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The Current Transcript for August 29, 2024

Host: Susan Ormiston

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

SPEAKER: NASA has decided that Butch and Suni will return with crew nine next February, and that Starliner will return uncrewed.

SUSAN ORMISTON: Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams were supposed to be on the International Space Station for about a week, but it's been nearly three months and they're still up there. In a moment, the race to bring the astronauts back home and why SpaceX seems to be coming out on top. Also, this morning, when Tanya Talaga's great uncle requested government documents about his mother, he was told she didn't exist. For years he searched for traces of the women in his family.

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SPEAKER: He was looking for why it was they were so silent, why they weren't proud of who they were, what had happened to them to erase identity, memory. Everything.

SO: Coming up in 30 minutes, how this erasure affected Tanya Talaga's life, and what digging for truth about her grandmothers uncovered about Canada's history. And later, staying active as you get older, we're told, is the key to healthy ageing. But what if you think it's too late? That the window for starting to work out has passed you by? Well, in an hour, what we can learn from the story of a 94-year-old indoor rowing champion who didn't take up exercise until his 70s. But we begin in outer space, where two astronauts have to wait until at least early next year to come home. I'm Susan Ormiston in this week for Matt Galloway, and this is The Current.

[Music: Theme]

How are NASA’s stranded astronauts coping?

Guests: Dave Williams, Elizabeth Howell

SO: It's not easy when your kid heads out on a big trip, especially when it's to space.

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BONNIE PANDAYA: I'm very happy that they decided not to send her down right away. You never know. You know, there were two accidents with the shuttle already. I sure as heck wouldn't want that to happen to my daughter.

SO: Bonnie Pandya is Suni Williams' mom. Williams and fellow astronaut Butch Wilmore have been stranded on the International Space Station since early June. Boeing's Starliner spacecraft brought them up there for what was meant to be an eight-day trip, but there were issues with the Starliner, and a few days became weeks. The pair gave a press conference from the ISS in July.

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SUNI WILLIAMS: We are having a great time here on ISS. You know, Butch and I have been up here before and it feels like coming back home. It feels good to float around. It feels good to be in space and work up here with the International Space Station team. So yeah, it's great to be up here. So, I'm not complaining, Butch isn't complaining that we're here for a couple weeks, extra weeks.

SO: Well, those weeks or months now. NASA recently announced that the astronauts won't return until next year. Starliner is set to come home without them in September, and their return trip is planned to be on a SpaceX aircraft. Elon Musk's SpaceX is also set to launch its Polaris Dawn mission, which hopes to feature the first ever spacewalk by an all civilian crew. In a few minutes, we'll talk more about this new era of the space race. But first I'm joined by Dave Williams. He's a retired Canadian astronaut who has been to the International Space Station, and the first non-American to hold a senior management position within NASA. He's walked in space three times-- more than any other Canadian. Good morning, Dave.

DAVE WILLIAMS: Good morning.

SO: Really honoured to be talking to you this morning. You know both Suni and Butch. What's your sense of how they're taking the news that they won't be home until at least February?

DAVE WILLIAMS: Well, I know them both very well. They're both fantastic astronauts. And I think what we heard from Suni sums it up really well. That despite the unexpected nature of this, they've been there before. They're used to working in space on the space station, and they'll have a lot of things to do between now and February.

SO: I'm sure. Do you think it was the right decision?

DAVE WILLIAMS: Absolutely. No question. You know, it's about controlling risk. And this is a test flight. So, with all the discussion about the thrusters, we have to remember it was a test flight of the vehicle. And the best decision to make was to be able to leave the crew on the space station, come back with crew nine and then bring the vehicle back autonomously. They're still going to get the data that they would have got before.

SO: Indeed. But why was transporting them home on the Starliner deemed too risky, do you think?

DAVE WILLIAMS: Well, ideally, we want a spacecraft where all the thrusters that control the position of the spacecraft are functioning properly. Thruster issues have gone back right to the beginning of the space program. We had a challenge in Gemini 8 with a stuck thruster. We had problems in the space shuttle with thrusters. And, it's not surprising that these early test flights, we're going to see issues with thrusters again. So, the team on the ground wanted to make sure that they're controlling risk to the best possible level while achieving mission objectives. And the best way to control the risk is to take the crew out of the vehicle, bring the vehicle back autonomously, they're still collecting the data, and then bring the crew back with the Dragon vehicle.

SO: Dave, while you were at NASA, you were part of a team that would be making exactly these types of decisions, of calls about missions. How does that kind of a decision get made? What are the big considerations?

DAVE WILLIAMS: Well, we have the mission management team that meets before a mission and then every day during a mission. And the mission management team is made up of the senior leaders of every different engineering discipline. And contractors are represented as well. And we weigh whatever the issue is. We look at the risks, we look at the benefits of making the decision. And the goal overall is to control the risk to as low as we can achieve. In this case, Butch and Suni actually joined the mission management team meeting from space, and they were able to participate and give their perspective to the decision makers as well.

SO: So, they're inputting their recommendations and what they're going through?

DAVE WILLIAMS: Yes.

SO: So, how much does NASA prepare an astronaut mentally for a change of plans like this? Clearly, they've been highly trained for the unexpected--that's space.

DAVE WILLIAMS: Well, for years, NASA has been working very hard on what we call expeditionary behaviour. We learned about that with the initial long duration flights to the Russian Mir space station that were done in the 1990s, and that's when we started the Expeditionary Behaviour program, giving the astronauts the tools they need to be great team players, great leaders, followers and to be able to deal with all these unforeseen circumstances.

SO: I want to take you back to your first spacewalk. I mean, the Polaris Dawn, the SpaceX mission, carrying four private citizens is set to involve the first spacewalk by a civilian crew. You've done it. What was it like, Dave?

DAVE WILLIAMS: It's one thing being in space. It's another thing sticking your head out the hatch into the vacuum of space, looking a few hundred kilometres back at the Earth. It really gets your attention, you might say. But, it'll be interesting seeing how they do the spacewalk. It's very much like the Gemini spacewalks, where they depressurise the whole spacecraft and the crew members are on umbilical to provide the life support. We had our own life support system, and we went quite a far distance away from the airlock itself.

SO: Do you have any advice? I mean, these people are civilians. Billionaire Jared Isaacman and three others. Privately trained astronauts.

DAVE WILLIAMS: Yeah. I would recommend doing a lot of mental imagery, thinking about what that image is going to look like, looking back at the Earth and move very slowly.

SO: Polaris Dawn was meant to launch this week, but it's been pushed back twice now, once because of a helium leak at the launch pad and once because of bad weather. It might be pushed back even more now because we heard yesterday, SpaceX's Falcon 9 rockets have been grounded by U.S. officials. One toppled into the ocean Wednesday after fiery landing coming back to Earth. So, what do you make of those delays?

DAVE WILLIAMS: You know, the delays, I think are to be expected in any space program, whether it's the private or the government program. We launch when we're ready to launch. And there's many factors that go into that, ranging from the technology in the vehicle, whether the vehicle is ready, whether the weather is ready, whether the crew is ready. So, there's a lot of factors that play into this. It's not like going to the airport, getting on a commercial airliner.

SO: It isn't, indeed. But what about the grounding of the Falcon 9 rockets? I mean, that could have ripple effects for a number of different SpaceX plans in the near future.

DAVE WILLIAMS: Yes. Well, we'll see how that works out. You know, I think the goal would be to get it back in action as soon as possible. But we have to wait and see what they're able to discover.

SO: And what about the growth of private space companies? I mean, we've seen a huge race now to get individuals into space to do a lot more launches like SpaceX and many others. What's your thought about that?

DAVE WILLIAMS: You know, I think it's the dawn of a new era of space exploration. In this millennium, we will see humans becoming a space faring species where we live on other planets in our solar system. Elizabeth Howell and I wrote a book about this called Why Am I Taller? How Astronauts Adapt to Living in Space. And it talks about what happens when we go back to the moon and ultimately going on to Mars. So, I see it as the beginning of a very exciting time.

SO: Wow. We're going to speak to Elizabeth in a few minutes. And you have your own company, which is involving medical innovation in space exploration. You're a doctor. What do you think is the role for Canadians in this new version of the space race?

DAVE WILLIAMS: You know, I think it's a tremendous opportunity for Canada. I would love to see us become ten per cent players in the global space economy. Today, that's about a $350 billion economy that will grow to one point one trillion in the next 20 years. And I think it would be exciting to see more opportunities for Canadian companies.

SO: Ten per cent. What are we at now?

DAVE WILLIAMS: We're a little bit less than that. I'd say we're probably around three per cent or so.

SO: So, we've got some growth in your view?

DAVE WILLIAMS: Yes.

SO: And wh at's at stake if we don't get involved? You know, there are, there is some opposition to space race, the amount of money that's spent on it by some people.

DAVE WILLIAMS: You know, I think space is about the development of new technology that enables us to go to space. So, it'll be part of the major space faring nations, which we currently are. But to remain part of that means that we're a nation committed to developing an economy based on innovation, as opposed to developing an economy based on consumerism. And I think this is a tremendous opportunity for Canada in the future.

SO: I was struck by what you said, in this millennium we'll be living in space. Living like, [DAVE: Yes.] on the ISS or on Mars?

DAVE WILLIAMS: Oh, well, we'll be living on other planetary bodies. We've had humans permanently on the space station since the year 2000. So, for the last 24 years, we've had humans living in space. But now we're going to see humans going back to the moon. They'll be living on the surface of the moon; we'll rotate crews like we do on the space station. And then ultimately, the same will happen with Mars, hopefully within my lifetime.

SO: Pretty exciting. It's fast, isn't it? I want to ask about, finally, Suni and Butch. Just got a minute left here, Dave. What message do you have for them? What would you tell them about the change of plans in the months ahead and about--there must be a slight level of anxiety that the plan now still may not work out exactly as planned.

DAVE WILLIAMS: You know, if I were able to chat with him today, first of all, I'd say a big hello. They're doing a fantastic job. Dealing with the unanticipated is never easy, but they'll have a lot of research to do. And certainly take time to look out the window and enjoy the experience.

SO: You must be thinking a lot about them and all the people going up, given your experience.

DAVE WILLIAMS: Yes.

SO: Dave Williams, really a pleasure to speak to you. Thank you very much. Dave Williams is a retired Canadian astronaut. He is a doctor, and he is an author of several books, including two with our next guest. Elizabeth Howell is a spaceflight reporter with the news publication Space.com. She's been covering the private space race as well as the Starliner mission. Good morning, Elizabeth.

ELIZABETH HOWELL: Good morning.

SO: Let's go back to June for a second. What do we know about what went wrong with Boeing's Starliner spacecraft?

ELIZABETH HOWELL: Well, they launched the mission and everything was appearing to go away normally until they got to the space station. But as you may have heard from astronaut Dave Williams a minute ago, it's a developmental mission, which means that they expect to find things that they were not expecting, if that makes any sense. And in this case, the unexpected arose pretty quickly because they had some problems with docking. The thrusters --or the little engines that control the spacecraft as it's moving close to the space station-- they weren't coming on at the right times. There are 28 of them, and some of them, five of them were not working. They did make the docking safely. But clearly after that point, NASA wanted to do a big investigation. And that begins the story that we have from today.

SO: It sounds very expected and planned with BCD plans. But months more in space than these astronauts expected. Is that planned for?

ELIZABETH HOWELL: Well, the nature of developmental missions as there is no schedule. What you're always doing is you're moving at the speed of knowledge. And when you're right at the cutting edge of science or engineering, which is literally what astronauts do from time to time, it's sometimes what happens. So, what had happened was, before this mission was even launched, two to three years beforehand, NASA made sure they had extra supplies on the space station for these two astronauts. They made sure that they had extra spacesuits available if they had two spacewalks. They also had tasks ready for them, such as science experiments or maintenance duties, if they had some extra time. And so, it certainly was built in. And it's a good thing they did that.

SO: Indeed. Boeing is now... NASA has picked Boeing's rival, SpaceX to return the two astronauts. What do you know about why they made that choice?

ELIZABETH HOWELL: Well, NASA has two options to send people back and forth from the United States, and those are SpaceX and Boeing. SpaceX has been running missions since 2020 for NASA, human missions specifically. But even before that, since 2012, it's been doing cargo missions. So, it has a lot of experience compared to Boeing. And as Dave Williams was mentioning earlier, there are challenges when you're making a brand new spacecraft. Thrusters are tricky. Propulsion, which is what was making the difficulties with the thrusters happen, is also very tricky, especially when it comes to helium. Helium is a light gas that very easily leaks. So, I would say that these challenges that Boeing is facing are not unexpected in a new spacecraft. But what ended up happening in this case is NASA just said, you know what? SpaceX has been sending up people since 2020. They've done something like a dozen missions in space. And so, we're just going to be going with SpaceX and then working to fix the Starliner before launching again.

SO: Elizabeth, the most recent news --and I talked to Dave briefly about this-- I want your opinion. The FAA has grounded SpaceX's Falcon 9 rockets for the time being, and they use them in all kinds of different launches. How does that change the plan to bring these two astronauts back next year?

ELIZABETH HOWELL: It's an interesting question. And there been some people saying it's a problem almost that SpaceX is the big company that launches so many things for space. They do it very well, but we're very reliant on that one company, and I'm sure we can come up with some business cases where you have a dominant player in the market, and then something changes in their supply chain or something changes with their market conditions, and then they're not maybe able to deliver. And it could cause some issues for the customers. And so, SpaceX will turn it around. And given past history, they tend to be very fast and effective on making the changes that will be needed to address the issues. But we can't say right now, sitting in this moment, exactly how long it could be. So, it could be a few weeks, it could be a few months. But as I indicated, when it comes to the space station, there's at least four months of backup supplies up there. And there are other spacecrafts, specifically from Russia, that can send up more cargo if the astronauts need it. There also are backup spacecrafts from Russia that could bring people back and forth.

SO: It's such a change, isn't it? In our lifetimes, where we're now in a place where private space companies are competing to provide space travel, how did we get here?

ELIZABETH HOWELL: It's a long journey, and it's been really fun to watch because we're talking 20 years of work here, essentially where NASA was saying, okay, we did a really good thing with the space shuttle program. That flew many, many astronauts, 135 missions. It's how we saw Canadians do our first spacewalks, our first missions, even. Because Marc Garneau flew on it in 1984. So, it was a wonderful spacecraft, but it also was older. And we just needed to do a replacement. In the meantime, the space industry have matured so much that NASA felt that there was a confidence in having them do a little bit more, having a bit more autonomy. One thing that I think people forget is, one of the reasons SpaceX is doing so well today is NASA nurtured it as well as obviously Boeing and other companies. But SpaceX received a lot of money in its early development from NASA and then later from the Department of Defence of the United States. When you get big contracts like that and you do well with them, you can take that money, and you can plough it into other things. And that's some of the reasons that SpaceX has been launching satellites and working on a next generation of spacecraft called Starship. So, it's been really, really interesting to see.

SO: Just briefly, you know, we seem to see a lot of launches, sometimes once a week now. In fact, as early as today, Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin is set to launch its eighth manned mission with six people on board. How does Blue Origin fit into this space race?

ELIZABETH HOWELL: Well, Blue Origin it also is competitor Virgin Galactic,, what they're doing is they're launching short term missions for a few minutes at a time. Or in Virgin's case, it's a couple of hours, but the space part's only a few minutes. And they have a couple of types of people. They have people that have clearly a lot of money or some funding to be heading up there and spending what might be about 500,000 Canadian or more for a seat, which is obviously not accessible to all of us. Luckily, there are sponsoring organizations that are working to get diverse people up there. And we have seen Black astronauts. We've seen, one of the Mercury 13. Simply put, it was a woman astronaut that couldn't fly when NASA wasn't accepting women. So anyway, we do see some diverse folks go up there, but we also see experiments. And one of the people flying this morning is a NASA funded researcher who's going to be putting an experiment up there for a few minutes and learning something from it. So, I think that because it's just the beginning, it's hard to predict where it could go next. But if we can expand the number of people going to space, the types of people going to space, the diversity and also get some experiments going, surely we can find some benefit.

SO: Elizabeth, in the last minute we have, space tourism is criticised sometimes as a luxury only the very, very wealthy can afford. Do you think that will change as the space race intensifies?

ELIZABETH HOWELL: I think it could change, but I think that just like any other venture, we need to make sure that we're thinking very critically about what types of people are getting the opportunities and how to be increasing it for those groups that historically have not. Luckily, there is funding available for a select number of individuals from underrepresented groups that have been able to fly on Blue Origin and also on Virgin Galactic. And so, I do hope to see more of that in the future.

SO: It's a fascinating time. Thank you so much for sharing your expertise, Elizabeth.

ELIZABETH HOWELL: Thank you very much.

SO: Elizabeth Howell is a spaceflight reporter with the news publication Space.com, and we reached her this morning in Ottawa. An update to this interview: Blue Origin's manned mission did in fact launch this morning. The CBC News is next. And then:

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TANYA TALAGA: The women in my mother's family and many First Nations families, we are all about survival, surviving for our children, finding our children. Keeping our children. And never letting them go.

[Music: Theme]

SO: Journalist Tanya Talaga has been digging into her Indigenous family history, which she also uncovered about Canadian history, in her search to know where she came from and who her ancestors were. That's coming up in six minutes. I'm Susan Ormiston, and you're listening to The Current. Stay with us.

[Music: Fades up]

How Tanya Talaga uncovered her family’s lost Indigenous history

Guests: Tanya Talaga

SO: I'm Susan Ormiston, and you're listening to The Current. Tanya Talaga had driven the stretch of highway hundreds of times. Past the big blue and yellow Ikea store, past the strip malls, past the high-rise buildings in Toronto. And unbeknown to her, she'd been driving past her great great grandmother's gravesite. Her family had been looking for Annie Carpenter for more than eight decades, and they had entrusted Tanya, the journalist in the family, with solving the mystery. They hoped she could piece together their lost history and how their Indigenous identity had seemingly been erased. Tanya tells that story in her new book, The Knowing. And in doing so, she also recasts the history of this country. Tanya, good morning.

TANYA TALAGA: Good morning.

SO: What did you know originally about your great great grandmother, Annie Carpenter, when you started out on this journey?

TANYA TALAGA: What I knew about Annie was contained in a brown filing folder that my Uncle Hank had left my mum and had made its way to me when he died. And he had for years been looking for his mum, Liz, and his grandmother, Annie. And when I say that he was looking for why it was they were so silent. Why it was they never talked about who they were, where they were from, why they weren't proud of who they were, what had happened to them to erase identity, memory, everything. So, when he passed away, my mother gets this filing folder. She brought it over to me shortly afterwards, and she said, here, this is for you. And in this filing folder was all of these pieces of paper. It was filled with names, people I'd never heard of. There were maps of Northern Ontario First Nations with little circles around them of First Nations communities. There were baptism records, marriage records, and there was a death certificate. And there was one death certificate of an Annie Gauthier. And Annie Gauthier was my great great grandmother. At the bottom it said that she died at the Ontario hospital. Where was the Ontario hospital? Where was she buried? It's at the Lakeshore Cemetery. Where was that? I had no idea. And my mum had been searching for Annie --Annie is her great grandma-- since she has been in Toronto.

SO: So, when your great uncle requested official government documents about Annie's daughter, what was he told?

TANYA TALAGA: That she didn't exist. It sounds bananas, but that his mother didn't exist. And he wasn't just told this one time. He was told this twice. Every time he would write-- and this was before the age of the internet, too. This is, you know, an older man trying to find out information about his mom and about his grandma. And so, he would write letters to the Department of Indian Affairs, because that's what it was called at the time. And he would write letters to the province of Ontario, looking for his mom's birth certificate, looking for information about his mom. And he would get letters back that said, we have no Elizabeth Gauthier in our records to be born between 1900 and 1910. And that was in the brown filing folder. And I reference it in the book because to me it was an example of the erasure or not being registered or seen by Ontario or Canadian government authorities, which is not unusual for First Nations people, older First Nations people. Like, we weren't running off to, you know, register a birth with your local vital statistics department. That wasn't something that we did, right?

SO: You talk about the motivation for this book, in part being everyone wants to know where they come from, who their ancestors are. What did this erasure look like in your personal life?

TANYA TALAGA: A silent mother. A grandmother who had so much that she kept inside, but I could see it on her face-- what she lived through. The women in my mother's family, and many First Nations families, I know to be true, we were all about survival. Surviving for our children. Finding our children. Keeping our children. And never letting them go. But our children were gone. We all had family members that didn't come home from Indian hospitals. Tuberculosis sanitaria from, quote unquote, "lunatic asylums." From Indian residential schools. There was a, you know, a great Uncle John. Didn't he go to Shingwauk, and didn't he not come back? I don't know. We can't find his name or his information, but it's a story that's passed through our generations. And that is also the name of the book, The Knowing. We all know of these family members. And you know, when Kamloops happened with the spirits of the 215 sort of waking this whole country up to what we knew.

SO: In the Kamloops residential school.

TANYA TALAGA: That's right, that's right. This is my knowing, but it's also everyone else's. This is the country's knowing too, right? I mean, the TRC in volume four of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission when they came out with their groundbreaking, unbelievable report, it was all about the children that were gone.

SO: Tanya, The Knowing is a very, very powerful metaphor. It's, singular and different to Indigenous families, is what you're suggesting. I want to talk a little bit about the Kamloops Residential School, because you describe it in your book. Three years ago, you were covering this story, the very disturbing discovery of 215 suspected graves of children who died there. Just give me a flavour of what you experienced when you went there. You write about the canoe ceremony, about bringing the spirits of the children back home.

TANYA TALAGA: It was remarkable. You know, I remember getting an email from, [unclear.] She is at Kamloops still. She works for Kúkp7 Rosanne Casimir. And she had reached out to a handful of Indigenous journalists to come to Kamloops and to write this story. And this was before, you know, everything was breaking loose all over the place with the news of the 215. And when I arrived, it was absolutely remarkable. I'll never forget those days. People were coming in from I think there was 18 communities in the area that had children coming to the school, but they came from beside that outside of B.C. they came from all over, you know, Alberta, from the north, from parts of, which is now the states. Right? Some of those nations. I went to the Powwow Arbour, and there were people there from all of these communities, and they were drumming. We were in ceremony. It was a sacred space. And it continued like that for three days. I remember sitting on the front lawn outside of the front doors, the imposing front doors of the school, and I saw out of the corner of my eye this truck come down. A couple trucks, actually, and on top of the truck was this long, beautiful wooden canoe. And all of these people got out of the truck and they were dressed in their regalia, and they lifted this long canoe off, and they drummed and they sang, and then they put the canoe on the lawn, and they addressed us all, and they said they were from Squaw First Nation, and they said they were there to tell the children that were buried at the school that it was okay. They could leave now. It was time to come home. And their spirits were to get in the canoe, and the canoe was going back with them.

SO: You're closing your eyes, telling that story. You remember being in that moment. Powerful moment for you.

TANYA TALAGA: I'll never forget it.

SO: I'm sure. And in a way, you were looking to release the spirit of your great great grandmother, Annie Carpenter, on this journey.

TANYA TALAGA: What was remarkable to me that when I was there at Kamloops, was pieces were starting to put-- fall into place in my mind, in my own mind, right? About about Annie, about the missing folks in my family. I mean, did Annie have more children? Was it just Liz and Louise? I found out that she was remarried when she was in her, you know, late 30s. Oh--so then that told me she must have had more children as First Nations woman. And finding out where she had come, the ground she had covered. And, you know, sitting there in ceremony, it all started to come to me that this is all part of the same story. Annie represented the children as well, that were gone, that were missing. Because where was Annie? What happened to her? How did she get erased and forgotten? We have no idea. How come she got from where she was living at the time, which was, you know, along the shores of Lake Superior. She was in a place called Graham at the time. How she got from there all the way-- this is the bottom of treaty nine-- all the way to the Ontario hospital, which is now Humber College, you know, for people listening from modern day Toronto. How did she get there? I actually still don't have any idea. And I've looked for the records, I have done searches, and I've been told that those records have been destroyed, and so I can't answer that question. How did she survive? I don't want to ruin the end of the book, but of course you know that she did not.

SO: The Indian Act, of course, is such a powerful piece of legislation. During the time she was alive, it was passed not long after Annie was born. What impact did you learn it had on Annie and Liz and other Indigenous women?

TANYA TALAGA: Part of the reason why I really started to hone down on Annie, other than my own family's search when I was writing this book on Indian residential schools was because of that. When I looked at when Annie was born, we had a census from 1881 that shows that she was from Fort Albany, along the James Bay Coast. There she was with all of her sisters and her brothers. She was ten years old in 1881. All right. The Indian Act was passed in 1876. Rupert's Land, the HBC, which is such a huge part of her life too, because...

SO: Hudson's Bay Company.

TANYA TALAGA: Yes, Hudson's Bay Company, because her father, Jean Baptiste Carpenter, worked for the HBC as a quote unquote "servant." And so, she was born at the confluence of these two massive parts in Canadian, quote unquote, "history." The sale of Rupert's Land to Sir John A Macdonald and the starting of the Indian Act. And so, when you asked me about how the Indian Act impacts my family and specifically impacted them, I say this in the book, Annie was born in the mouth of genocide. She was. And to me, it all became clear that this is the book I had to write. And what happened to the women in my family? And when you ask, how did it directly affect her, other than that, was the fact that she was enfranchised. So, that meant that when she married a white man, she was no longer seen as a status Indian or a member of her community. So, she was effectively erased. And the letters I have from the Indian agents at the time is they're, you know, unbelievable. Like they say it, like it's oh, it's like she graduated out of a class, you know. Oh, this is so wonderful. She's no longer, you know, a status Indian. She is now a white man's wife.

SO: You know, we all grew up learning about the Hudson's Bay Company. We still see it. You say, you suggest that it's a piece of history that Canadians often, too often, romanticize. What has been left out of the story, especially as it relates to women?

TANYA TALAGA: Well, we can have a whole other three hour show on that, that's for sure. I think that we really need to take a harder look at our history in this country. And I'm just going to make a plug for the work of Dr. Anne Lindsay, as she is an incredible University of Winnipeg professor. She has been an incredible historian. She's done a lot of work on slavery and the fur trade. And I think this is something that we need to include in our history books a lot more than we do. How our people were viewed, and why were they viewed in the ways they were? Well, when you look at the governors of the HBC who was running Rupert's Land, these were folks from Great Britain that all had ties to slavery. The Royal African Company, African National Company, East India Trading Company. Plantations in the Caribbean, those ideals of empire, of imperialism, those ideas of who is worthy, who is not, the othering of our people, I really do believe comes from that period. We have seen this talked about in the United States, but we don't see it here. We don't talk about the caste system here. I think of the work of Isabel Wilkerson, whose book Caste is incredible. It's a Pulitzer Prize winning book. She looks at how come, when we're speaking about race, we also don't talk about Caste. And when you look at the Indian Act, when you look at Indian residential schools, the proof is there.

SO: You quote a number of very powerful men at the time, including, the guy who ran HBC --Hudson's Bay Company-- at the time, Simpson. How did he describe in your research, Indigenous women?

TANYA TALAGA: That guy was a character. George Simpson, he openly referred to Indigenous women as half breeds, as brown bits, as commodities. Brown jugs. And he ruled for decades. And not only did he rule for decades, he had at least 13 children with mothers who were Indigenous. And after the women would have his children, he threw them away. He didn't want anything to do with his offspring either. He would try and marry off some of the women as well to his subordinates. And he said, you know, "If you can dispose of the lady, it will be satisfactory, as she is an unnecessary and expensive appendage. I see no fun in keeping a woman without enjoying her charms. But if she is unmarketable, I have no wish that she should be a general accommodation shop to all the young bucks at the factory, and in addition to her own chastity, a padlock may be useful." We romanticise this period also, too, in Canadian history with the quote unquote "country wives," right? Like all of us First Nations women were hanging around waiting to get married to European men. I can't imagine that a 12-year-old or a 13- or 14-year-old girl during the time of the fur trade would want to leave her family, her mom, her dad, her community, her language, to go off and be a bride to some man that she doesn't know him, his culture, his language. But it was her, that girl, that made the family survive.

SO: Tanya, you-- the breadth of your book is very broad and stunning, really interweaving today's experience with the history of this country. How would you say what you've just described hundreds of years ago with the Hudson's Bay Company and Annie's life at the time with the experiences of Indigenous women today?

TANYA TALAGA: Annie died in 1937. That was less than 100 years ago. Our women are-- they continue to disappear. They continue to die, to go missing. One of the things I wanted to accomplished with this book was, where did the trafficking of our women start? Where did the murdered missing Indigenous women and girls’ genocide start? It started here. These are the attitudes that were ingrained, built into the fabric of Canadian policy, bureaucracy, society. We are still fighting those images, those words, those feelings, those racist slurs. Today, our women are still so vulnerable.

SO: We started our conversation talking about this grave next to the Ikea in Toronto along the highway many of us drive frequently. You visited the grave with your mother. What did it look like? And what did it mean to you and your mom?

TANYA TALAGA: I have driven past that site so many times, I can't even tell you how many times. Right along the Queen Elizabeth's way, to get to Shirley Gardens, to get to that giant Ikea, to get to the airport or to Hamilton. And all this time, her gravesite was right there. How cruel reality is. How bizarre. When we first went there, we met Edward Janiszewski, and he is with the Lakeshore Cemetery Project. He used to work at the Lakeshore when it was a psychiatric facility. It's now CAMH. And it was him that found the papers that showed there was a graveyard for this institution, this very large institution that's in Toronto right now, and no one knew about it. When he asked people he found the graveyard. It was overgrown. It was a dog run. It is right off of this massive highway right in the heart of Toronto. And he started a committee to clear it and make it better. And he did. But there are 1511 people buried in this giant graveyard that's the size of a city block. Less than ten per cent have markers. When we first got there, my mother and my daughter and I, to go visit Annie, Ed met us and showed us this graveyard that they have now cleaned off. And so, now you can actually go there and see. And it's just like this field of unmarked graves. And there was a project in that the Canadian government had recently to commemorate with headstones, First World War veterans. And luckily from those spots, I know where Annie is because I know there was a First World War veteran near her. And so, I can sort of figure out where she is. But Ed knew the exact plot, and we went there and there is actually a little funny story about the first time we went there with Ed, and he took us. And, you know, I had my smudge bowl. We were crying. It was a huge emotional moment, and I could see Ed out of the corner of my eye, looking a bit nervous. And then he comes up to me and he said, Tanya, I'm sorry, this is the wrong spot. And so, we were smudging and crying and like, you know, welcoming...

SO: Somebody was the beneficiary.

TANYA TALAGA: Exactly. And so, then we moved we went to the right spot and then we did it all again. And now we visit Annie. And through the course of finding Annie, a group of us have come together from Grand Council Treaty three, Anishinaabe, Aski Nation, Anishinaabe Nation, Kimberly Murray's office, the office of the Special Interlocutor, and the Ontario Coroner's Office. And through finding Annie, we have found 32 other First Nations people buried in the grave. And we also have elders on our committee, too, including my cousin Victor Chapas. And we are now looking for the family members of those 32 others.

SO: So, now that you've found Annie's resting place and those others, what do you hope Canadians take from what you've written?

TANYA TALAGA: This country, our cities, our towns are built on our bones. They're built on our loved ones. And this is an ancient history from 500 years ago or 300 years ago. Annie died in 1937. What happened to Annie's children? What happened to Annie's brothers and sisters? Children and their children and their children? It is still happening in this country. We still have women that go missing. Boys, men that go missing. We still have children dying in the waters in Thunder Bay. This is all connected. We're still fighting for that equity and to be seen as the first people of this country, and to be given that seat at the table. Not ceremonial or something that is like, you're just doing it to have us there. No. The treaties make us partners in this land. Like it or lump Canada, we have to make it work.

SO: I'm going to end it there. Tanya, thank you so much for sharing your journey.

TANYA TALAGA: Chi-miigwech.

SO: Tanya Talaga is an award-winning author and a member of the Fort William First Nation. Her new book, The Knowing, is out this week. And beginning on September 25th, you can stream the book's companion docu series, also called The Knowing on CBC Gem. Coming up after your regional update, researchers say fitness is important whether you're 10 or 60, but it might be even more valuable for seniors.

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SPEAKER: We can't control the ageing process, but we all have the ability to be the best version of ourselves at any age level.

[Music: Theme]

SO: Sounds inspiring and it's never too late to start. In 90 seconds, we'll hear from older Canadians on how they stay fit, strong and healthy, including a 100-year-old champion swimmer. I'm Susan Ormiston and you're listening to The Current.

[Music: Fades up]

The 100-year-old swimmer smashing world records

SO: I'm Susan Ormiston, and you're listening to The Current. This year, The Current brought you several stories on ageing and wellness. And today, we're bringing back one of those conversations. A look at the role of exercise in ageing. First stop, the pool deck at the Guilford Aquatic Centre in Surrey, British Columbia.

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[Sounds: Aquatic centre]

BETTY BRUSSELL: I'm going to swim. [laughs]

LINDA STANLEY WILSON: So, Betty, is there any chance I'm going to get you to do the 100 backstroke in a race?

BETTY BRUSSELL: I am going to try.

LINDA STANLEY WILSON: Yes?

BETTY BRUSSELL: Yes.

LINDA STANLEY WILSON: Because I think that you could do a good job with 100 backstroke.

BETTY BRUSSELL: Yeah, I will try to. Yeah.

LINDA STANLEY WILSON: Yeah.

BETTY BRUSSELL: Yeah.

LINDA STANLEY WILSON: So, I will have to watch you pract- do the backstroke a little bit.

BETTY BRUSSELL: I will practice the backstroke.

LINDA STANLEY WILSON: [chuckles] Okay.

SO: Betty Brussell is about to dive into a training session--pun intended. She's tucking her hair into a pink swim cap. Her blue and white suit reads: white rock waves masters swim club. It's fair to say that Betty fits quite comfortably into the master's category, and she's a competitive swimmer, and today she is getting last minute instructions from her coach, Linda Stanley Wilson. It's all to prepare for her next meet after a great showing earlier this month in Victoria.

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BETTY BRUSSELL: I swim, just try very hard. And I got three new world records [laughs] in the 400 freestyle, 50 breast and...

LINDA STANLEY WILSON: 50 back.

BETTY BRUSSELL: And 50 back. Yes. Well, I've always been swimming, you know, just outside, like kids doing on holidays. And when we retired, we lived in Grand Forks. And the swim offs for the senior games came there a year and I was watching, and I said, you can do that. So, the next year I swam in the senior games and I did one lane breaststroke, and I didn't even do it right [laughs] because I'd never been taught anything. I just picked it up. And I was 68 foot when I, first time I went, yeah.

SO: It's a remarkable trajectory. From not doing it right to multiple world records. But for Betty, her swimming and exercise more generally are about more than just winning.

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BETTY BRUSSELL: When you swim, I count my lanes, so I can't--you can't really think of anything else because you lose count. So, start doing stuff, whatever you want to do. I walk a lot, too. Well, I swim twice a week, and the days when I don't swim, I walk. I live on a hill. I go uphill slowly and when I go down, I go fast. [laughs] Because my kids are always say, "Mom, don't go so fast!" It's a habit, you know. I'm basically a happy person, you know? Anything happen, I just only thought of what I have left, and usually it's enough, you know? Yeah.

LINDA STANLEY WILSON: And what's the goal for the next, for this year ahead: 2024?

BETTY BRUSSELL: Just be able to swim. You know, records and stuff never has been nothing. I didn't even know how many I had. I had to go look and find them and count them. [laughs] So, yeah. And medals, too. It's nice to get a medal. But when I have a good time it's fine.

LINDA STANLEY WILSON: I think Betty really likes being around the team and we all love her. So, I think--you might like that just a little bit, yes?

BETTY BRUSSELL: Yes. Oh, I love to be with a team, I love people. Yes. You see, when you get older most of my friends have either died or put in homes or, you know, I lost most of my friends. And I like to be with people.

LINDA STANLEY WILSON: Betty comes to all of our social events, and she comes to the restaurant after the swim. And she's usually one of the last people to leave.

BETTY BRUSSELL: [laughs] Yeah. No, I'm okay, I'm okay. I'm looking forward to my birthday.

LINDA STANLEY WILSON: Yes.

BETTY BRUSSELL: In July, I'll be 100.

SO: Betty is now 100 years old, and she says she plans to compete in the World Senior Games in October. Lorcan Daly knows all about high achieving seniors. He's an assistant lecturer in exercise science at the Technological University of the Shannon in Ireland. Part of his research involves examining the impact of exercise on seniors, so he suggested his team do some scientific research on his grandfather, Richard Morgan. Matt Galloway spoke with Lorcan Daly in January. Here's their conversation:

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MG: Tell me about your grandfather. He is also remarkable. He's 93 years old. What has he achieved?

LORCAN DALY: Yeah. He's a fantastic guy. A brilliant grandfather to me, certainly. Basically, his story with rowing, he started at the age of 73. He never did any structured exercise before that. Prior to being in school, he might have played some hurling, which is a sport we have here in Ireland. But basically, my first cousin, so his other grandson was a competitive rower. He got a scholarship to Harvard. He was bringing him to training. One of the days while he was there waiting, he hopped on a rower himself and gave it a bit of a go. One of the coaches saw him and said, you know, you've a great technique there. You should actually try and do this. And then from there on, he started to go really into us training. At his peak, he'd be training twice a day, could be one or two hours plus sessions, that type of thing. So definitely very fit. And then me being a sports scientist, I've always followed him with interests. I went to two world championships with him in America, which is fantastic to see and to be there with him. But then beyond that, I said, look, I might as well study this guy. He's going to have a very interesting physiology. And that's exactly what we found with the analysis last year.

MG: So, he's won, what, four world championships?

LORCAN DALY: Yeah. He's won now four world championships. I think he's got probably four or five more medals at world championship level. So, he did a good number of them. So yeah. Probably gonna get medals any time he'll be going to national championships, as well. So yeah, he's having a good career with it for sure.

MG: And he never really exercised before? He was in his 70s.

LORCAN DALY: Yeah. So, he started at 73. Before that, not that much, really. He even used to smoke a lot when he was probably in his 40s up to that point. He started smoking very young. So really, it's kind of, he's flipped it on its head. And he's actually developed his physical capacities very highly now. Which is very interesting.

MG: So what sort of test did you do on him in the lab?

LORCAN DALY: We basically got him in, we assessed his body composition first. So basically, what we found there, he was very lean, low body fat. But probably more importantly, the high amount of muscle mass, which is a very good indicator of his health, wellness and obviously his physical capacity. Then we assessed some resting and exercise trials. We basically simulated a two-kilometre race, and we essentially just monitored his body. His oxygen consumption, his heart, his lungs. However, they behaved, essentially, during the trial. We would normally probably go for an incremental trial to take him up to a VO2 max, but he has some challenges with his hearing, even seeing the monitor. So, we just said, look, we're going to do some unique here. But we got some even possibly a lot more interesting data from it, which was very encouraging.

MG: What did you find out about your 93-year-old grandfather and how fit he really is?

LORCAN DALY: So, one of the tests we assess, basically when you initiate exercise, when you're at a rest and then go up to a, whatever higher or moderate workload, the speed that you can increase your oxygen consumption to meet the demands. Superior athletes will get that up much faster, much like starting a Ferrari versus a very old car you'd have that might be a while starting. Similar idea, the faster that comes up, the better the athlete. The values he had in terms of the speed to get up to that would be what you typically see for a 30-year-old who is healthy and moderately active. So that's pretty astonishing given he's 92 at the time when we did the test.

MG: And so, I mean, the easy way to put that, like he would be as fit or as healthy as a 30-some-year-old in his 90s.

LORCAN DALY: Definitely somebody with that score, particularly, we found that that was similar to someone of that age.

MG: Yeah.

LORCAN DALY: And you probably wouldn't have, you know, the strength or power, or different things, certainly. Depending on the metric you looked at. But, according to that one, for sure. He has that value, which is similar to a 30-year-old.

MG: But he's also I mean, you said he's 80 per cent muscle and like 15 per cent body fat?

LORCAN DALY: Yeah, very, very high levels of muscle. Which is probably just due to his diet being high in protein, but probably even more so his regular training and his inclusion of a lot of resistance exercise, which is very important. We know elderly participants, elderly people lose a lot of muscle mass, but probably even more important than that, they lose the muscle function. So, you might lose 10 per cent of your muscle mass, but you might lose 30 per cent of your strength or power, which is even more detrimental. So he is almost certainly maintained that through the combination of the rowing and his other weight lifting exercises which he does.

MG: How often does he exercise and how much does he exercise?

LORCAN DALY: So, he would typically vary it a bit depending on the time of the year. He would normally, he'd probably compete. And then nearly within a few days he's back training for next year already. So, he's kind of going all year. Takes some days off, for sure. Maybe one a week, something like that. At higher levels of training, as I kind of mentioned, he does two sessions a day. So, one in the morning, one of the evening, and he might do some weightlifting exercises twice a week. You know, taking them intense. He has dumbbells there. He'll be doing lunges, bicep curls, rows, things like that. He would vary the training a bit. A lot of the time would be volume focused, very consistent. So, his total mileage for a year would be high. He might say, look, I'm going to row 15km today, either spread between two sessions, however, he wants to do it. So, you'd have a target. I'm going to hit this amount of distance and he'd go at a steady, relatively steady pace. In addition to that, he might include some intervals or some high intensity stuff, but mostly it was low intensity, steady state type work.

MG: I'm 40 years younger than he is, and I think I'm fairly fit, and I feel totally lazy in comparison to what you've just said. [laughs]

LORCAN DALY: Yeah. So, it's an exceptional routine, really. You know, for me, I'm so inspired by the whole thing. I'd probably when I'm retired and I've loads of time, I can see myself doing exactly the same thing. So, but I would say his routine, by accident or by design is probably the perfect recipe for your health and well-being. Speaking of the rowing, it's a real full body exercise where we've a demand for oxygen all around the body, upper and lower. That's going to put a good stress on the heart. Challenge the heart, challenge the cardiovascular system, and then improve it as a result. Combined with the weightlifting he was doing, he's getting all the muscular power, strength and muscle mass that we'd like to see. And that is like a full package, really, of exceptional health. I would say.

MG: There really is also something to be learned from the fact that it doesn't matter. You can start whenever. If you feel like, as I said earlier, the window for working out has passed you by, that's not the case.

LORCAN DALY: Absolutely not. So, I suppose what a number of these studies well, there's very few of them, as you can imagine. It's hard to find these types of individuals, of course. But what we often would see, there might have been an Olympic champion in their youth. They might have been training and their whole life, and essentially that's what they're used to that just kept going. But he followed a different trajectory in that he had, you know, no background until 73 and then significantly developed. So that's the key takeaway there, we'd say, is that these things are highly plastic. They can adapt. You put a stress, whether it's from weightlifting or a cardiovascular exercise, the body will respond and adapt at any age. And some new, even, research from colleagues in the Netherlands, other work from Luc van Loon, we see that, they had groups of people over the age of 85, and they put them on a weight training program, they actually gained a lot of muscle mass and strength at very, very advanced stages. So definitely no time is too late. Start now, I would say, for sure. The body will respond.

MG: I'll let you go. But I just, a last thing. There was an interview with him and a big profile in the Washington Post, and one of the things is, he said, "there is a certain pleasure in achieving a world championship." Does he have a real sense of pride in what he has accomplished?

LORCAN DALY: Definitely. We kind of, we were talking back and forth, just, you know, how you could motivate others. But he really wanted, it was all his goal oriented. You know, even as the, within the micro level of his training sessions, he had a target for a distance to hit. And then he got huge satisfaction of achieving all these goals. So, he certainly enjoyed the wellness part of it. He enjoyed being able to ease a lot more because he was training so much. He enjoyed the sense of mood he got from it. But, you know, he enjoyed the competitive side of it as well, for sure. He knew all the guys, they'd have some banter in the dressing rooms after, so he had lots of friends with it. And he enjoyed that whole social process with it, for sure.

MG: What a remarkable man. Really quite something. I'm glad to hear about him, and we hope that he continues rowing for many years to come. Lorcan, thank you very much.

LORCAN DALY: Thanks for having me. All the best.

SO: Lorcan Daly is an assistant lecturer in exercise science at the Technological University of the Shannon in Ireland. And a little update from Lorcan about his grandfather. Richard is now 94 years old and was rowing until a month or two ago. Unfortunately, he now has had to stop due to ill health.

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MICHAEL CERRA: I think I just feel better and more alive today than three, five or ten or 20 years ago. I can do what I want. I have no restriction.

SO: Michelle Carra is 72 years old. Ten years ago, he joined what was supposed to be a 12-week research study at the University of Quebec in Montreal.

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MICHAEL CERRA: That's when I learned that I wasn't in such a good shape, you know. Then when I started, I thought I was in shape. I used to train and do some martial arts and cycling a lot. You know, I did the ride for cancer from Montreal to Quebec City and stuff like that. So I thought it was going to be a breeze. But after those 12 weeks the difference was huge. Today I wouldn't see myself not going to the gym two or three times a week. It's become part of my life. I am stronger. What I could do once at a maximum weight, ten years ago is like 15 or 20 pounds or less than my warmups today. So my strength has improved and my general condition has improved, also. My stamina. Overall, my health is probably better than it was ten years ago.

SO: Michael Cerra was under the supervision of Professor Mylene Aubertin-Leheudreand. She is in the Department of Physical Activity at the University of Quebec in Montreal, specializing in ageing and exercise. Matt Galloway spoke with her in January. Here's their conversation:

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MG: What do you remember about Michael’s group when they first started with you?

MYLENE AUBERTIN-LEHEUDREAND: Yeah, it's a big souvenir for us because they arrive, they are thinking that they are fit and we organize the research to keep people that are officially healthy that we call normal ageing. And we prepare them to start to be trained using the structure and supervised exercise. Focusing on power and strength. And it was amazing the improvement from Michael, but from all the men and women that were involved in that.

MG: What sort of improvement did you see?

MYLENE AUBERTIN-LEHEUDREAND: Many of them improved by 50 per cent--their strength. After just 12 weeks. Which it was very impressive. But what was very impressive is that half of them start to continue the training, even if they were inactive before, or just doing by leisure or physical activity, such as cycling or working. And nowadays they more, as Michael said, they are more fit than ten years ago. So that is for us, the key of the success.

MG: It's interesting because he also says that this is part of who he is now. This is part of his life. There are physical benefits to this exercise, but what do we know about the mental benefits of this sort of exercise as we get older?

MYLENE AUBERTIN-LEHEUDREAND: Yeah, just recently there's a publication that come out and show that by training yourself, you can improve your mental health. So depression, anxiety, but also cognition. And--which is good. It has been believed before that just aerobic exercise that can improve this aspect of the health. And in fact, this new meta-analysis show that even resistance training is efficient to improve depression, anxiety, symptoms or cognition. So, everything that you can do will be good for your health.

MG: That can, it can deal with depression.

MYLENE AUBERTIN-LEHEUDREAND: Yeah, definitely.

MG: That's fascinating. I mean, have a listen. Part of this is about when people can start. Here he is with one more piece of advice.

MICHAEL CERRA: You can start any age. That's what I believe. It's never too late. Whether you're 50, 60, 70 or 80. Give it a go. Give it a try. You'll see. You know, it'll take a few weeks, but you'll see the improvement.

MG: Is he right? Is it never too late?

MYLENE AUBERTIN-LEHEUDREAND: Definitely. It's never too late. And this is my trademark when I speak with older adults. It's never too late. And do not hesitate to do. Every minute counts. So do not hesitate to start with one minute, two minutes per day. And after that increase, when you feel better and better on your fitness. So, it's never too late and it's never too low. You know, the amount that you can do.

MG: What is the type of exercise that's most important? I mean, is it aerobic exercise? Is it, as you said, resistance exercise and strength building?

MYLENE AUBERTIN-LEHEUDREAND: It's a balance, you know. Of course, if you want to keep your muscle and your strength stronger and stronger, the best is resistance training and muscle working on power. So, you need to increase the speed or the tempo of your movement. But if you like aerobic exercise, if you like flexibility, start with what you like because that is the problem. You know, as a specialized exercise physiology or physical activity and ageing, of course what we recommend is to do resistance exercise and after that combined with a small amount of aerobic and flexibility. But the problem is the majority of older adults are inactive in Canada. Even if they know, even if they hear like today, the fact that physical activity can be beneficial and it's never too late to start. So, it's because we put a lot of pressure on the type of exercise you need to perform. So, for me, I think the first key message that we need to start is start with what you like. And after that when you feel better and when you keep these habits in your lifestyle, you can start to do more specific exercise that will help you to improve your fitness.

MG: Are there exercises that can be adapted and developed for those, as we age, who may suffer through illness? Who might have a disability, perhaps who may be living with dementia? Are they, those individuals, are they also able to participate in exercise? And are there exercises that can be created for them?

MYLENE AUBERTIN-LEHEUDREAND: Yeah, definitely. It's what we are doing as kinesiologists. We are specialized on adapted physical activity. And adapted is for population or age or with chronic disease or with mental health or with obesity. So of course, you need to find the good professional to help you to not have injuries or disabilities increase due to the exercise. But yes, it's never too late and everyone can start. It’s not a problem.

MG: Give us, then, we just have a minute or so left. Give us one tip for somebody who wants to get started. What? Where should they begin if they think, "you know what, I'm too old. I haven't done this. I'm too far along." You said none of that matters. So, what's one thing that they can do to start right now?

MYLENE AUBERTIN-LEHEUDREAND: Yeah. Every time what I like to start is with a walk.

MG: Just go for a walk.

MYLENE AUBERTIN-LEHEUDREAND: Just go for a walk. And after that, between two light of the city, increase the speed. So, you walk at a usual speed. And after that, during one block, you increase your speed. And to increase your speed, you need to have some difficulty to breath. For example, to have, so while you are walking, you need to speak with some difficulty, and you are at a moderate intensity. And what you can do between the other block is to come back to usual and to the other block you can squat some time just to increase your strength, and after that you continue. Increase the speed. Go back to your normal, squat, go back to the normal, increase the speed. So just do a walk without material. Stop like that and you will see you will increase also what you need at the first. Because that is also a problem for the resistance training. Most of the time you need to have gym equipment, and this is not accessible everywhere. But if you can that will be perfect. To do some squat, leg press, leg pull up or bench press.

MG: Just get out for a walk as the first step.

MYLENE AUBERTIN-LEHEUDREAND: Yeah.

MG: Mylene, thank you very much. Great to talk to you.

MYLENE AUBERTIN-LEHEUDREAND: It was my pleasure. Thank you very much.

SO: Mylene Aubertin-Leheudreand is a professor in the Department of Physical Activity at the University of Quebec in Montreal. She specializes in ageing and exercise. Last up today is a community centre gym in North Vancouver, British Columbia.

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BARRIE STREET: The weight here is 19 pounds and I'm stretching the back muscles with this. I'm Barrie Street. I'm 87. And here's my first exercise equipment here. Of course you can't see it, but this is one where I strengthen my leg muscles. One of my favourites, this. As we grow older, we lose some elasticity. We lose some balance. We lose some muscle mass, etc. I don't want to sound like the Grim Reaper because most of these issues can be addressed through exercise. I can attest to this with conviction. There are, of course, many kinds of exercises for seniors to keep themselves fit, and you don't necessarily have to run, bike, swim, or even go to the gym. For instance, you might try yoga, tai chi, social dancing, walking, stretching. Somewhere you'll find an activity with your name stamped on it. [laughs] I like to count my steps every day, so I aim for 8 to 10,000 steps every day. And I just got a notification from my Fitbit saying that I walked from the North Pole to the South Pole, a distance of 25 million steps in six years. So that helps as a motivator. My weekly routine, as I mentioned the steps. I go to the gym a couple of times a week, I play some pickleball and tennis, and I do a fair amount of stretching. Even lining up at Tim Hortons, my morning coffee, I'll be stretching in the lineup. Back stretches. Legs stretches. Lunges. Squats. People think I'm weird, but that's okay. [laughs] Exercising has a huge impact on my life. It literally changed my life. It's changed my mood. It's given me more agility, alacrity, given me better cognitive fitness. Better cardiovascular, stronger heart. Helps me to sleep better. Much more, it's given me zest and passion for life. I wouldn't have this zest and passion without my life of fitness. I recommend it strongly to everyone. We can't control the ageing process, but we can influence it because we all have the ability to be the best version of ourselves at any age level.

Speaker 5 The weight here is, £19 and nine. Stretching the back muscles with this. I'm Barry Street, I'm 87. And here's my first exercise equipment here. Of course you can't see it, but this is one where I strengthen my leg muscles. One of my favourites. This. As we grow older, we lose some elasticity. We lose some balance. We lose some muscle mass. Etc... I don't want to sound like the Grim Reaper because most of these issues can be addressed through exercise. I can attest to this. We conviction. There are, of course, many kinds of exercises for seniors to keep themselves fit, and you don't necessarily have to run by a swim or even go to the gym. For instance, you might try and yoga taichi, social dancing, walking, stretching. Somewhere you'll find an activity with your name stamped on it. I like to camp missteps every day, so I aim for 8 to 10,000 steps every day. And I just got a notification from my Fitbit saying that I walked from the North Pole to the South Pole, a distance of 25 million steps in six years, so that I did this and motivated my weekly routine as I mentioned the steps. I go to the gym a couple of times a week, my place to pick up ball and tennis, and I do a fair amount of stretching and even lining up at Tim Hortons, my morning coffee. I'll be stretching in the line of back stretches, leg stretches, lunges, squats. People think I'm weird, but that's okay. Exercising has a huge impact on my life to literally change my life. It's changed my mood. It's given me more agility. Like Richie, give me better cognitive fitness, bad cardiovascular, stronger heart. Helps me to sleep better. Much more. It's given me zest and passion for life. I wouldn't have this zest and passion without my own life of fitness. I recommend it strongly to everyone. We can't control the ageing process, but we can influence it because we all have the ability to be the best version of ourselves at any age level.

SO: Barrie Street runs a website that has fitness tips from an 87-year-old. He was working out in North Vancouver. Now over to you. Have you or someone you know started to exercise later in life? How's it going? Tell us the story through our email thecurrent@cbc.ca. And that's our program for today. Stay tuned to radio one for Q and a reminder, you can also listen to The Current and your favourite CBC radio programs live on the CBC News app.

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SO: Just go to the 'local' tab and tap 'play.' You can also find and follow us wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Susan Ormiston in this week for Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening to The Current.

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Thursday August 29, 2024 Full Transcript

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