The Gristle in the Stew - Charley Boorman - Ariel Dorfman

Hour One

The Gristle in the Stew:

In the 1960's, an Ontario government film called One on Every Street was shown regularly to parents of intellectually disabled children. The goal was to reassure them and to persuade parents that committing their children to the care of an institution for the mentally retarded, as these children were known, was the best thing they could do.

Their children would be well cared for.

Muriel Clark is fully convinced that her son, and thousands of other children were neglected and abused in those institutions.

Rob Clark can't speak out - but plenty of other former residents can.

And for the first time their tales of childhood in Ontario's institutions for the intellectually impaired are being told. Those tales are harrowing.

The children who grew up in those institions are middle aged men and women now and they are looking for recompense. They have launched class action law suits against the province of Ontario.

They are asking for 3 billion dollars in damages to be split among 12,000 former residents and their families.

This is the largest legal action on behalf of the intellectually disabled every undertaken in Canada.

It started with two women, Patsy Seth and Marie Slark.

Today they live - independently - in down town Toronto but they grew up at Huronia, the oldest and biggest Ontario instittution for the intellectually impaired, in Orillia a couple of hours north of Toronto.

Here is David Gutnick's documentary "The Gristle in the Stew ."

Eleven Sounds Reprise:

Last week on the program, we had a bit of fun with something called "11 Sounds Your Children Have Probably Never Heard."

Well, a bit too much fun, as it turned out.  Many of you wrote in to tell us that you couldn't hear the sounds, because of the background music we added for a bit of flavour.

So, here again are those 11 sounds your children have probably never heard, minus the music.  

Hour Two

Cancer Prevention & Mail:

On last week's program we talked about cancer research...and where all that money re donate actually goes. It turns out that our listeners have a lot to say about that...You were particularly interested and concerned about the balance between dollars to find a cure for cancer as opposed to dollars to find ways to prevent cancer. Here are some of your letters.

The word that turned up in many of these letters - and in the many others we received - is "prevention." Instead of focusing on treatment and cure, why aren't we doing more to stop the galloping rate of cancer diagnosis and death? And why aren't we talking about the role of environmental toxins and carcinogens in promoting the scourge of cancer?

This morning, we've invited two guests to tackle some of the questions you've raised: Dr. Cornelia Baines is an epidemiologist and one of the world's most-respected authorities on breast cancer screening. She is Professor Emeritus at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto.

Dr. Mary Gospodarowicz is Medical Director of the Cancer Program and Chief of the Radiation Medicine Program at Princess Margaret Hospital, the largest cancer centre in the country.

They were both in our Toronto studio.

Charley Boorman:

Charley Boorman is a motorcycle enthusiast, adventure travel writer and an actor. And he's part of a movie dynasty. His father is the accomplished movie director John Boorman, his godfather was Lee Marvin, and his first acting role was in Deliverance at the age of 3 where he played John Voight's son.

In 2004, the call of the open road enticed Charley and his best friend actor Ewan McGregor to embark on an around-the-world motorcycle journey. That 20,000 mile route took them from London to New York City in less than 4 months.

That trip was documented in their 10 part television series "Long Way Round."

Since that time Charley has logged thousands more miles on three continents.
 
But for his latest adventure this past summer, the globe-trotting Mr. Boorman wanted to limit his tour to just one country. One very big country.  So he chose Canada. Six weeks, 10 provinces, and three oceans later "Extreme Frontiers: Canada" was in the can. The first episode will be broadcast in the UK later this month.

Charley Boorman was in a BBC studio at Tunbridge Wells England.  

Hour Three

Music - For a Few Dollars More:

 The 1965 movie "For a Few Dollars More" was one of Spaghetti Westerns that made Sergio Leone and Clint Eastwood household names.

These films were identifiable as much by their music as by the flinty stares of Clint Eastwood or the stylized violence and formulaic plots.

That music was composed by Ennio Morricone.  His scores for "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly", "A Fistful of Dollars", "For a Few Dollars More" and others are among the most memorable ever composed for the movies.

They certainly caught the ear of Steven Tsitsos. He's one of the best young concert violinists around these days.   His new CD is called "Into the West" and it's a tribute to Ennio Morricone and the music of the Spaghetti Western.

Steven Tsitsos will be my guest on the program next week.  And to give you an idea of what we're going to talk about, here is Steven Tsitsos on violin, with David Occhipinti on Guitar, Andrew Downing on bass, Terry Clarke on drums, and Andrean Farrugia on piano.  This is Ennio Morricone's "For a Few Dollars More."

Ariel Dorfman:

You can't go home again. It's the title of a novel by Thomas Wolfe and it's become something of a cliche. But the sentiment is perhaps better understood in the final pages of the book, where Wolfe's protagonist says this:

"You can't go back home to your family, back home to your childhood ... back home to a young man's dreams of glory and of fame ... back home to places in the country, back home to the old forms and systems of things which once seemed everlasting but which are changing all the time - back home to the escapes of Time and Memory."

Ariel Dorfman is also a writer, perhaps best known for his play "Death and the Maiden." And like Wolfe's George Webber, he also tried to go back home again.

Born in Argentina and raised in New York, he moved to Chile when he was 12. Chile became his home and he became a Chilean. And when the political and cultural revolution of the early 70s began to change the face of the country, he was at the centre of it.

But that all changed on September 11, 1973, when a US-backed coup overthrew the Socialist government of Salvador Allende and installed the dictator, Augusto Pinochet as President.

Dorfman was forced to flee. But he pined for - and worked for - a return to his adopted homeland. And when that day did eventually come, it didn't turn out the way he hoped and expected that it would.

That story is the subject of Ariel Dorfman's newest book "Feeding of Dreams: Confessions of an Unrepentant Exile." It's published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Ariel Dorfman was in a studio in Durham, North Carolina.

 Music - Ella and Jimi

Here's a favourite of Ariel Dorfman  and Michael. This is Ella Fitzgerald - "Let's Do It".

And while we're on the subject of American music icons, today happens to be the anniversary of the birth of singer-guitarist Jimi Hendrix, the greatest guitarist in history according to Rolling Stone magazine.   Hendrix died in 1970.  Had he lived, he would be 69 today.

 Here is Jimi Hendrix - "Wind Cries Mary."

Winter Tales #4

This year, on the 75th anniversary of the CBC and the Governor Generals' Literary Awards, the CBC and the GG's have commissioned a series of original stories on the theme of winter.
Each is written by a past GG winner. 

This week, Canadian playwright Judith Thompson.

Ms Thompson's first play, The Crackwalker, came out of her experience as a social worker with adult protective services. She has won many awards for her work, including twice winning a GG -- for her play, White Biting Dog and the anthology The Other Side of the Dark.

In Sundays in Winter, a 12-year-old girl describes her experience of winter, which stings with the complications of a difficult home life. Here is Judith Thompson.