Satire

It's Friday, May 19th.

A teacher in an Inuit community in Northern Quebec has quit after the school told him to stop teaching Evolution..especially the part about humans coming from apes. In fact, the mainly Pentacostal school wants him stay clear of anything to do with the origins of man.

Currently, the school says it's open to competing beliefs as long as they don't date any further back than October 23, 4004 B.C., at nine o'clock in the morning. Which I think we can all agree is when the earth was created.

Right? Isn't that right? I left my Gideons back at the hotel.

This is the Current.

Teaching Darwin in Quebec

Like many small-town high-school teachers, Alexandre April teaches quite a range of things to his students ... How to conjugate verbs ... why beluga whales are white ... where fossils come from.

What he can't teach his students however, is where they come from. For some time, none of the teachers in the mainly Inuit town of Salluit in Northern Quebec have been allowed to teach Darwin's Theory of Evolution. Alexandre April recently quit his job over the issue and he was on the phone from Salluit.

Teaching Darwin – School Board

The high school Alexandre April used to teach at falls under the jurisdiction of the Kativik School Board. Gaston Pelletier is the board's Director of Educational Services and he was in Montreal.

Spread of Pentacostalism

As we just heard, the majority of people living in Salluit belong to the Pentecostal faith ... a branch of Christianity that is frequently -- but not always -- associated with anti-Darwin teachings.

And Salluit isn't the only community influenced by the Pentecostal church. In fact, the faith is growing increasingly popular in aboriginal communities across the country.

Ronald Niezen is a professor of Anthropology at McGill University and the Canada Research Chair in the comparative study of Indigenous rights and identity. He joined us from Montreal.

Listen to The Current: Part 1

(Due to various rights issues some segments may be edited for internet use)

The Current: Part 2

Fantasy Baseball

More than any other sport, baseball is driven by statistics. It's a game where the most arcane measurements document its most obscure features and where the box score is an object of worship.

But who owns these numbers? That question is at the centre of a lawsuit between Major League Baseball and an online fantasy sports company. Some one-and-a-half Million people spend one-and-a-half Billion dollars on fantasy sports games each year.

Andrew Lundy is the Senior Producer of CBC Sports Online and he's also the "commissioner" of the Sandbox Memorial Fantasy Baseball League where members create fantasy teams and compete with each other based on their players' real-life statistical performances.

Fantasy Baseball – CDM Sports & Statement

Andrew Lundy's fantasy baseball league is hosted on a CBS Sports website. That website pays Major League Baseball Advanced Media 2 million dollars for a license to publish ball game statistics.

But not everyone gets access to those numbers. CBC Distribution and Marketing (which has no connection to this CBC) is a St. Louis based company. Like CBS Sports, it operates a number of fantasy sports games. But Major League Baseball refused to license them, so they sued for the right to publish the stats, saying they're in the public domain.

We contacted Major League Baseball Advanced Media for this story. Although they were unable to do an interview, they did give us the following statement:

“"As we have said repeatedly, this lawsuit is not about the ownership of statistics. Fantasy games,such as those operated by CBC, involve far more than the mere reporting of statistics as information - they use and exploit, in a commercial manner for profit, the names, likenesses, performances and other personal attributes of professional players. Such attributes have been licensed for many years and in connection with countless products and services - including fantasy and other games."

This statement came to us from Corporate Communications at MLB Advanced Media.

Charlie Wiegert is the vice-president of CBC Distribution and Marketing. He joined us from St. Louis.

Fantasy Baseball – Law Professor

To take a look at what sort of legal precedent this case may set within the world of sports and beyond, we were joined by Diane Zimmerman. She is the Samuel Tilden Professor of Law at New York University. And we reached her at her home in New York.

Listen to The Current: Part 2

(Due to various rights issues some segments may be edited for internet use)

The Current: Part 3

Shadow People

After millions of sales worldwide, the secrets buried in The Da Vinci Code ... aren't really much of a secret any more. But there's still plenty more intrigue behind the story.

The basis of the novel and the hugely promoted new movie is a secret bloodline called “The Priory of Sion” that leads all the way back to Jesus Christ. And while The Da Vinci Code's author, Dan Brown, has always admitted his book is a work of fiction ... the theory that Jesus didn't die on the cross, but instead had children with Mary Magdalene, has a well established history.

Whether or not that history is steeped in fact or fiction is just one of the mysteries uncovered in John Lawrence Reynolds latest book. It's called Shadow People, Inside History's Most Notorious Secret Societies, and he joined us from our Toronto studio this morning.

Last Word: Inuit Creation Story

Earlier in the show, we heard about the dispute over teaching Darwin in Salluit, Quebec. It is the Inuit in that community who are leading the charge against teaching evolution ... in part because many of them have converted to Pentecostalism.

Traditionally, though, Inuit have very different ways of explaining why the world is the way it is ... traditions that don't belong to Darwin or The Bible.

So we ended the show this week with one such story ... the tale of how two common arctic birds came to be. It’s narrated by Jeannie Arreak Kullualik and it's part of a series of Inuit legends produced for CBC Radio and collected on a CD called Inuit Legends Volume 2 that's available from the CBC's on-line store.

Listen to The Current: Part 3

(Due to various rights issues some segments may be edited for internet use)

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