Wild Rose Country - Why We Get Fat - University of the Bush

Hour One

Wild Rose Country:

A Muslim mayor of Calgary. A Jewish mayor of Edmonton. A woman leading the right-wing Wildrose Party. An Indo-Canadian leader of the Liberal party.

And - this week - the election of Alison Redford, the first female Premier of the province.

Voters aren't just talking about change in Alberta, they're embracing it. That's in stark contrast to the rest of the Canada where recent elections have resulted, largely, in more-of-the-same.

But Alberta does things differently. Indeed, the landscape in Wildrose country is shifting in ways that may foreshadow many surprises yet to come.

We're going to look at those changes with the help of three diehard Albertans:

Licia Corbella is a columnist and editorial page editor with The Calgary Herald and Rod Love is a long-time political strategist for the Alberta Progressive Conservative Party. They were both in our Calgary studio.

Anila Umar is a community activist in the area of diversity and volunteered on the campaigns of the new Premier-designate, Alison Redford, and the mayor of Calgary, Naheed Nenshi. Her day-job is Director of Career Services with the DeVry Institute of Technology.

She was in Edmonton.

Disc:

That was the Wailin' Jennys - "Glory Bound".

Nancy Riche Obit:

There is something telling that Nancy Riche should die during an election campaign.

The political activist, ardent feminist, trade union leader and staunch supporter of the NDP died Oct. 1 of heart failure in St. John's. She had been, as usual, deeply and energetically involved in the Newfoundland and Labrador provincial election,

Knocking on doors, canvassing with NDP candidates, giving speeches and talking on the radio.

As she did in her last radio interview on The Sunday Edition two weeks ago.

Sadly she suggested she wasn't feeling well before the interview but was determined to go ahead with it. After we spoke, she was taken to hospital where she died a week later.

She was born the only girl in a family of 12 children. She grew up in the Battery in St. John's, now a trendy residential area but in her time, a small fishing village.

She started her working life as a shorthand typist but soon showed her talents as an administrator and later as an organizer.

She worked in Ottawa for 18 years and served as Secretary-Treasurer of the Canadian Labour Congress.

CLC President Ken Georgetti this week praised Ms. Riche as a tireless advocate for worker's rights and women's rights.

When she retired she returned to her beloved Newfoundland, but was always on call for yet another cause, another need to be answered, another political mission.

As they say she left Newfoundland a better place, Canada as well.

Nancy Riche was 66 years old.

Disc:

Music by Rawlins Cross.....that was "My Eliza/Rawlins Return."

Disc:

Some music now by the Kenyan Boys Choir. From their CD "Spirit of Africa", this is Paul Simon's "Homeless".

Hour Two

Why We Get Fat:

It is hard to overstate the scope of the problem with obesity.

In Canada, 1 in 4 adults are now considered obese. That means we're doing better than the US where nearly a third of the adult population is considered obese. And this is hardly a North American phenomenon.

According the Red Cross, there are now more people classified as obese, many more in fact, than there are people suffering from famine. 1.5 billion people are now obese around the world. The dangerously overweight now outnumber the dangerously underfed by more than half a billion people.

And of course obesity creates a host of medical issues. Chief among them is diabetes. Here are some more numbers. One out of every ten Ontarians is now diagnosed as diabetic. Diabetes already kills more people worldwide than malaria.

The World Health Organization projects diabetes will soon jump ahead of HIV/AIDS as a leading cause of death on the planet.

All of which explains why health officials say we are in the midst of an obesity epidemic.

What it doesn't explain however is why those same officials continue to promote cures that according to my next guest are making the problem even worse..

Gary Taubes is an award winning investigative journalist and science writer. His work has appeared in Science magazine, Discovery and the New York Times. He has written several books on science but he is perhaps best known for his work on the subject of obesity. His latest book is called "Why We Get Fat: And What to Do About It" .

Today, Mr. Taubes is the world's best known spokesman for the "low carbohydrate" approach to nutrition.He claims that our decades-long obsession with counting calories and banning fat from our diet is actually the PROBLEM, rather than the solution to the obesity epidemic. All this has left the professionals at war with one another. And us left in the middle with no idea whether skim milk is a health food or a deadly poison.

Gary Taubes was in Berkeley California.

Mail - Chris Hedges:

Time now for some of your mail. Last week on the program I spoke with the American writer Chris Hedges. Among other things we discussed his despair at the state of politics in his country.

Esi Edugyan:

One of this season's most celebrated Canadian novels almost wasn't.

The author of Half-Blood Blues found it so hard to get the novel published, she came close to giving up on the writing life. Which is ironic, since Esi Edugyan's book is nominated for three major literary prizes this fall.

The novel is on the short list for the Man Booker and Scotiabank Giller Prizes as well as for a Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize.

Half-Blood Blues is opens in Paris in the 1940s.

It is the story of a brilliant jazz musician who is arrested by the Nazis and disappears. He is young and black, and German, with a talent on par with Louis Armstrong.

During the jazz age - in Paris in the 1920's - African-American musicians moved to France to became part of a vigorous music scene in the Montmartre district.

Half-Blood Blues explores what happens to some of the Montmartre musicians as fascism is on the rise in 1939 and 40.

When jazz trumpeter Hiero disappears, his fate is a mystery that haunts his friends for decades.

As the mystery unravels, acts of jealousy and betrayal as well as great bravery are revealed, culminating in a shocking revelation.

Esi Edugyan was in our studio in Victoria where she's left her six week old baby girl long enough to have a conversation with us.

Hour Three

75th Anniversary Promo:

In a few weeks, the Sunday Edition is going to throw our own party to toast, and roast, the CBC on the occasion of its 75th anniversary. It is going to be a really big show - music, comedy, special guests and lots of highlights from the CBC archives.

Sylvia Tyson, Molly Johnson, Serena Ryder, Don Ferguson, Joe Sealy and a terrific house band - they will all be at Glenn Gould Studio in Toronto on Tuesday October 25th.

It all gets started at 6:30 and you can be a part of it. If you live in the Toronto area, come and join us.

Disc:

Etta James with her 1961 recording of "A Sunday Kind of Love."

Mail - Lightbulbs:

Last week I spoke with Howard Bandston....an award winning lighting designer, and a prominent crusader against the impending ban on incandescent lightbulbs.

We did hear from some defenders of fluorescence:

New Tribe:

In March of 1971, 57 politicians, native leaders and academics began talking about a "University of the North".

It was intended to be a grass roots university, about the north, for the north. They discussed how a university north of 60 should teach, who would pay for it, where it should be. They debated for 14 years. In fact, they talked so much they killed the idea and the University of the North became the University that never was.

The idea of a university north of 60 lay dormant for nearly 40 years and then along came Erin Freeland Ballantyne.

29 years old, first Rhodes Scholar from the Northwest Territories, first Rhodes Scholar to have a baby at Oxford; driven, determined and indefatigable.

Two years ago she launched Decintha - Decintha means bush in Dene. It's a fly-in university - 25 minutes out of Yellowknife on Blachford lake.

Decintha is a school for all races and all ages. Its classroom is the land with a little conventional instruction thrown in. Both McGill and the University of Alberta give academic credits for a session at this University of the Bush.

It's very small and Decintha is still scrambling for money and wobbly on its feet but this summer the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, Prince William and Catherine stopped by and hung out for a few hours.

Jennifer Kingsley, taught a writing course last year at Decintha. This summer she went back. Here is her documentary "New Tribe."

Human Library:

Once upon a time - in Copenhagen, Denmark in the year two thousand to be exact, seven people got together to try do do something about youth violence.

One of their friends had been stabbed to death in a night club.

They decided to hold a conference. They invited seniors, immigrants, the police, people from all walks of Danish life - they opened it up to anyone who wanted to come.

But, the friends asked each other, how can we get all these people to really talk to each other, to really listen to what the others had to say.

And that is how the Human Library was born.

Participants were asked to give their lives a title. They would be books. Anyone who wanted could talk to them, "read the book", so to speak.

It was a success, Danes who would normally ignore each other talked up a storm.

That storm has gone global.

There are now Living Library events from Australia to China to the USA to Canada.

Last weekend another Canadian human library took place at Concordia University in Montreal. There were more than twenty-five human books and dozens of readers.

The library rules are simple - the reader can take out the "book" and talk to that book.

The conversations were wide ranging and passionate. David Gutnick was there.