetics at the University of Toronto, co-director of the Fungal Kingdom Program at the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research. Bryan Yipp is a physician-scientist and assistant professor in the Department of Critical Care Medicine at the University of Calgary.

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MEMORY MAIL

MG: This is The Current on CBC Radio and the CBC Listen app. My name is Matt Galloway. On Monday, I spoke with Carole Peterson about her decades in pioneering research into early childhood memories.

SOUNDCLIP

CAROLE PETERSON: Almost all the research was done in the laboratory, and it kept showing that children had very poor memories. And, you know, I thought about this and I thought about why are they talking to children in the laboratory? And they're doing things like does the clown have purple pants or green pants? And who cares? And I thought, you know, the only way to assess this is to find events that are stressful, that are impactful, that are salient, that really make a difference to a child, that are meaningful. And so I thought about how can I change my research instead of just listening to what children say to starting to assess accuracy of the children?

MG: Carole Peterson is a psychology professor at Memorial University of Newfoundland. And her work has done a lot to change attitudes toward childhood memories. Turns out those memories can be far more accurate than previously thought. We asked you for your own early memories. That's a bold request. But many of you sent in mail, and The Current’s senior producer, Karin Marley, is here with some of those letters. Karin, good morning.

KARIN MARLEY: Good morning, Matt. So let's start with Barb Goulet. She writes: “I was probably three years old. It was Christmas morning and my brothers and I were up early running around in our pajamas. I distinctly remember my mother telling me to “go put your underwear on”! I decided it would be hilarious if I took her request literally. So I proceeded to put my underwear on, every single pair, one over the other. I remember waddling out several minutes later with a layer of undies on down to my knees. Well, the response was so satisfying. It made them laugh. And they told me I was soooo funny and such a character. It is a wonderful early memory for me.”

MG: Duane Ramsay writes: “I was born in June of 1937. In May of 1939, King George and Queen Elizabeth toured Canada. We lived on a farm 50 kilometres northeast of Kingston, Ontario, and dad and mother were driving my five year old sister and me to see the king and queen. We had a flat tire making us too late to get to Kingston. So we parked along the railway track between Kingston and Napanee and waited for the King's train. Thousands of people lined the track and the king and Queen stood at the back of the caboose, waving to the crowds. I remember where we parked, the train, and the king and queen waving.”

KARIN MARLEY: So Margaret Frydenlund in Surrey, B.C., shared her memory of her father's death. “My mother, brother and I were driven up to the city hospital in Edinburgh, Scotland, in a friend's taxi. My memory was of my mother and grandmother standing by the bedside of my father who was dying of TB. He had been wheeled out into the grounds. It was a warm day and my mother and grandmother both had very colourful floral dresses on. No doubt the fashion at the time. The worst part of that memory was that my brother and I were not allowed to get out of the taxi and we so desperately wanted to. My twin brother and I would have been three that September of 1939. My father died in January of 1940. That is the only memory I have of him.”

MG: Valerie Bell in Southampton, Ontario, shared a memory of her mother's death. “When I was a young girl, age five, in 1954, my 34-year-old mother died from polio. I remember it like it was yesterday. Our house was quarantined. My sister and I had to go live with my aunt. Once my mother was admitted to hospital, she was placed in an iron lung, which scared the hell out of me. Children were only allowed to visit in the hospital on Sundays. And so my father would dress us up to see her. I can't imagine my poor mother only able to see her girls once a week. How strange the mind works. As to this day, I am unable to remember any of the good, happy times with her, only the tragedy that fell upon me.” And as Carol Peterson said, we remember in many ways those meaningful memories so strongly. Something like that is burned into your brain.

KARIN MARLEY: That is true. But of course, some of the memories are happier. Maureen McCartney in Winnipeg writes: “I have an amazingly clear memory of being a flower girl at a wedding in 1946 when I was not quite three years old in Liverpool, England. I remember the wedding car, a black Austin princess and a uniformed driver taking my hand and helping me into the back seat. The church was huge, a dark Roman Catholic place, and it seemed to be lit only by candles. When my aunt and her new husband had to kneel by the priest, all I could see were the candles. I shouted out very loudly, “what is that man doing to my Auntie Joan?” The bridesmaid pushed a jelly baby into my mouth and shushed me.”

MG: Finally, Heather Malek in Elora, Ontario, wrote about a very, very early memory. “My first memory was when I was about two months old. I think of it as my first awakening. The memory starts with a smell, an unpleasant smell, sharp and harsh. Then brightness, overwhelming light, blinding. Then sound, the sound of crying. I was the one crying loudly. The light evolves into shapes and colours. Definition occurs while some areas are still too bright, too intense. I recognize now the shape was a face, the face of my granny with her chunky, shiny earrings and necklaces that she wore all her life, and the strong smell that was always sharp.”

KARIN MARLEY: Smell does evoke a lot of memories, I suppose. Doesn't it?

MG: It certainly does. Karin, thank you very much.

KARIN MARLEY: You're welcome.

MG: Karin Marley, senior producer here at The Current. Thanks to everybody who wrote in. You can comment on anything you hear on this program. Do get in touch. Email us, thecurrent@cbc.ca. And because it's radio, we'd love to hear your voice. So if you want to record a voice memo on the phone and send it to us, do that as well. You can email it to thecurrent@cbc.ca. That is our program for this Wednesday. Q is up next. I'm Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening. We’ll see you tomorrow.

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