November 1, 2009: Canada - Sick for Over a Hundred Years - Generation Next - Part One (Doc) - Episode 17 of 'Twenty Pieces'

Michael Enright's Essay

In his essay this week, Michael reflects on Fall and its rituals, along with the changes that come as Winter approaches. As the days grow longer and the weather cools, our host muses about one of the things that he will miss most about the summertime-- his motorcycle.

Canada - Sick for Over a Hundred Years

Michael Bliss is one of Canada's leading historians with, fortunately for us, an intense interest in the field of medical history. He has written four books on the history of medicine. These include biographies of the 19th century Canadian physician William Osler and of the pioneering American brain surgeon Harvey Cushing. He also wrote The Discovery of Insulin. And Plague: How Small Pox Devastated Montreal. Plague was short-listed for the 1991 Governor General's Award for non-fiction. He joined Michael in our studio in Toronto.

Listen to Hour One:

Generation Next - Documentary Series

Twenty years ago next week, on November 9, 1989, the Berlin Wall was smashed. It marked the beginning of the end of a dream- for communists, the end of a nightmare- for many people who lived under Soviet domination.

Almost overnight, capitalism bloomed. Whole economies were redesigned, free speech flourished, unemployment soared and so did interest in organized religion. Billionaires popped up. Social safety nets were shredded. Neighbours found out who had been spying on whom.

Real elections were held. Here was democracy... or something like it.

Now, from the ashes of the old - still warm, still combustible - the young are building new worlds in Eastern Europe. Theirs is the first post-Soviet generation. They carry the weight of the past - its secrets and lies. And like the young everywhere, they dream about a different future.

In the second hour of our show this week, we presented the first hour in a series were calling Generation Next: Young Minds, Bodies and Souls after Communism. From Ukraine, Romania, the Czech Republic and Hungary

Karin Wells and David Gutnick bring us the sounds, experiences, ideas and dreams of a special generation. Bodies are built, souls are nourished...but this week, we looked at the MIND.

Listen to Hour Two:

David Adams Richards... God Is...

David Adams Richards is one of Canada's best-known writers - the author of award winning novels, short stories, memoirs, essays, poetry and plays. He's written thirteen novels, including Nights Below Station Street which won the Governor General's Award for fiction in 1988; Lines on the Water, about fishing on the Miramachi river, won the Governor General's Award for non-fiction in 1998. And in 2000, his novel Mercy Among the Children was co-winner of the Giller Prize.

But this Fall David Adams Richards has produced another kind of book - it's a polemic really - called God Is, period. It's his effort to, he says, to set a wrongness right and argue against the, "trivializing of so much that is fundamentally important".

It's his contribution to the ongoing debate about religious belief, faith and morality. It looks at sin and God and atheism...from the point of view of a man who lost his faith and found it again.

David Adams Richards was born in Newcastle, New Brunswick and has been writing full time since 1973, when his first novel, The Coming of Winter, won the national Norma Epstein Award for Creative Writing. At that point he dropped out of university and took up writing full time.

This week he joined Michael in our Toronto studio. 


Twenty Pieces of Music that Changed the World

It's time once again on the Sunday Edition for 20 Pieces of Music that Changed the World. For the past year or so, as many of you probably know, we've been looking at pieces of music that were not only famous, or important in the world of music, but which had greater resonance in the wide world beyond music - that changed the world. Our guide, as always for the series, is Robert Harris.

Listen to Hour Three: