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The Current Transcript for November 11, 2019

Host: David Common

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: Look, we were human trip wires. The idea was for us to go ahead, stir up trouble and have the Germans open up on us before they opened up on the rest of the unit.

DAVID COMMON: Even now, decades after the Second World War, largely unheard stories of the horror and the people involved are still coming to light. Remembrance Day is about remembering. It isn't about blaming or saying "you people" when referring presumably to immigrants as Don Cherry did this weekend, accusing them of not wearing poppies in numbers sufficient for him. No explanation of how he'd come to such a conclusion. Well, as he fades into history, we're focusing on history. The tales you may never have heard, very personal stories forgotten in time and the history intentionally hidden from Canadians. We begin with the story of the Black Watch. I'm David Common and this is The Current.

Former Black Watch soldier recalls the bloodiest days in the storied regiment’s history

Guests: David O’Keefe

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[Scene from Black Watch Snipers documentary]

VOICE: I could hear the guns firing, bullets flying by, dropping like flies in the grass.

DC: Private Jemmy Bennett was a young member of the Black Watch Regiment. That was a scene featuring him in the History Channel's documentary Black Watch Snipers. Black Watch soldiers were involved in some of the most ferocious battles of the Second World War. On Remembrance Day, we're looking back at some of its lesser known stories. David O'Keefe is a historian who served with the Black Watch, but long after that war ended. His new book is called Seven Days in Hell: Canada's Battle for Normandy and the Rise of the Black Watch Snipers. David O'Keefe is in Montreal. Hello.

DAVID O'KEEFE: Hello.

DC: So tell us about Jemmy Bennett, key character here. What was his role with the Black Watch in 1944?

DAVID O'KEEFE: Well, Jimmy Bennett was a kid from Saskatchewan, just from a farm, as he would say, a stone's throw from Melville, which is probably about 50 kilometres. And he ended up in the black watch in 1943 after serving in the Aleutian campaign. And when he arrived, he was put into one of the rifle companies. And he ended up fighting through these seven days, this one week between July 18th, 1944 and July 25th as part of the standard everyday infantry rifle companies. And being one of only 20 men, two out of 320 to survive the massacre that the Black Watch encountered at Verrieres Ridge. The last thing he ever wanted to do was to go back into a rifle company. So he ended up joining the Black Watch sniper platoon, which miraculously like him, had also survived.

DC: What was it about that one week or that the tone of your book about these seven days in hell?

DAVID O'KEEFE: Well, a lot of times we tend to forget almost as if this was, you know, fault fell through the cracks of Canadian history. The battle for Verrieres Ridge is without a doubt, the Vimmy Ridge of the Second World War for Canadians. And it started on July 18th and there were actually three attempts by Canadian and British troops to take Verrieres or wrestle Verrieres Ridge away from the Germans. And the first was on the 18th and the second was on the 25th and finally on the 8th of August, the Canadians captured it. And what I've done is I've focused this book on those seven days between the 18th and the 25th, which frankly is some of the heaviest, bitterest and most costly fighting the Canadians were engaged in all of the Normandy campaign.

DC: And of course, they had only weeks earlier come through Juno Beach, come through the site where the D-Day landing had taken place.

DAVID O'KEEFE: Oh, yeah, exactly. They arrived a month of the day after D-Day. And of course, you know, a lot of times we look back at the Normandy campaign and we figure once the troops got ashore and, you know, we had this great victory on June 6th itself that the campaign ended, but it didn't. It went on for almost about another 90 days of hard fighting that would rival anything from from World War One. And so as a result, when the Black Watch and the rest of the second Canadian division arrived in early July, the bridgehead was in a complete stalemate. And we're looking at a traditional type struggles, very similar to what you would see at Passchendaele or the Somme. And infantry casualties are extremely high. So these men who hadn't fought at all yet in the war, with the exception of a brief sojourn in Dieppe, the disastrous raid, we're thrust into this incredible charnel house that was unfolding before them.

DC: And of course, we always talk about or very often, talk about bravery and sacrifice, but you in your writing, break it down to people being shot, people being blown to smithereens, a commanding officer being killed. And this is all within a very storied unit within the Canadian military, the Black Watch. What role does it play within Canada's military history?

DAVID O'KEEFE: Well, the Black Watch emerged from the trenches of World War 1 as the you know, the unparalleled stars of the Canadian Army, if you will. I mean, they are the Montreal Canadiens, the New York Yankees, the Manchester United, if you will, of the Canadian Army. You know, during World War 1, they had, you know, raised three battalions, which was unheard of. And all three of them were standing shoulder to shoulder at Jemmy Ridge. They fought through every major engagement. The Canadians were in they won the most battle honours, most individual awards. And so when they came out of the trenches, they had built up quite the legacy. But that legacy very much or became very much of a double edged sword, because the new generation of officers and men who went off to the Second World War were supposed to live up, if not surpass the reputation that was earned in World War 1. So you can imagine the kind of pressure arriving in a situation like this, not only having to fight a war, but also having to maintain the honour of the regiment as well.

DC: So what, you take risks for ego?

DAVID O'KEEFE: Well, it's more than just ego in a lot of senses, it's a question of honour. You know, one of the things that the regimental system in Great Britain and here would develop was that intense sense of honour, kind of like, if you will, some of the old families used to have. A question of family honour and you know, there's nothing wrong with pride on a battlefield or pride anywhere except when you don't know when to say when anymore, when pride clouds your vision and clouds your decision making. And that's part and parcel of what I deal with in the book.

DC: You are also focussing on not just the snipers, but the black watch scouts, a unit within the broader unit. Can you explain to me their role, what they were trained to do in battle?

DAVID O'KEEFE: Yeah, the snipers are actually part of the scouts. Most of them were scout snipers. There was a group of about 22 when they went into Normandy. And as one of my veterans, Jim Wilkinson said, he said that, look, we were human trip wires. The idea was for us to go ahead, stir up trouble and have the Germans open up on us before they opened up on the rest of the unit. So, you know, sometimes they would go off and they would patrol, they would try to stir up trouble, they would do reconnaissance patrols. And then sometimes even in battle itself, they would be out ahead of the rifle companies as they advanced, trying to knock out German machine gunners and German anti-tank gunners before they could open up. It's an extremely dangerous job and you know, but that's part and parcel of what what the life of a scout is like. It's in many cases very bohemian.

DC: You also sort of walk through the calculus, the physics of of being a sniper and the things that would have to be taken into account before taking a shot.

DAVID O'KEEFE: Yeah. They all had to be highly trained. Most of them had to be able to hit a man's torso at 400 yards while he was moving with nine shots out of ten. And then, of course, they would have to hit a man's head on the move at 200 yards. Nine times out of ten. So to even make it into the scope platoon to start with, you had to be a crack shot. And then, of course, there was also your attitude. These were men who'd like to live on the edge. These were men who like to play alone. They had a lot of initiative and they did not necessarily conform easily to discipline, the strict discipline that you would see in the rifle companies. So they were very much loners, but that's what was expected in this kind of subunit.

DC: They were, of course, facing off against German forces, but a wide range in German forces. Reading your part of the book, there's there's one shot taken by someone who drops what looks like a kid, 15-year-old, but at the same time, they're also facing very battle hardened troops.

DAVID O'KEEFE: Well, they are by this time in the Normandy battle, you are starting to see kind of an uneven approach, I suppose, to the to the German defence. You do have, without a doubt, the Black Watch and the rest of the second Canadian Division coming up against seasoned Waffen SS Panzer divisions who were veterans of the Eastern Front and really knew the tricks of the trade. And then you also see some units, very marked units who have seen some action, but they have to have a lot of foreigners that are being conscripted into service. So a lot of East Front soldiers and some of them at this particular point are indeed very young. And what you're referencing is, again, Jim Wilkinson, who, you know, was like a lot of them itching for their first action and itching for their first kill until they actually pulled the trigger and did the deed and then had a massive wave of remorse overtake them.

DC: Because in that case, it was.

DAVID O'KEEFE: All too human. Yeah.

DC: Yeah, absolutely. Because you focus on these seven days in hell in Verrieres Ridge, why was that ridge, why was that battle so critical, so important?

DAVID O'KEEFE: Well, Verrieres Ridge by July of 1944 had turned into the main defensive hinge enormity for the Germans. And if you could crack through that hinge, you were going to blow the German line wide open. And so that was one of the reasons why it was so central to earn the ridge. And to, you know, to to pull off a victory here. But it was very difficult to do because the Germans, like I mentioned before, was, you know, who were quite skilled. And so there was going to be heavy fighting. So you had to create the conditions for a breakthrough. And that meant engaging in a series of really ugly killing matches, original battles to create the conditions by weakening up your opponent, kind of I guess you could say like a heavyweight boxing match where you're continually jabbing your opponent until you exhaustive and open him up for a big roundhouse. And that's what the thinking was like when the black watch ended up going into battle on the 25th.

DC: Let's talk about Verrieres Ridge in more detail. What what was the kind of fighting? What was the kind of battle there?

DAVID O'KEEFE: Well, it was typical of the Normandy campaign by this time. You had, for instance, the Germans were dug in along the ridge and behind the ridge and they were supported by Panzer battle groups and quite a lot of artillery, rockets and mortars. We're not talking about. But, you know, a simple or relatively easy kind of nut to crack. This was perhaps the hardest nut to crack for the allies in the Normandy campaign at this particular time. Also to it, it's set over a wheat field, very rich, is not as steep escarpment or anything like that. As a matter of fact, it's a very gentle and beautiful rise. And it's kind of a paradox to say that, you know, when you actually look at it and say, wow, you know, it's beautiful here, it's lush. And you realize in 1944 exactly how deadly it was, simply because when the black watch and the other units of the second Canadian Division advanced up very air, it was very much like the opening day of the Somme in World War One, where the Germans were on three sides. So essentially you were advancing into a horseshoe of fire, moving through wheat fields. And of course, this was very difficult because even though the Canadians had trained for four years in England, rationing in England prevented you from using the wheat fields. So if you get into wheat fields, which are standing waist or shoulder high and then you come under fire, you can imagine that unit cohesion, command, control, communication all break down.

DC: You can't see each other.

DAVID O'KEEFE: Exactly.

DC: You sometimes can't hear each other.

DAVID O'KEEFE: That's right.

DC: There's one part of that move that that you describe where there's the the antennas on those who are carrying radios and they pop up through the wheat fields, which provides an opportunity for the Germans on the other side.

DAVID O'KEEFE: Yeah, well, the Germans have been quite skilled and they've been fighting in this kind of terrain in Russia for about three and a half years. So they they knew the tricks of the trade. And in this particular case, the only thing that they could see for the most part, once the men of the black watch slipped into the wheat and they were watching them the entire time. Were the antennas, the big whip antennas that you would have on the back of the radios, whether they be men packed or in Jeeps or Bren gun carriers? So these were kind of like sales, if you will, you know, above the above the ocean, indicating exactly where the various headquarters for each one of the companies were. And, of course, battalion headquarters, as the sails that were targets, the sails that became easy targets. And of course, one of the first things that the Germans did was to drop a curtain of mortar fire behind the black watch to make sure that they wouldn't retreat or couldn't retreat without serious casualties. And then they proceeded to pick off each one of those radios, one after another after another, to isolate them and cut them off from their communication.

DC: When you look at what they then went on to do, what were some of the scenes that these young Canadians had to confront?

DAVID O'KEEFE: It was absolutely horrific. The first thing, of course, would be the odd sniper bullet that was coming through the wheat, followed by some machine gun fire. And it always had a sound. The veterans described it like wasps, because, of course, you really didn't hear the crack of the gun when it was firing, but rather that as the bullets would come through. And then, of course, the crump of the mortar fire coming down behind you. And the further they went up the ridge, the German fire increased. And then suddenly you had the artillery shells coming down, then the rockets, and then you had the tanks on the flanks opening up and more machine guns. And then the closer you got into the German lines, you had rifle and machine gun fire. That, of course, is all mixing with the sights and smells and sounds of carnage. You have men who are screaming, screaming for their lives, screaming for their friends, screaming for their mothers. You have body parts that are flying past you. Your best friend to the right suddenly has faces blown off and he disappears into the wheat. Other men are tossed into the air. It's absolutely horrific beyond. I don't even know if the word horrific really describes what they were going through yet. Under those conditions, the only thing that you could do was attempt to push on and push forward because there was no going back, no going to the side. You had to reach your objective or you were going to die.

DC: How successful was it?

DAVID O'KEEFE: Well, the first two attempts were not very successful. As a matter of fact, the casualties were massive on the 18th and on the 25th. There was a lot of bitterness and recrimination that came out of the first two. You had units in the second Canadian vision from right across Canada who suffered severely, not just the black watch and on the 25th. The black watch ended up suffering 94 percent casualties, which essentially puts them up there with the Royal Newfoundland Regiment in World War 1. And that was what we're looking at. World War 1 scale casualties. And also to, you know, as much as the worst massacre at the west end of the ridge, on the east end of the ridge, there was mutiny. There were two units in the third Canadian division which had come ashore on D-Day and had fought for a month. Who realized that? No, the plan that was put in place was not just was not going to work. And so they refused to advance ad there was ta lot of fallout from that as well.

DC: Why do we remember things like D-Day in our history and Vimmy in our history and Verrieres Ridgeis not something that comes up?

DAVID O'KEEFE: Well, I think it's a larger philosophical approach, I suppose, to history. I mean, I come from a school of thought where, you know, historical events are not sentimental treasures that we take off the shelf once a year or polish them up and put them back. They are fields of, you know, proper investigation, which would lead us to understanding, appreciation and eventually empathy. So I think sometimes the unsettling facts are very difficult for us to face. And so we tend to focus more on the successes of things like, you know, D-Day and of course, eventually Vimmy Ridge. But at the same time, even though we paid a very difficult and costly price for Verrieres Ridge, we did end up succeeding. And it actually had greater strategic ramifications when we did that, than even Vimmy Ridge in the First World War.

DC: Here we are on Remembrance Day. What will you be thinking about in terms of the Black Watch and the other Canadians who fought?

DAVID O'KEEFE: Well, you know, for the book, I sat down with a lot of these men over about a 25 year period. So without a doubt, I always think back to them. And then, of course, you know, I also have my own family, a grandfather in World War One, father and uncle in World War Two, another uncle in Korea, cousins in the Gulf War, Afghanistan, friends in Bosnia. So, you know, in the morning, it's all about reflection and remembrance. But then as my grandfather taught our family, it was all about appreciation for life. And as the day unfolds, the joy, the joy of what we have, the joy that we're together, the joy that we have, everything we have in this society right now tends to fill our lungs up with air yet again. So by the end of the day, it's kind of like a second Thanksgiving for for my family.

DC: David O'Keefe, thanks very much.

DAVID O'KEEFE: Thank you for having me.

DC: David O'Keefe is a historian and filmmaker who served with the Black Watch Regiment. His new book is called Seven Days in Hell: Canada's Battle for Normandy and the Rise of the Black Watch Snipers. He was in Montreal. Now CBC Radio One will have special coverage of the Remembrance Day ceremony at the National War Memorial. That's coming up later today. You can listen on CBC Radio One or on the CBC Listen app.

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["For the Fallen" by Chor Leoni choir]

DC: That was the Vancouver men's choir Chor Leoni with "For the Fallen." The CBC News is coming up next and then another lesser known story of war.

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VOICE: Their role is rather crucial because at that point in the war, they needed to really bring some labour over to France to get things moving, to support the forward troops.

DC: They were Chinese labourers, more than 80 thousand of them quietly brought to Canada, smuggled across this country, then sent on to Europe to support the Allied war effort, digging trenches, digging graves. I'm David Common, and you're listening to The Current.

[Music: Theme]

Forgotten stories of the World Wars

Guests: Daniel Black, Ted Barris

DC: Hello. I'm David Common, and you're listening to The Current.

[Music: Theme]

DC: Still to come, sidelining women, right from the start.

[sc].

VOICE: If you're on the sideline, you're considered not a leader, less capable, non strong, not smart, not promotable and that established the second rate citizenship for women.

DC: Sally Armstrong's Massey Lectures air this week on Ideas. They're called Power Shift: The Longest Revolution. She's my guest in just about half an hour. But first, a long journey to the frontlines.

[Music]

DC: It's been 101 years since the end of the First World War, and even after all that time, we're still learning new stories of sacrifice and of bravery. One of these that is often over looked is the Chinese Labour Corps' service during the First World War. Daniel Black is the author of Harry Livingstone's Forgotten Men: Canadians and the Chinese Labour Corps in the First World War. He's in Ottawa. Hello.

DANIEL BLACK: Good morning.

DC: So I've got to tell you, I had never heard of the Chinese Labour Corps prior to learning about this interview that we were going to do. What did they do?

DANIEL BLACK: Well, they worked behind the lines in northern France and in Belgium. Their job was to support the forward troops by repairing roads, delivering supplies, stockpiling ammunition, and some of them even repaired tanks. So they were both skilled and unskilled men that came from northeastern China. But their role is rather crucial because at that point in the war, it was around the time of the Battle of the Somme and after that that they needed to to really bring some labour over to France to get things moving, to support the forward troops.

DC: And I mean, I keep saying this, I'm stunned that I'd never heard about this and a lot of people I talked to about this have never heard about this. Why do we not know? And what was Canada's role in all of this?

DANIEL BLACK: The challenge was to get them to France and so the British originally had their sights on recruiting over 100,000 labourers. And they went to northeastern China because the men were considered more robust, stronger there. So they established their recruitment depot and also at Qingdao, which is slightly to the south in Shandong Province. And s OK, how did they get them to France? Well, they came up with an idea of maybe we can start to ship them around Africa or up through the Mediterranean, but one of the ships was torpedoed by a IAU boat south of Malta with considerable loss of life. So the British came to Canada and they were looking for a safer route and that route was to ship them across the North Pacific to the west coast of Canada and then by rail on the CPR from Vancouver to ports in the East Coast. So Montreal, St. John and also Halifax.

DC: This is an enormous journey, two oceans and an entire continent in a way. How many people are we talking about?

DANIEL BLACK: Well, the number that again, the British recruited, about 95,000 in total. The French were also recruiting at the time too, but their numbers were far less. But I've, in the research I've done, it looks like approximately 81,000 members of the Chinese Labour Corps. These were men between the ages of 18 and 40, arrived in Canada and crossed by the CPR. Now under great secrecy, I might add.

DC: Yeah. So why? I mean, how do you keep secret and why do you keep secret 80,000 plus people going to help the war effort?

DANIEL BLACK: First of all, we have to understand that 100 years ago, Canada was not a welcoming place for Chinese immigration. So there had been a $500 head tax applied to Chinese immigration around the turn of the century. So the military in deciding to take this role on, it decided to waive the $500 head tax because after all, these men were coming in one side of the country basically and leaving out the other. But they still didn't want the Canadian public to know that that head tax was being waived given the sentiments of the time. So that was one reason. The other reason, of course, was security. I mean, the War Measures Act was in effect since 1914 and you had the possibility of things going wrong in terms of the transport and shipments of both soldiers and these labourers. Anything to do with the war, so security was quite high.

DC: I'm still struck, though, of course, once they get to Europe, they're playing this critical role of digging trenches and repairing military equipment and in some cases collecting and burying the war dead and becoming part of the war dead themselves because mortar shells land where they land. They don't discriminate. How is it that their role hasn't been recognised more broadly in the years since?

DANIEL BLACK: You know, the Chinese weren't treated very well at the Versailles Peace conference following the war. There was a fair bit of political manoeuvring going on and so they went home from France, at least of the people that we're trying to broker a better deal for China after the war. They went home to China fairly disappointed, actually strongly disappointed. So that's one reason. They kind of slipped into obscurity, the whole story. It has, though, thankfully, come back into the light. Historians are starting to take a look at it.

DC: You talk about the individuals. There are so many, but Mr. Chun is one of them. I understand you have a translated letter that was written by him. You have a portion of it you can read for us?

DANIEL BLACK: Yes, I have it right here in front of me. This letter first appeared in a publication back in 1983 on the West Coast Historical Review publication. It's from this fellow and he writes, he's writing to his father and mother in law. And this is what he says. We have arrived in English, Canada, from where we take a train and in about sixteen days we will arrive in France. My journey has been one of peace and tranquillity under the protection of the Heavenly Father. And I have met with no dangers or hardships. Every day we have all we want. Our eatables, clothing and everything we want are excellent. I hope that mother and father in law have no anxiety about me. I thank you for taking care of my wife, that she is bound to fret about my absence. I and wish you all a tranquil farewell. Your son in law in reverence.

DC: Do we know if Mr. Chun made it back to that wife he speaks of?

DANIEL BLACK: We do not know that.

DC: Do we know anything more about him other than that letter?

DANIEL BLACK: No. That's pretty well it. And it's rather indicative, David, of the lack of personal anecdotal information on these men. With that realization, my my book, the narrative of the book was angled towards the Canadian story, including Harry Livingstone's involvement.

DC: So let's talk about Harry Livingstone. Who is he and how did he become involved?

DANIEL BLACK: Harry Livingstone was a small town doctor from Listawel, Ontario. You know, he's actually a grand nephew of the great African explorer, Dr. David Livingstone, which is rather interesting. But he grew up he grew up in this small town in southwestern Ontario and around in the summer of 1916, he decides, OK, he's you know, not a young guy. He's in his mid 20s at this point. He decides he's going to head down to London, Ontario and enlist. And of course, he was a doctor. So his skills were definitely needed. So he goes down to London and then he becomes a captain in the Canadian Army Medical Corps. And from there, he and in a couple of other officers, medical officers, bought a train on what really was a top secret mission. They arrived in northeastern China and he spent about two months there examining the labourers before they were sent onto these transport ships, these large vessels that brought them across. And some of these vessels had about 4000 labourers on them. Harry's ship had about 2300 when it left. So across he comes with this contingent and he travels with them all the way to to Canada and then across to France.

DC: What is it on this Remembrance Day that you will take time to think about?

DANIEL BLACK: Well, I think I will think about how these Chinese labours have been for the most part, forgotten and are certainly not on the radar for a lot of Canadians. It's an interesting story. They were men who were hired under contract to go and work and make money for their families back home, but when it was all over, they were forgotten and they returned to to a country, to China that was in very much in hardship. You know, there was drought and famine and there was a warlordism going on over there when they came back. And the money that they earned on their contracts, by the way, had been had been devalued. So by the time they came back, the money that they thought they were earning was worth a lot less when they got home. I will think of them on Remembrance Day. I will think of one young man in particular, a fellow by the name of Xu Ming Chan who died on the on the train, the CPR train special near Chapleau, Ontario. He died of malaria in 1917 and he was buried. His body was taken off at CFB Petawawa and just in early October, there was a headstone installed for him. Commonwealth's headstone installed for him 102 years after the fact. I was up there for that event and assisted with the wreath placing. And it really touched me that here was a man who was lying there for all that time and nobody really knew a lot of people didn't know he was there. And yet he was a war casualty. He was under contract to serve, but he was that was what he was doing. He was going to France, but he never made it that far. There were about 50 members of the Chinese Labour Corp that died in Canada on their way across and most of those young men are buried at the Williamhead, which was the quarantine station where they first arrived when they showed up on the West Coast.

DC: Well, Daniel Black on this day of remembrance, thank you for helping us to remember something so many of us didn't know about. To bring some light to these forgotten men.

DANIEL BLACK: Well, thank you, David. I really appreciate you having me on the show.

DC: Daniel Black is the author of Harry Livingstone's Forgotten Men: Canadians and the Chinese Labour Corps in the First World War. He's in Ottawa. Now that story about the Chinese Labour Corps is a reminder that there are so many different tales of the war that are still to be told. For writer Ted Barris, the story he's uncovered is actually quite close to home. He always knew his father, Alex Barris, had served in the Second World War, but the exact details were fuzzy. Barris Sr. was a decorated U.S. Army medic, but didn't share much about his experience with his family. Now, in his latest book, Ted Barris explores his own father's story and the history of medics in combat. It's called Rush to Danger: Medics in the Line of Fire. And we've reached Ted Barris in Hamilton today, where he's participating in a Remembrance Day events at the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum. Hi, Ted.

TED BARRIS: Morning, David.

DC: So how did it come to be? What was the first conversation you had with your dad about his wartime experience?

TED BARRIS: It was an accident. I was laid up with an injury and my father, who was a freelancer, was working at home and he was sort of making me feel less sorry for myself as I recovered. And I popped the question, I was about 14 in 1963 and I said, what did you do in the war? And my dad was a great storyteller. Some of our listeners will know that Alex Barris was a personality on television and radio. He wrote a column for The Globe and Mail for many years. It was on front page and so on. A great storyteller, but not stories of tough stuff. He told me about the funny things that they did during the war. He was trained, bear in mind he was born in the United States, so he was streamed into the American army, trained in Kansas to become a medic. Hated it out there. When he finally gets overseas, they're sent into the toughest battle that the Americans experienced in Europe, the battle of the bulge and even the training that he took in Kansas where he learned first aid and then anatomy and so on. He knew he knew that this was not getting him ready for the toughest stuff that he would face. And eventually, little by little, as I grew and dad and I grew closer as co-writers and co-authors and co-hosts, he shared some more of this with me. But even after he died in 2004, I knew I had more to do.

DC: You say he realized his training was inadequate for what he would face in places like the Battle of the Bulge. What was the Gulf? What was the difference?

TED BARRIS: Even the Americans didn't know what they would face there. Bear in mind that this happened between December and March 44-45, the Battle of the Bulge, voldest winter of the war. The Americans had not given the 94th Infantry Division, the one that dad's medical battalion was attached to sufficient winter clothing, no winter boots. Dad grew up in New York.

DC: Frostbite must've popped up there. Yeah.

TED BARRIS: He grew up in New York. He had no idea what that was. They were transported from western France to Belgium and into the battle in steel floored trucks. The men's feet froze in transit. So he had that was his first test as a medick.

DC: Your father actually received the Bronze Star from the U.S. Army for heroism. What did he do to get that?

TED BARRIS: When the Americans crossed into Germany in this pushback after the Arden breakout by the Germans in late 44, they were essentially the Germans were defending the fatherland. So they had set up incredible defensive works booby traps, landmines, anti-tank ditches, dragon's teeth, and my father's infantry brothers were pushing through into this and and ultimately they were in German wooded areas which were concealing all of this weaponry. It was a location just inside the German border and my dad's position to first aid station behind it. He sent medics in on the night of the day of 12th of February, 1945. This is at a time when his first aid station was dealing with no fewer than 120 wounded men in a 12 hour period. That's about one wounded man for every six minutes. He got so focused on what was happening in the first aid station, he felt forgotten about the four guys he'd sent into the battlefield to bring back wounded. They didn't return. He was a tech sergeant. He was responsible. So he had to go thread his way back through areas that had been exploding all day with landmines and so on to find these guys. And in the night, he finds them and brings them out one by one, by one by one and somebody spotted it and he was awarded the Bronze Star.

DC: His heroism is given the merit of the award of the Bronze Star, but I wonder how he was seen and how medics in general were seen by their fellow soldiers.

TED BARRIS: Not very kindly. Most infantry people back then and even today consider medics kind of like a bad omen. You're death, we don't want you around us. One of the men I talked to whose story you probably know, the sniper whop wrote a book a few years ago.

DC: Afghanistan veteran. Yeah.

TED BARRIS: He called medics mommies. You know, they went around in basic training saying, you know, you've got enough food for dinner tonight? Did you write your mom lately? Have you got clean socks for tomorrow's march? But then when push came to shove and found himself stepping on an improvised explosive device in Afghanistan, he desperately needed a medic and when they came, they saved his life.

DC: One of those medics, you actually write about.

TED BARRIS: She's extraordinary David, and you've talked to enough military people to know how well-trained these people are today. In her case, she'd sort of trained for a dozen years for this night in Afghanistan. She had to make her way with her crew and a bison. Bear in mind, too, that medicks now are armed. Unlike during my father's time, when the Geneva Conventions, in effect, protected them, gave them immunity if they were not armed and wearing a Red Cross today, medicks are armed because their first priority is to protect the wounded. So Atlanta goes into this location, slowly getting there by way of moving her bison to the location. And she talked about hands on his wounds without even looking down. In other words, she could do it by what she referred to as muscle memory and asked her what you mean means. She said, well, it's kind of like riding a bicycle. When you learn to ride a two wheeler, you don't have any balance your hands on what to do, your feet don't know what to do. But once you master it, you don't ever have to look down or think about it again. And that's the way she treated her work on this location. She's focussed on the area around Jody medick. The wounded man looking for other insurgents. The atmosphere of the men who were at his side. So she's got this split focus and brings him out on a medevac helicopter, a Blackhawk, and essentially saves his life. They later, as you probably know, they later married.

DC: So much recognition now for things that we saw a lot in Afghanistan, continue to see as a result of the conflict in Afghanistan, and that is PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder. We called it shellshock in the First World War, very hard during that era for soldiers, veterans to have any recognition of it, have any treatment for it. But there is still some degree of stigma, some degree of difficulty in acknowledging it and getting treatment for it today. What would you say to those who live with PTSD?

TED BARRIS: I'm not an expert on that sort of thing, I'm not a psychologist or psychiatrist. I'm like you, I'm a listener. I've heard thousands of them talk to me and they all simply want to be able to express themselves as best they can and talk to somebody who understands. As you probably know too, when you go to a legion or you go to a gathering where veterans of whatever war have come together, they can share it because they know what each other's talking about. Men and women who experienced together. I remember doing a presentation in Ottawa and a woman asked me a question after presentation. She said, my husband's in Afghanistan, what do I do when he comes home? And again, I said, I'm not an expert. I would say that you probably know more about what your husband's going through over there than any other wife in our time. The Internet, imagery, correspondents, the news. So with that knowledge use it as a means of as a stepping stone into that memory and those horrific experiences and then allow them to get it off their chests. That's probably all they need is a chance to talk with someone who understands it, isn't in a rush and gets has a sympathetic response.

DC: You've written many books about the war. This one, which looks so much through the lens of your father's own experience, marks the first time you're writing about it, I suppose more personally. Did that alter your memories of your father?

TED BARRIS: It did in the sense that I learned, as I said earlier, we shared some dad and I talk. But even after he died in 2004, I knew there was a lot to do. And I found both records in the University of Georgia, in Athens and at the Central Records Centre in St. Lewis. I found additional details of his experience. And then I found a man in New Jersey, Tony M, who had actually served with dad and he gave me insights into my father that I didn't expect. For example, one knows that dad was a professional writer after the war when he came to Canada from New York. During the war he was a frustrated writer. He was actually he established the Medical Corps newsletter, which he named typical Alex Barris name, he called the newsletter The Weekly Dose. And Tony had stacks of these things that I didn't even know existed. And they were my dad's editorials and his comments about the army and survival and so on. And it was a voice I had never heard. So when I went looking, I had this wonderful perspective of my dad that I'd never had before.

DC: A window right into a world that you knew little about.

TED BARRIS: Yeah. The other thing too, as you can appreciate, writing history through 18 previous books, I've never used the word I in the text until now.

DC: It can feel a bit weird.

TED BARRIS: He really pushed me to do that. And you have to use, I had to use my voice to give my dad's story a platform and then to bounce off into the hundreds of other stories that go all the way back to the civil war in the United States and all the way up to Afghanistan, Iraq and the present.

DC: Ted, we've only got a minute here, but here we are in Remembrance Day. What will you be thinking of? What will you be remembering?

TED BARRIS: I will be remembering these invisible people, these medics, these nurses, surgeons, stretcher bearers, ambulance drivers from all these periods who for some reason either because they sense it was a duty, because they sense they knew these people they were attempting to save did this, without even thinking, batting an eye. Imagining my dad marching into camps, woods in the dark, past the mines. I'll be thinking about these people who have been so invisible, so lost, but while everybody was running away from the problem, they were running toward it.

DC: Ted Barris, thank you very much.

TED BARRIS: My pleasure. Thank you.

DC: Ted Barris is the author of Rush to Danger: Medics in the Line of Fire. We reached him at the Canadian War Plane Heritage Museum, where he is participating in a ceremony there marking November 11th. That's happening today.

[Music]

DC: OK. Coming up in our next half hour, does this ring a bell? This line. Sunny days, sweeping the clouds away. It's a theme song and a show that stood the test of time. But there's more to Sesame Street than just its funny skits and catchy tunes.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: Sesame Street was one of the programs that first had quite explicitly Canadian identity type messaging in what it was doing.

DC: It's the 50th anniversary of that show and we're digging deep into Sesame Street messaging. I'm David Common and you are listening to The Current.

[Music]

Sesame Street celebrates its 50^th anniversary

Guests: Matthew Hayday

DC: I'm David Common, and you're listening to The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

[Clip from Sesame Street]

DC: Oh, Oscar. Hard to imagine, but this week, Sesame Street is 50 years old. The iconic TV show started out as an educational tool for American children, and it's now seen in more than 140 countries. In Canada, kids and their parents could watch Ernie and Bert and Cookie Monster, Elmo, Oscar the Grouch from American stations or for many years, the Canadian spin-off Sesame Park. Here's what one Canadian professor of history thinks about the impact of Sesame Street.

SOUNDCLIP

[Sesame Street theme song]

MATTHEW HAYDAY: My parents didn't let us watch a lot of what they called junk TV, but we could watch all we wanted of educational television. So I watched a lot of Sesame Street as a child. My name is Matthew Hayday. I'm a professor in history at the University of Guelph. I wanted to study Sesame Street because thinking back on my childhood, Sesame Street is one of the programs I can remember as having had segments that introduced me to ideas about Canada.

[Clip from Sesame Street].

MATTHEW HAYDAY: And depending what station you would watch, you would get different versions. So the American version, had all the Spanish language material, whereas the Canadian one had a lot of material about counting in French and French language content. It was one of the main things I definitely remember was how much French there was.

[Clip from Sesame Street]

MATTHEW HAYDAY: But also aspects of the show that had Canadian symbols.

[Clip from Sesame Street]

MATTHEW HAYDAY: I remember the language learning segments that were part of it. I remember segments that were about Canadian culture and Canadian symbols. And my research more broadly beyond this particular project is about ways in which governments and educators and other actors have tried to craft new ideas is in ways of thinking about Canada and shaping Canadian culture. And Sesame Street was one of the programs that first had quite explicitly Canadian identity type messaging in what it was doing. I was going back through old YouTube clips and there was one I found that I had very strong memories of and it involves a segment that is about the Canadian quarter.

[Clip from Sesame Street]

MATTHEW HAYDAY: A quarter has a caribou on it, on it. A quarter has a caribou. And the caribou says, that's me. And they just, it sticks in my brain. So and I think I like it because it's such an explicitly Canadian segment. It's got sort of a fun little jingle that goes along with it and it's very emblematic of Canadian symbols and that dimension of the program.

[Clip from Sesame Street]

MATTHEW HAYDAY: The alphabet, of course, is very important and there was definitely a discussion that happened among the curriculum committee that was attached to the program about how they were going to deal with the alphabet. And so the importance of the letter Z was certainly central to those discussion.

[Clip from Sesame Street]

MATTHEW HAYDAY: And it seems kind of funny to think about it, but this is something that when I've talked about this project with friends they were like, oh, yeah, I watched Sesame Street as a child and that's why I used the letter Z, because they're just that little bit older than I am. So they only watched the U.S. version of the show. So they learned their letters with A to Z instead of A to Z as I was exposed to. One of the things that's really interesting about Sesame Street is just how much educational research went in to both the original American version at the Children's Television Workshop and then the Canadian version that had a curriculum team involving people from McGill and others consulting on all the different aspects of the content. And one of the themes they really wanted to emphasize beyond language learning, which was very central, was to expose Canadians to different ways that Canadian children lived. So one of the first set of segments they produced was a series of little vignettes where they had sent out film crews across the country to film Canadian children living in different environments. So that included a young girl who lived on a ranch in Alberta, a little boy who worked lived on in a maritime fishing community. And this is one thing I thought was interesting because it was so early on. A young indigenous boy who lived on a reserve in Manitoba. The clip apparently showed him travelling to school every day by boat because that was how he actually had to commute effectively to go to school. So they were interested in showing Canadians living in different ways. The underlying message they were trying to get across was that we are different, but we're all still you know we're all still part of this sort of broader shared humanity. This shared community. But they wanted to show that there were different ways that you could be growing up.

[Sesame Street theme]

MATTHEW HAYDAY: So how would I want to say happy birthday to Sesame Street? I think what I'd want to say is a gigantic thank you for having done so much to educate multiple generations of children, including ones that were really vulnerable. To spread literacy, to spread numeracy, to just provide such an entertaining and enjoyable way of learning for children that not only their target market of preschoolers would enjoy them, but older siblings and parents would enjoy them, and they wouldn't have done so well that it's indelibly marked in brains like mind, where I will now spend an evening going through YouTube, looking back on old classic segments of the show and enjoying a nostalgic glow as I do so. So that would be really a gigantic thank you to Sesame Street on this occasion of their 50th birthday.

DC: Matthew Hayday is a history professor at the University of Guelph. Sesame Street is celebrating its 50th anniversary this week. And on Q today, you can meet a young man who went from childhood fan of the show to claiming centre stage Ryan Dillon, the puppeteer and voice behind Elmo.

[Music]

'There's never been a better time' to be a woman, says activist Sally Armstrong

DC: You're listening to The Current on CBC Radio One and Sirius XM. I'm David Common. Over the past few years, we've seen a revival of the women's movement, call it MeToo, or Time's Up. A new generation of women is speaking up and pushing for greater equality. It's a development that's profoundly exciting to my next guest. Sally Armstrong is an author, journalist and human rights activists. This year, she delivered the CBC Massey Lectures and looked at how women's inequality began and the effects of patriarchy today on women and society overall. The lecturers air all this week on Ideas on CBC Radio One, and they're published in a book called Power Shift: The Longest Revolution. The incredible Sally Armstrong joins us now. Hello.

SALLY ARMSTRONG: Hello, David.

DC: So tell us what you set to find out in these lectures.

SALLY ARMSTRONG: Well, this was the most exciting assignment because they told me to find out when women were oppressed in the first place how that was sustained over such a long time and where women are today. And what I found really astonished me, because the truth is, David, our history is flawed. You know that expression, man, the hunter is bogus. There's no evidence to say she was not hunting right beside him. And what I found out was that men and women were equal until about 10,000 years ago with the birth of patriarchy.

DC: So this whole logic, as you say, of man the hunter, this whole idea that man was was out killing and gathering the animals and the woman was at home or wherever dealing with things, it just doesn't happen?

SALLY ARMSTRONG: No. I mean, they did everything together. The whole story which was put about by anthropologists and archaeologists who were the first to delve into the Stone Age, the Palaeolithic and it was men who did it, which is fine. Men were doing those things on their own in those days, but the trouble is, they only looked at men. They just didn't look at the women. So why are women sidelined? Why are they second? Because we were put there at the very first study and if you're on the sideline, you're considered not a leader, less capable, non strong, not smart, not promotable and that established the second rate citizenship for women.

DC: Why then, has the inequality persisted for as long as it has and continues to in so many ways today?

SALLY ARMSTRONG: Aha. Well, the patriarchy started. And you know what? It wasn't even a devilish start. What happened was as soon as there was surplus in food, as soon as they had enough food to plan ahead, rather than, you know, kill today, eat today to survive tomorrow, as soon as they could plan ahead, they realized what they needed were more labourers. And so men began acquiring the pregnant women around them. And that was the beginning of women being oppressed by men. But what they didn't do, religion finished. All the holy books, every single one of them, are very hard on women.

DC: And it became locked in place?

SALLY ARMSTRONG: It did it. In fact, it almost as Amanda Freeman, the BBC researcher, said it became a biological fact when it was not a biological fact at all.

DC: When did you personally become first involved in this work you have now done for decades and done so well around both feminism and the women's movement?

SALLY ARMSTRONG: Well, you know, I guess the pivotal point for me was covering a story about the gang raping of women in Bosnia. And I was working for a magazine and when I found that story, I was so shocked by it. But, you know, at a magazine, I could rush that international news piece to press in about three months. So I gathered everything I could name, mobile numbers, anecdotes, everything I could. I brought it back and I gave it to a huge news agency. And I went back to my office and waited for the headline and it never appeared. And seven weeks later, a Newsweek magazine printed a four line blurb there, gang raping women in the Balkans. They phoned the man who I gave it to the editor. I said, what happened? He said, oh, you know, I was on deadline. You know, I forgot. I said 20,000 women were gang raped, some of them eight years old, some them 80 years old and you forgot? And he said, Oh, Sally, you're always going on and on about the women. And it was kind of maybe a Scarlett O'Hara moment for me. I thought if no one else is going to do these stories, I am. And that really began a string that goes onto today.

DC: That particular work, of course, helped lead to rape being recognized as a war crime.

SALLY ARMSTRONG: You know, those incredibly brave women in Bosnia and some in Croatia, they banded together and they went to The Hague and they took their story to The Hague. And, you know, going public for those women was very dangerous because their families could have rejected them, but they went public and in 1998, made rape a war crime.

DC: That, of course, has continued to this day. We think no further than the Yazidis.

SALLY ARMSTRONG: Exactly.

DC: And you've you've done work on that as well. What is it that most struck you covering that case of these Yazidi women?

SALLY ARMSTRONG: You know, the incredible thing about all of these is how long we take to decide that a woman's catastrophe is something that deserves all of our attention. We move not quickly enough, but we move on famine and we move on other catastrophes like earthquakes. But when it's women, we're still late to the party. We pick it up later. And by then, there's enough outrage, certainly among women around the world that we do get action. But imagine that those Yazidi women and girls I interviewed, girls 12 years old who were taken as sex slaves. It was four years before they got out of the clutches of ISIS.

DC: What strikes you when you think back on them now?

SALLY ARMSTRONG: Well, I tell you. Very strong feelings, David. I think there's 450,000 of them in refugee camps. The land they come from and they call it Shingul. In Arabic it's Sinjar, but they call Shingul, so I do. They've been living on that land for 8000 years and it's empty. It's there waiting for them.

DC: Of course, we can talk about these these horrors that are occurring overseas and we we ought to talk about them. We ought to expose them. But you've also said that it's never been a better time to be a woman. Why do you think it's never been a better time to be a woman?

SALLY ARMSTRONG: Well, I think it because I've done the research and I'm the eyewitness and it's true. There's never been a better time because the women themselves are the change makers. They're the ones that are picking up the call, the clarion call to make change for themselves and their daughters. I mean, look at Malala Yousafzai or look at Greta Thunberg or the women of Malicounda Bambara, who were the first to eradicate female genital mutilation. And those numbers are plummeting from numbers like 92 percent, down to 32 percent or 85 percent down to 12 percent. There's change all over the world. Consider that 160 little girls in Kenya between the ages of 3 and 17 sued their government for failing to protect them from being raped and won the case. These things are happening everywhere, not to mention, of course MeToo, Time's Up. Hashtag feminism has now moved this new wave of the women's movement closer to the finish line than ever before.

MATTHEW HAYDAY: And yet it's been so hard-fought and so hard-won and sometimes the changes seem incremental. At other times, when you speak about MeToo, it seems that things are going fast. But you wonder if it'll stick, I suppose. What gives you the optimism?

SALLY ARMSTRONG: You know, the social innovators today, for them, the Holy Grail is finding out whether things like MeToo are going to stick. And so far they feel that it is. Because this is huge. This is every woman. You know, intersectionality is the new rallying cry. And this is all the women, all the time, moving toward the finish line. And these social innovators define this new kind of power. They say old power is like a currency. You get as much as you can, you hoard it, you download it, you keep it, you hide it, you don't share it. But the new power, they say, is like a current. You upload it, you share it. And the more surge it has, the better it is. It's inclusive. It's all over the place. And they say, me, too, is the best example they can see of that. So it fits certainly into the stories that I've been doing, particularly during the last six or eight years. There are changes everywhere. We're not at the finish line, but but we're closer to it than ever before. And now, David, you know what? It's starting to look like people who are not on side are simply out of step. I mean, a corporation that doesn't see that they should pay women the same wage as they pay men doing the same job. They just seem to be out of step and out of sync and not modern and clever, I think.

DC: But of course, it still continues. There is still a wage gap. It's been in places like Canada, It's been shrinking, but it still.

SALLY ARMSTRONG: It's still significant and it's everywhere. You know, remember that wonderful Netflix film called The Crown?

DC: Yeah.

SALLY ARMSTRONG: So that brilliant actress who played Queen Elizabeth was paid, I believe, a third less than the man who played Prince Philip.

DC: Who was in a, I would argue a secondary role. She was the queen.

SALLY ARMSTRONG: Exactly.

DC: She was the star.

SALLY ARMSTRONG: But, you know, we're having bigger conversations about this than we ever did before. I think that equal pay and violence against women, which by the way, costs $1.3 trillion a year, and these are the issues that the other waves of the women's movement were less demanding of. I mean, they —heaven knows they had other things to do, such as get us the vote, such as write us into the Constitution. But this fourth wave, this wave is going after equal pay. They're going after discrimination and they're going after the issues that have kept violence where it is.

DC: You've also done work looking at trying to quantify how closing that pay gap, how creating a more equal society can actually benefit that society and that society's economy.

SALLY ARMSTRONG: Absolutely. I mean, we do not need one more paper to explain the value of equality to the economy. And you know what, David? One of the problems is I remember a man in Afghanistan telling me that if he gave up, if he gave human rights to women, that meant he'd have to give up his own human rights. And that foolish comment is really carried out to our own corporate world. There's some ridiculous feeling that if you let women in, you're going to have to push men out. And that's totally ridiculous. You make more money if you have women on the board. You make more money if you have women in management. And it's never, ever because women are better or smarter than men. It's because together she brings ideas to the table. He brings ideas to the table, and they're different ideas. And together, everybody wins.

DC: Of course, there's also backlash from organizations, men's rights organizations, thinkers like Jordan Peterson. Do you worry about that?

SALLY ARMSTRONG: I do. You know, because there's so much positive out there. Young men today are are much more active in raising the children. They're much more active in the community. They're contributing a lot more because that's expected of them today and when someone creates a throwback to its women's work or women don't belong. Who's that guy on Fox News, I start my last chapter with, Tucker Carlson. He announced on his program one night that if a woman makes more money than a man, then it will lead to divorce. and the man will end up drinking. And he goes on and on and on with all those social ills. And I thought, what is it about men like that that think women don't belong in the C suite, on the board, in the office? It perplexes me to no end, and especially when we think of the young men today who are so involved in in raising their children and being part of the community. But there I saw a study that said even young men are still under the impression that the longer you stay at the office, the more likely you will be to be promoted. And David, it's not true. All these studies show that is simply not true. But but, you know, I think men pass along messages to other men that that they should they should have a discussion about to what impact is inequality for women have on society's overall. It is enormous. It is shockingly enormous. First of all, there's a tremendous cost to it. You know, of some of the studies show that even in retirement, a woman who is has not been paid a fair wage compared to a man, she has less money to spend in retirement. And that, too, affects the economy. We know that if women are part of the economy, the economy flourishes. There's no doubt about that. And there's nothing in it that hurts men. Together. we're better. Together we go forward.

DC: When you look at the things that are happening in the world today, what are the things that are most able to affect change when you look at the area you're talking about?

SALLY ARMSTRONG: Well, you know, there's a club in Canada called the 30 percent club, and it's to try to get 30 percent of board appointments made to women. And one of the people who founded it in Canada who used to be the CEO of KPMG. And he said to me, the way we look at women, it's as though we are dismissing anybody who was born between June and December. He said it's that foolish. You need both. And I concentrated on that in lecture five because of work done. Honestly, this is so shocking to me. Wait. But 37,000 years ago, we've seen all those handprints and drawings in the caves and an archaeologist called Leslie Van Gelder who analyzes those drawings because now we can determine sex and age and all of that because of the size of fingers and bones and all of that.

DC: So of the artist of whoever?

SALLY ARMSTRONG: Yeah. Yeah. But she looked and we used to think men did them all. And as it turns out, about two thirds are done by women and girls. But she analyzed these in terms of intimacy and relationship and I was struck by her work because one of her favourite, she's a world authority on fluting. So fluting is you put ochre in one hand, you put the other hand on the cave wall and you blow the ochre out of your hand, over your hand on the cable and you leave your handprint. And her favourite fluter was a four year old girl who fluted with two hands. But she was very taken by this child because she realized after quite a long time, there was no mark of fire on the floor of the cave. And she said to herself, who's holding her light? And it occurred to her that no matter what you do in your life, someone's holding your light. Now, she was looking at handprints that are 37,000 years old and I looked at it in terms of of the women, as you mentioned, making rape a war crime in The Hague in 1998 and a little girls in Kenya winning their case, suing their government for failing to protect them from being raped and at Me,Too and time's up and all the men that have joined into that. And I think it's right, whether it's the boardroom or the classroom or the bedroom, someone's holding your light. And I think if we look at our accomplishments, the big wins, the small wins, the middle ones and realize that whatever you do, someone's holding your light. You really understand the concept of better together.

DC: Sally Armstrong, thank you very much.

SALLY ARMSTRONG: Thank you, David.

DC: Sally Armstrong, author, journalist and human rights activist. Her CBC Massey Lectures, Power Shift: The Longest Revolution air all this week on Ideas. That's on CBC Radio One. And that is our program for today. Stay tuned for Q after the CBC News. And then later this morning, special coverage of the Remembrance Day ceremony at the National War Memorial in Ottawa. It is hosted by Susan Bonner. You can listen on CBC Radio One or at the CBC Listen app. To close out our program on this Remembrance Day, an essay by the daughter of one of our producers, Willow Smith. She gets the last word today and it's well worth it. I'm David Common. Thanks very much for listening to The Current.

[Music: Theme]

The Current Transcript for November 11, 2019

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

Former Black Watch soldier recalls the bloodiest days in the storied regiment’s history

Forgotten stories of the World Wars

Sesame Street celebrates its 50th anniversary

'There's never been a better time' to be a woman, says activist Sally Armstrong

Sesame Street celebrates its 50^th anniversary

Nov. 11, 2019 episode transcript

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