May 30, 2010: Life After an Environmental Disaster - Hard Labour Series, Aboriginal Child Health - Speech Pathology (Doc) - Jamaica's War on Drugs
Guest host Helen Mann
Hour One: Life After an Environmental Disaster - What Can the People of Louisianna Learn from the Exxon Valdez? - Riki Ott heard about the BP rig and headed straight for the Louisiana coast. She's a marine toxicologist and an environmental activist. And she wanted to share her experience and expertise with those who live and work on that coast, and provide some advice on the challenges they face. In our first hour, Dr. Riki Ott will also tell us those things.
Read more here
Listen to Hour One:
Hour Two: Hard Labour Series -- Aboriginal Child Health - The first conversation in a series we're calling Hard Labour. The Harper government has made much of its agenda for the G-8 and G-20 summits -- where the focus will be child and maternal health in the developing world. But if you want to see the effects of poverty and inadequate care you hardly have to travel the globe. Just look at children living on many of Canada's first nations reserves. We'll talk about the challenges of fighting for equal care with Dr. Cindy Blackstock... who's taken that fight to the Canadian Human Rights Commission.
Read more here
Listen to Hour Two:
Hour Three: Speech Pathology - Documentary - Why is it so hard for children in Ontario to find the services of a speech pathologist? Karen Wells tries to find the answers.
Read more here
Listen to Hour Three:
Elsewhere on the show: We'll learn more about the bloodletting that's taken over Jamaica's capital and just what it all means for the so-called War on Drugs; we'll try to lift your spirits -- with some lovely recordings by Canadian jazz great Oscar Peterson. They've been re-released to honour him two years after his death; and guest host Helen Mann will sit down with with Oxford economist Paul Collier. His new book The Plundered Planet says environmentalists and poverty activists need to find more common ground. He has a lot of ideas for finding it.
Guest host Helen Mann
Hour 1
Music
Song: Quicksand
Artist: Creaking Tree String Quartet
Album: The Soundtrack
Music
Song: True Blue
Artist: Songs
Album: Joe Sealy and Paul Novotny
Life After an Environmental Disaster -
What Can the People of Louisianna Learn from the Exxon Valdez?As a young woman, marine biologist Ricki Ott fell in love with the remote community of Cordova, on Prince William sound in Alaska. At the age of twenty nine, with a PhD in Marine Toxicology in hand, she left her home in Wisconsin, with plans of becoming a Commercial Fisher . Living in one of the most beautiful places on earth. Doing what she loved.
For Rikki Ott, everything must have seemed just about perfect.
But on one fateful day in 1989, of course, everything changed. That was the day of the infamous Exxon Valdez oil spill. At the time, it was the most horrendous environmental catastrophe in American history. And it set Rikki Ott's life on a different path.
From that day until this, she has fought tirelessly for justice for the people and the environment of her small town.
More recently , she has just returned from three weeks visiting Louisianna and Alabama. She's been speaking with some of the people who for generations have made their livelihood from the bountiful waters of the Gulf of Mexico.
Rikki Ott is now on her way back to Alaska. She joined us now from our studio in Vancouver.
Music
Song: Who By Fire
Artist: Leonard Cohen
Album: A Feast of Cohen
Music
Song: Sisters of Mercy
Artist: Serena Ryder
Album: If Your Memory Serves You Well
Prom Salon
They used to be relatively uncomplicated affairs.
A very very long time ago.
Today the photographers and limos are booked months in advance. There are pre-grad brunches and post grad parties, all built around the key event, the grade twelve graduation prom.
In St. John's, Newfoundland, the season is on in full force. Flocks of teenage girls are buying their dresses from the mainland, or online. They post pictures on Facebook to avoid the mortal sin of showing up at the grad in the same dress as another girl. They go to tanning salons to get rid of their springtime North Atlantic pallor. And they scour the internet for celebrity photos, hoping to copy the look of Hollywood starlets.
Many of them end up at Paula Adams Signature Salon where a Graduation Package - a formal hairdo, manicure and makeup goes for one hundred dollars. Every Friday morning at this time of year, Paula rallies her team of stylists to meet the nervous girls in search of transformation on - like - OHMIGOD - like THE biggest day of their young lives.
Music
Song: To a Tee
Artist: Manteca
Album: Fun Fun
Hour 2
Music
Song: Spare Parts
Artist: Creaking Tree String Quartet
Album: Creaking Tree String Quartet
Hard Labour Series -- Aboriginal Child Health
This latest series is called "Hard Labour", and we begin it with a look in our own backyard...
Canada used to have one of the lowest rates of infant mortality in the world. We haven't just slipped, we have dropped like a stone, from sixth place to 24th, according to a recent study from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.
The vast majority of those deaths occur in the first month of life. And about seven times as many infants die on First Nations reserves as in the rest of the country. Dr. Cindy Blackstock knows this better than anyone.
For more than two decades, she has been watching the effects of deprivation in First Nations communities, and lobbying for change.
Dr. Blackstock a member of the Gitksan Nation, and the Executive Director of the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society of Canada, which launched a formal complaint three years ago with the Canadian Human Rights Commission. It accused the federal government of chronically underfunding services for First Nations children.
Dr. Blackstock joined us from Ottawa.
Music
Song: Dark Lights
Artist: Belle Orchestra
Album: As Seen Through Windows
Oscar Brand Tribute
It's been two and half years since the great Canadian jazz pianist Oscar Peterson died. In that time, many of his best recordings have been re-released to honour his huge talent. A good thing too because his music never goes out of style.
Today we played a few tracks for you.
Music
Song: Autumn in New York
Artist: Oscar Peterson Trio
Album: Oscar Peterson Trio
Music
Song: Too Marvelous for Words
Artist: Oscar Peterson Trio
Album: Oscar Peterson Trio
Music
Song: Lulu's Back
Artist: Oscar Peterson Trio
Album: A 75th Birthday Celebration
The War on Drugs. There
's still no end in sight.Jamaica has burst onto the Canadian headlines in the past couple of weeks. Many of us who have heard often--or even visited Ocho Rios and Montego Bay are now hearing for the first time about neighborhoods like Tivoli Gardens and Denham Town.
The events of the past couple of weeks have shown us a country where whole neighborhoods are run by drug lords. Drug lords whose business interests reach all over the world --including to the streets of Canadian cities.
If the violence in Jamaica shocked us...perhaps it shouldn't have. The relationship between drugs and violence...and drugs and politics is nothing new. Just this week , Mexican president Felipe Calderone visited Canada --largely to try to convince a skeptical public that his war on drugs is finally bearing fruit, and that one day soon the hideous violence in his country will stop.
Tom Feiling doubts that. While writing his book,
"The Candy Machine: How Cocaine Took Over the World" , Mr Feiling traveled the trade routes from Colombia through Jamaica and Mexico to the northern streets where the products are consumed. Along the way, he learned a lot about the true cost of the war on drugs.Tom Feiling was in our studio in London.
Music
Song: Havannah's Savannah
Artist: The Rakish Angles
Album: The Rakish Angles
Music
Song: Song of Hope
Artist: Joe Sealy Trio
Album: Joe Sealy Trio
Speech Pathology - Documentary
From time to time here on The Sunday Edition, we like to take a look at different corners of that massive bundle of problems we have come to call the "health care story".
To hear about the experiences of different Canadians who are facing the challenges of trying to get the health care to which they probably thought they were entitled.
This week, Karin Wells looks at the struggle by some Ontario parents to get speech pathology services for their children.
Music
Song: Wychwood
Artist: Lily Frost
Album: Viridian Torch
The Plundered Planet
On the other hand, huge swaths of the planet are mired in desperate heart-breaking, soul destroying and deadly extreme poverty. And that has some people thinking we need to ramp up economic development to do what we can, regardless of the consequences to the environment, to help make a better life for what one thinker has labelled the bottom billion.
And the guy who made the idea of the bottom billion one of the top items on the foreign policy agenda in 2007 is not indifferent to the stand-off between the folks who want to put the environment above all other issues and the ones who are intent on economic development above all else.
Paul Collier, is an economist at Oxford University and is the author of the 2007 best seller, The Bottom Billion: Why the poorest countries are failing and what can be done about it. His newest book is The Plundered Planet: Why We Must-and how we can-manage nature for global prosperity.
Professor Collier was in our Toronto Studios.
Music
Song: Some Othre Blues
Artist: Joe Sealy Trio
Album: Double Entendre
| 
The Sunday Edition Podcast
Follow Us
