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The Current Transcript for June 2, 2023

Host: Matt Galloway

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

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BRANDON MITCHELL: I remember a brief sensation of heat, a yellow flame. I didn't know it at the time. I suffered what I'm told is a traumatic brain injury, and I had a brief period of something called blast lung.

MATT GALLOWAY: When Russia invaded Ukraine last winter, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky put out the call for volunteers to help defend the nation. New Brunswick Army Reservist Brandon Mitchell was one of those who put his hand up. In an hour, Brandon Mitchell talks about why he went to fight a war in a country he has no connection to, what his time on the frontlines in cities like Bakhmut was like, and why he now sees that war as his war. And The Globe and Mail’s Mark MacKinnon on why Kyiv and also Moscow are increasingly becoming targets. Also this morning, Anna's hummingbird, Scotts Oriole, beautiful birds. But where do the names of those birds come from? And who was this Mr. Scott?

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ED YONG: He's not a scientist, he’s not a bird lover. He's a military commander who oversaw the dispossession, the ethnic cleansing of people.

MG: The science writer Ed Yong has been digging into how names are given to species in the natural world. He's here in half an hour with a fascinating story of what's in a name, why it's harder to change them than you might think, and why science needs to be connected with the world it lives and operates in. But we begin with acts of kindness at the end of a long smoky week in Nova Scotia. Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway and this is The Current.

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NOVA SCOTIA WILDFIRES

Guests: Shaun Hatfield, Sarah Dunsworth-Nickerson, Tina Simpkin

MG: Shelburne, Nova Scotia, is a town on edge. At the local fire hall, the parking lot is full. Some people are sleeping in their cars, others are camped inside the building. They're all from areas nearby that have been evacuated this week because of the fires. Sherri Alexander has been sleeping on a cot inside the gym of the fire hall since her seniors apartment was evacuated.

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SHERRI ALEXANDER: Two ladies asked me if I was by myself and trust me, I'm from Alberta. I don't have any family in Nova Scotia at all. So they said, here, you take him and he’s beautiful. I know I'm 70 years old playing with a stuffed animal and it's crazy, but I love it. Yeah, I don't know. It's an odd feeling when a total stranger comes to you and says, you know what, you need something to cuddle.

DORIS JACKSON: Our Lord Jesus is getting us through this year because we put our trust and our faith in him. But me and my husband is that a 93-year-old lady, we don't know her, she opened up her home to us.

HENRY JACKSON: We've never, never laid eyes on the lady before.

Doris and Henry Jackson and their poodle, Chloe, were forced from their home on Monday. They've been staying, as you heard, with a stranger that they met at the fire hall just a few kilometres away, Shaun Hatfield is a counsellor in Barrington, Nova Scotia, and a pastor at Southside United Baptist Church. He was also forced from his home earlier this week. Shaun, good morning.

SHAUN HATFIELD: Good morning, Matt.

MG: It's Friday. It's been a long week. How are you doing?

SHAUN HATFIELD: It has been a long week for all of us as a community. But the story that you just featured reminds me so much of the kind of stuff that's going on here in the municipality of Barrington, Matt. It’s so touching.

MG: So describe the kind of stuff as you say that's going on in the municipality of Barrington.

SHAUN HATFIELD: Well, just hearing the story that you introduced with, you have a family from Ontario who moves in a week ago or two ago, they don't even have their stuff unpacked. They bought a new home in the municipality of Barrington, and they've been given an evacuation order. And so they come to our local arena. I meet them and we get some lunch ready for them. It's a mom and a dad and four teenagers. You can imagine that. And they're sitting at the table and the mom is quite distraught. She's emotional. And what are we going to do? We bought hotels the whole way across the country. They're expensive. Besides, we can't get a hotel within 200 miles from the municipality of Barrington. Where are we going to go? What are we going to do? Just before she sat down to have lunch in her distraught condition, a man had come into our municipal arena and gave us a piece of paper and said, my wife and I have accommodation for five or six, four or five people. I go and get that slip of paper from the staff there and bring it back in and I say, if you call this number, I think you may find some good fortune. So she calls the number, and within the span of that phone call, her tears of anxiety turn into tears of joy. And she said, I can't believe this. This family has agreed to take us in. And so they go and stay with the family. I don't hear from them for a couple of days. And all of a sudden, the husband, Bruce, comes back to the municipal arena yesterday looking for me, and he's awash with emotion. He said this family in our community took them into their very home, into their kitchen and into, you know, to sleep in their bedrooms. And he's just awash with emotion. And he said, I can't believe how well we've been treated. And he's even given me employment. I just settled here. I was worried about employment. He's given me a couple of days work helping the men bring their pots in from the shore. And so they're just so grateful. And they said, you know, we found home. And so it's stories like that that are just so beautiful.

MG: It really tells you something about the part of the country you're in.

SHAUN HATFIELD: Yes. Hospitality. We're not only the lobster capital of Canada, but, well, one of our slogans here is hospitality at its best. And again, this family is just so overwhelmed and touched by the accommodation that's been made for them. It's just hard to find words to express that kind of human connection in times of crisis where people who are total strangers one day all of a sudden become friends and even lifelong friends, undoubtedly, for, you know, because of the experience that's brought them together.

MG: You've been put out of your home as well. Where are you staying right now?

SHAUN HATFIELD: I moved away from home 40 years ago and now, my wife and I are back home with my 82-year-old mom. You know, they always say you have to be careful that your children don't move back home and here we are. So we're very grateful to her and to have a place to go and to be able to help this week, other people find accommodation and the food that they need and the clothing that they need as well, because we have a 99-year-old man at the Arena in Barrington. He's been the head of the show out there. He's been splashing smiles on people's faces. And Donald Stocker, he's 99 years old and he said, I left, the Mounties came, said I had to leave, and I was just getting my morning coffee. He said, I figured I'd better get out before they came back. A fellow always wants to be ahead of the Mounties, he says. And so he comes to the arena just with the coat he's got on, the clothes he's got on and locked the door in the barn and left the property. And I spent some time chatting with him and I wrapped it up by asking him and saying, you know, what would you like to see happen after this is all over? And he said, well, all I'm looking forward is turning 100, you know. So there's a man that's chasing life and that's what our community is doing. In the midst of all this destruction and death to ecosystems and to animals and to property, we're chasing life out here. And I see it in a myriad of ways, by the way, that community has come together to care for and to love one another.

MG: I'll let you go, but as I said, it's been a long week and the hope is there's going to be some rain starting later today and maybe continuing through the weekend. When you look at the days ahead, what are you hoping for?

SHAUN HATFIELD: We've all been praying for rain all week and asking God to pour out rain because it's only a hose from heaven that can extinguish or kill this dragon of a fire. So we're hoping, all of us are hoping to get back home, those of us who have homes, but we also have a heart for those who may have lost their homes and we will rebuild. And I know that this community and God will give us beauty for ashes. Out of the ashes, we’ll rise up again and we'll rebuild what we have to rebuild because we are a community like that and we have a God like that that takes such good care of us.

MG: It is a very strong community. And in the midst of all of this, it's really heartwarming to hear the work that people are doing just to help each other out, people that they may not have met more than a moment before. And it's good to have you to talk about that as well. Shaun, thank you very much and good luck to yourself as well.

SHAUN HATFIELD: On behalf of my community, thank you to you as well, Matt.

MG: Shaun Hatfield is a councillor with the municipality of Barrington in Nova Scotia. He's also a local pastor.

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PETER SUTHERLEND: My name is Peter Sutherlend. I'm owner of Wild Blueberry Farms in Clyde River, Nova Scotia. Sunday morning, I went past my house. There was a spot fire that started by the highway and it was just smouldering and I went back to my blueberry farm and never thought nothing of it. This big smoke column was off toward Barrington within, I'd say two hours. All of a sudden, everything erupted closer to my blueberry field, so I knew that spot fire had come to life. So I went down to the lower field, moved my loader. I have a water sprinkler system like for watering the blueberries. So I was going to wet down my area and hold out and then a couple of Mounties come roaring down and heavy handed said, mandatory evacuation. You're to leave right now or we'll arrest you. They escorted me outside my gate, locked my gate and tied a yellow ribbon on it. That was the last I've seen of my blueberry farm. And then a day or so later, I’d seen a video of a fire truck going up the Upper Clyde Road, all burnt right up to my blueberry field, burnt right around. Yeah, you've got insurance, you know, but what I built up there, I’ll never get it back. You know, I want to go back and put my hands on. You know, it's what's hopeless, you know, when you can't go and do anything else.

MG: Peter Sutherlend is known as Blueberry Pete, one of about 16,000 Nova Scotians forced from their homes and their land. And as we were hearing, there is a groundswell of people stepping up to help those people. Sarah Dunsworth-Nickerson has been organizing some of that help. She's in Shelburne. Sarah, good morning to you.

SARAH DUNSWORTH-NICKERSON: Hi. Good morning.

MG: What's your week been like?

SARAH DUNSWORTH-NICKERSON: Hectic. It's been hectic. I don't even know what day it is. It's been busy. It's been heartwarming and scary and overwhelming I think is the word.

MG: Let's walk through some of that. Tell me what you've been doing and what's warmed your heart in there.

SARAH DUNSWORTH-NICKERSON: Well, Barrington is our neighbour. We love Barrington. They're part of our community and we're Shelburne. We're right next door. When we knew that the fires were happening in Barrington, everybody here is looking for a way to help. And so some people have organizations already set up, you know, the Red Cross. And those people are going into action, but the townspeople, we didn't know where to go. And it turns out that you just have to start doing something on your own because everybody's busy. You're trying to get a hold of the town. All the town councillors are busy. I mean, Cherry Dolan, our CEO, is literally out fighting the fire. And so a couple of people in a parking lot of the fire hall found an empty room and started taking donations. And a couple of days later, it turned into two free stores full of donated items for people who've been displaced.

MG: What's it like to see that? I mean, we were just listening to Shaun talk about what's happened in his community and what's happening in that centre where people who haven't met each other a moment before are turning their houses over to folks who are in need. What's it like for you to see this?

SARAH DUNSWORTH-NICKERSON: It's truly astounding. It's wonderful. I was saying to a friend, you know, we all talk about Facebook being blab, but it's been the thing now where everybody has Facebook groups because we don't have any cell service. We do now, but we didn't have cell service or Internet. So that was the way the community was keeping in touch. And you'll see people who started community groups and someone asked for something and the need fulfilled within minutes with multiple offers. And these aren’t small asks. These are I have two pregnant cats that need a foster. My dad and his dog need to drive to Yarmouth. And just seeing, you know, there's as many people willing to help, it seems, as need help. And so it's quite a feeling.

MG: People are good.

SARAH DUNSWORTH-NICKERSON: People are good. This is a wonderful place. This place, the people here have come out in droves. It's just… And Nova Scotia too. I mean, I look around and I saw my local Blanford fire department on in Mahone Bay. And it's just everybody from Nova Scotia has come out. And then, you know, from Canada, we can feel the help and the love. It's, sorry, it's really overwhelming. It's really great.

MG: You said it's scary as well. And I mean, I know that, again, that part of the world is just beautiful. Shelburne is just a lovely little town. And these fires keep popping up and it feels as though there is a lack of control because of the scale of what's going on. What's the scary part for you?

SARAH DUNSWORTH-NICKERSON: The scariest part for us is the nature of fire. It's that you can't predict anything. And so if you're familiar with the geographical area, we have some bodies of water separating us from Barrington. So the fire at one point would have had to travel in a pretty weird way to get over to Shelburne. But a couple of days ago, somehow, I don't like to say the fire jumped the harbour because it sounds like it's, you know, it's a person, but somehow, a fire started over on the Shelburne side. That was absolutely terrifying. Shelburne is terrified because we have so many people here seeking respite and refuge here. Where do we go if Shelburne sets on fire? So I think that's the terrifying thing, is that if we have to start relocating people who have already relocated, where are they all going to go? That's the scary thing. So just trying to hope that the firefighters can keep it under control and we can wait until rain, I guess.

MG: For people who are looking for help but they don't know kind of where to go, what would you suggest? What would you offer? Where can they find help?

SARAH DUNSWORTH-NICKERSON: So I think what I figured out about Nova Scotia is if you need help, you go to the fire department. And that's exactly what's happened here. At the fire department, the Red Cross is set up. We have one of the free stores in the back. What we're trying to do with the free store is just set people up with each other. So if somebody needs help, they could go to the fire hall, talk to any one of us there. We also have a place on Ann street. Pastor Ben has given us the Anglican Church, which is full of housewares and clothing. There's toys for kids. There's nice people to talk to. So people want to even just come and hang out. Those are two places that people can reach out to us. There's a dog rescue, hurt and soiled dogs set up on Water Street at the Remax there. They've got a lot of donations from Pet Value and Royal Canin and stuff. The Red Cross ladies act like these are all people you can reach out to and they can put you on to who will help you. I mean, that's, I think, the best way to do it. And we also have a Facebook group. It's the Shelburne NS fire assist free store and volunteers. So if anybody wants to reach out to us, we'll help you however we can.

MG: It's not something that anybody would want to go through, but what you have described in the way the people are helping each other out really is quite something. Thanks for talking to us and thanks for what you're doing. Sarah, Thank you.

SARAH DUNSWORTH-NICKERSON: I want to say I'm not really doing anything except talking about how amazing the people are in this town and it is truly home.

MG: I think you're being modest, but I'll take that.

SARAH DUNSWORTH-NICKERSON: All right.

MG: Take care of yourself.

SARAH DUNSWORTH-NICKERSON: Okay. Have a good one.

MG: Sarah Dunsworth-Nickerson is in Shelburne in Nova Scotia. Tina Simpkin is a CBC meteorologist in Halifax and we spoke on Monday morning just after the fires began. Tina, good morning to you.

TINA SIMPKIN: Good morning to you. Doesn't that put a smile on your face?

MG: It sure does. You know what else would put a smile on people's face is some rain. So I'm going to ask you to be a meteorologist and give us the forecast. Is there rain coming?

TINA SIMPKIN: Yeah, there is rain coming. In fact, there is rain falling, except the only bad thing right now is that it's not falling everywhere and it's not falling over areas that are engulfed in flames. But there are spotty showers and there's more rain in the forecast for tonight. We’re seeing a couple of systems coming together. So this is the really good news is there's about 10 to 25 millimetres of rain in the forecast for tonight with an additional five to 15 millimetres of rain tomorrow. And accompanying the rain, yes, we have some northeasterly winds, 20 at times gusting up to 50 kilometres per hour, but there's also some cooler temperatures. So that's going to help things out as well. So I think any wind that may be gusty from the northeast is really going to be offset by the rain that will be following as well. So some really good news that we have this weekend.

MG: Nova Scotia is a big province. And these fires are in a number of different regions, but I saw some photos yesterday from Halifax, just right from the CBC studio where you could see the smoke on the horizon right from there.

TINA SIMPKIN: Yeah. Well, there was another fire, a historic club. It's called The Waegwoltic Club in downtown Halifax, and that went up in flames yesterday. There was another forest fire not too far away from the city, within the city limits that had started. No word on either of the cause of those fires, but they were independent from the main fire that's going on in Tantallon and Hammonds Plains. So can you imagine what it's like to be a firefighter and trying to allocate resources in all these locations? Yesterday, we had record highs in the province. Most of the temperatures were in the lower 30s. The humidity was fairly low and the winds were high. So it was not a good situation yesterday for fires and lots of fires were sparking up.

MG: You end up talking about this story, but you're also part of the story. When I spoke to you on Monday, you and your family had been out of your home.

TINA SIMPKIN: Yeah.

MG: What do you know that has happened to the home, to the neighbourhood that you love?

TINA SIMPKIN: Yeah. Well, no one is still allowed into that neighbourhood. It's still blocked off. I don't have any official word on if my house is standing or not, but there have been some firefighters, some people that are in and posts on Facebook, and I'm kind of discerning that my home is still standing, but there's nothing official on that. I know from the Facebook messages that people are getting contacted by the Emergency Management Office and the Red Cross, notifying them if their home is burnt or not there. And so from one of my neighbours, they did tell me that their house was gone and they had been notified. So I think at this point, my house is still standing.

MG: But you don't know. And I mean, that's the thing is all these people who are out, 16,000 people and people may not know what's happened back home.

TINA SIMPKIN: That's exactly right. And I think there's a lot of frustration with that. And, you know, we work in news and we don't have the information because it's not coming here. And the only thing like Sarah was talking about, there's more information on the local Facebook pages. So my subdivision has a Facebook page and I've been getting information from people and they're posting where their homes are. They've been notified that it's been burned. So we're all discerning with the map where the path and where the swath is. So we're piecing together as a community what's going on. There's been some really sad stories there with pets left at home and they couldn't come back and get their pets. There's been really wonderful stories about people opening up their homes. I'm with family. I'm very lucky. I think I said that on Monday, so I have a place to stay. A lot of hotels in the region are of course very booked with everybody going to the hotels. But people are for the most part, from what I'm hearing, are housed in the community. So that's good and that's really positive.

MG: It's been a tough week. I hope you get a chance to catch your breath on the weekend and I hope that rain falls as hard as you say it is going to this evening.

TINA SIMPKIN: Yes. Yes. Yes. And, you know, you got to hand it to the firefighters that are out there that have been working non-stop, posting pictures of their blisters on their feet, you know, because they've been wearing these boots all week. So thankfully, they're out there and a lot of love to be shared for them.

MG: Take care of yourself and thanks again.

TINA SIMPKIN: My pleasure. Bye.

MG: Tina Simpkin is a CBC meteorologist in Halifax. Your CBC News is next. And then.

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ED YONG: It’s just a bunch of names. It doesn't really harm anyone, but try telling that to someone who can trace the calamity that befell his actual family to the actions of a man whose name now graces one of the birds that he loves and wants to see.

MG: There is a reckoning happening in the world of birding. Countless species are named after people who have done terrible things in the past. Changing those names isn't as easy as you might think. We'll talk about that with the great science writer Ed Yong in six minutes. I'm Matt Galloway. This is The Current on CBC Radio. Stay with us.

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ED YONG

Guest: Ed Yong

MG: Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway and you're listening to The Current.

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MARK MACKINNON: You hear a noise off in the distance. I can more or less tell you how many seconds we have. I don't know where it's going to land, but it's going to land in about six seconds, seven seconds.

MG: As war in Ukraine continues, I'll speak with a Canadian on the front lines as well as the journalist Mark Mackinnon in Kyiv as Russian airstrikes bombard that city. That's in just under half an hour. But we begin with a reckoning in birding.

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FEMALE SPEAKER: In 1905, the National Audubon Society was founded, an environmental non-profit dedicated to conserving birds and their habitats. And of course, our society is named in honour of the one and only John James Audubon, an ornithologist and naturalist who painted and catalogued the birds of North America in the 19th century.

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MG: The Audubon Society is highlighting its good works on behalf of birds. However, the namesake of that organization, John James Audubon, has a dark past that is now coming to light, and there is pressure on the group to change its name. This is part of a larger reckoning for ornithologists coming to grips with the uncomfortable history of the names that have been given to birds. Ed Yong is a science writer for The Atlantic and the author of a new article, The Fight Over Animal Names Has Reached a New Extreme. Ed Yong, good morning.

ED YONG: Hi. Good morning. Thanks for having me.

MG: Tell us a bit about John James Audubon. How important was he and is he to birding?

ED YONG: Yeah. I mean, he's a very, very renowned figure. It's not for nothing that his name graces the National Audubon Society. You know, it's almost synonymous with birds in America in painting these beautiful images of birds, of North American birds. You know, he contributed a lot to the nation's appreciation of its avian fauna. But his reputation, you know, once sterling, has taken a huge hit in the last decade or so for so many reasons. There are scientific problems. So he is being accused of scientific fraud, of wholesale making up a species of birds that doesn't actually exist and that contributed to his rise to fame. He's responsible for pushing out certain myths about birds like the ideas that they can't smell, which is not true, and withstood the test of time for a long time because of Audubon's terrible experiments. And mostly, I think the thing we're here to talk about today, he was also kind of a terrible human. He dug up the graves of many Native American people, stole their skulls and sent them to a physician named Samuel Morton, who used those skulls in studies aiming to prove that Caucasians were intellectually superior than other peoples. Morton's work was the foundation of the scientific racism movement, and Audubon helped him in performing that work through these grisly acts of body snatching. Those remains still have not been repatriated. And then, you know, more than that, Audubon was a slaver. He very much profited off the suffering and enslavement of other people. It's not just then the society that has to deal with the fact that their named after a slaver, a grave robber, a fraud, it's also the fact that several birds are named after Audubon. You know, there is an Audubon's Oriole, for example, and that's part of this reckoning. Is it right that these incredible creatures should bear the names of people who have committed atrocities? Is it right that those people should continue to be honoured in this way? And can we do something about that?

MG: What has been the response of the Audubon Societies to these revelations? Again, those societies have done really good work in terms of protecting habitat and enhancing knowledge and appreciation around different species of birds. How have they responded?

ED YONG: In varied ways. Several local chapters have changed their names. The National Society has not done that. Their board of directors just in March voted to keep their name on the grounds that it would, quote, allow the organization to direct resources and focus towards enacting the organization's mission. This debate is not about the quality of the work that the various Audubon related organizations have done. It is a question of whether they should continue using the name of a person who committed really horrible acts in a way that I think sends a message to black birders, to indigenous birders, to many other communities that have been poorly represented in this space and stand to have more representation at this pivotal time. There are many, many people who have their names stamped onto birds, and there are many of them who also did horrible things.

MG: When did you start to think about this? You mentioned online that you've been thinking about this idea of how things are named, what names are attached to them and whether we should rethink this. You've been thinking about this for a while. When did it start to run through your mind?

ED YONG: You know, I've been wanting to do the story for a long time, but there was that pesky pandemic that kept on diverting my attention. I wanted to do the story because I think I came to the same kind of realization that a lot of the people I talked to did for the longest time, these eponyms and animal names that come from humans were just, you know, names in a field guide. They were names I rattled off like Blaine Dillard's Beached Whale, Townsend Warbler. They were just identifiers. They were just labels. And a lot of this reckoning with where these names come from has really turned up in the last couple of years. And I think it has mirrored the racial reckoning that has swept across America and around the rest of the world. It has mirrored discussions about the legacy of science itself, the ties between Western science and colonialism and imperialism. I am really interested in science as a social and political force. It is not this neutral endeavour that it is often painted to be. It is deeply enmeshed in who we are as people and the values that we have. And this is a case where those values have been imprinted upon the natural world for us all to sort of learn and memorize. And I think a lot of people are rightly asking, could it be another way?

MG: One of those people is the indigenous birder Stephen Hampton. You start the piece talking about him and about the Scots Oriel, which is again one of those birds that, you know, you see in a field guide. You tell me a little bit about who Steven Hampton is and what he learned about the Scots Oriel.

ED YONG: Right. So Stephen Hampton is an indigenous birder. He's a citizen of the Cherokee Nation and he has been birding for over 50 years. For the longest time, Scotts Oriel was just a birding’s bird, its beautiful black and yellow bird. You'd be thrilled if you ever saw the details. But what Hampton learned was that the Oriole is named after a man named Winfield Scott, who was a general in the 19th century, and he led this campaign to dispossess the Cherokee people of their lands, this campaign of ethnic cleansing that removed them from their homelands, often with fatal results. So Scots soldiers rounded the Cherokee, looted their homes, separated their families, and a lot of them ended up travelling westward along what was then known as the Trail of Tears. And this is a very personal story for Hampton because dozens of his ancestors, including his great great grandfather, travelled along Trail of Tears. They were among the people who were pushed out of their homes by Scott and his soldiers. And it was one of those soldiers who named the Oriole after Scott in 1854. So, you know, here is a man with really no connection to birds at all. He's not a scientist, he’s not a bird lover. He's a military commander who oversaw the dispossession and ethnic cleansing of Steve Hampton's people. And so this is very personal for him. And I wanted to start the story with that anecdote because I think it says something powerful. There's often this feeling, I think, among critics of this movement that who cares? You know, it's just a bunch of names. It doesn't really harm anyone. But try telling that to someone who can trace the, you know, the calamity that befell his specific ancestors, like his actual family, to the actions of a man whose name now graces one of the birds that he loves and wants to see. It's very personal. And I think that that is, again, you know, one example, but I think you could make very similar links across the worlds, other animals and plants that bear the names of people who owned slaves, who killed indigenous people, who colonized lands belonging to indigenous people on behalf of Western nations.

MG: How were those names given out? I mean, is that representative of how those names were doled out, that the eponyms were applied because it was an honorific, this is a tribute to this person that somebody deemed to be often a great man?

ED YONG: Yeah, absolutely. That's often a point of confusion, I think. People in this movement have been accused of erasing history, and they would say that, so two things they would say, firstly, we only started this because we became aware of the histories of people like Scott and Audubon and others that have long been ignored. So it's actually paying attention to history that led to this call for change. And also, the names of themselves very ahistorical. Like I can actually see out my window right now, Anna’s hummingbird perched on a tree. Now, if I told you that, you would probably assume Anna was like maybe the person who discovered the hummingbird, right?

MG: Or learned something about it, taught us more about the bird, what have you.

ED YONG: Totally. Anna was a French courtier who was the wife of a French naturalist and probably never came to America and never saw hummingbirds. So most of these eponyms are bestowed as honorifics. They are ways of celebrating commanders, patrons often like benefactors. They are sometimes ways of honouring colleagues, other professionals in the field. Now, certainly with the latter, you might say, okay, fair enough. Like scientists work in these close knit communities, they get to honour their colleagues. I don't have a strong feeling about that argument, but you do get to these very, very insular old boys club networks. You know, people like Audubon and bird and Wilson and like all of these ornithologists from around the same time were naming birds after each other and you can just trace like circles where this happens. And it is also not coincidental that certainly in North America, a lot of these eponyms were assigned in the early 19th century. And you can just trace their periods with the westward spread of European settlers across the country. It is just a perfect recapitulation of the act of colonization. And I will remind everyone that these are animals that Native Americans have known for a very long time and had their own names for, and those names were displaced by a wave of eponyms given by people of European descent.

MG: The pushback to this, I mean, one of the things you've heard, as you said, is that people say you're erasing history if you do this. But the other pushback is that if you change the names of birds, if we don't call the Annas hummingbird the Annas hummingbird anymore, that it creates confusion, that people will have to relearn these names and it will require further efforts that perhaps people don't want to expend. Tell me more about how you understand those arguments against changing the names of birds that would be named after slave traders or racists or colonizers.

ED YONG: So I think there's two things to talk about here, because animals have two kinds of names. They have common names like Annas hummingbirds, they have scientific names. Those are the, you know, the often Latin ones in italics that are complicated. The common names, yes, people often say if you change the names, you know, your fields guides are going to have to change, people will have to relearn a ton of names, it won't be clear whether you are talking about the same animal. And I think that's a very weak argument. I sympathize with it a lot, but it is certainly the case that names do change all the time. You know, the American Ornithological Society has changed 100 plus names in the last century, often for reasons like wanting to get consistency between different sides of the Atlantic, animals might be reclassified. Names change and a lot of people who are used to these animals are used to the names changing. I think a lot of the birders who are part of this debate see it as actually a wonderful opportunity. Here you have a moment where whether you're a veteran birder like Steve Hampton who's been doing it for all their life, or you are someone like me who has actually just bought a pair of binoculars a few weeks ago and started to get into this pastime, you were on the same playing field, right? Now, you all have a bunch of new things to learn, and you can learn from each other in this very community minded kind of way. A man named David Allen Sibley I think puts this very well.

MG: Legendary birder and creator of field guides and more.

ED YONG: Right. You know, the Sibley Guide to Birds, I have it. Most of the people listening to this who are birders probably have it, right? David Allen Sibley, on a call from the American Ornithological Society, said that this is a choice. Firstly, he's not bothered. The man rights field guides. He knows that names change. But also, he said that this is a debate between stability and respect, respect for people whose ancestors were harmed by the actions of early ornithologists or the societies those ornithologists were part of and benefited from. And then a choice between stability and respect simply said, I've come down on the side of respect, and I think that's the right call. Now, scientific names are a little different. Scientific names are harder to change because there, stability really does matter. They are meant to allow for unambiguous communication across scientists so that every animal has one unique name and only one name. And if you use that name, you are absolutely sure that you are all talking about the same thing. Now, changing that requires going to this body called the ICZN, the International Committee for Zoological Nomenclature, and there's a process to go through. It's a very difficult process. No names have been changed on ethical grounds, even though, for example, there is a beetle named after Hitler, which seems like a very obvious candidate for a name change.

MG: So this is a fascinating part of this story and you have to stop there. You would think that if there's a beetle named after Hitler, people would say, you know what, we're going to change the name of this beetle. Why has this been so difficult? And in the difficulty in not changing that name, I mean, this has actually put this beetle at risk, right?

ED YONG: Yeah. This is a Slovenian cave beetle that had the misfortune of being named after Hitler in, I believe it was 1933. Yes, this beetle is very rare. It's found in Slovenian caves, and it is potentially threatened because of overenthusiastic Nazi memorabilia collectors. This is a very clear example. If you want to change a name, don't start talking about like changing hundreds of names. Why not just change this one name? And the reason why that hasn't happened, according to the ICZN president, is there's a few reasons. One is just it is not in their mandate. It's a bureaucratic reason. Like the ICZN follows a very specific code of how scientific names should be regulated. There is no provision in that code for changing names based on ethical grounds. So it's not that they don't believe in the ethical grounds, it's just that there is no process for doing so. Getting a process involves many layers of bureaucracy. They are a bunch of 26 scientists who are all volunteering in their spare time. They don't have the person power for this. I kind of get it, especially if we're talking about changing like hundreds of thousands of names, right? Like maybe 20% of all the scientific names or records are eponyms. It's a lot of work for 26 people who frankly have other things to do. So we're really starting to get into like pretty deep, you know, my hands are tied because of bureaucracy problems. And that feels like not the strongest argument, especially since even scientific names do actually change. They can change for reasons of grammar. They can change when species are reclassified. There is precedent for changing it. What matters then is which arguments you think are strong enough to warrant a change. And my view is if you think making like the Latin grammatically accurate is a strong enough reason, then grappling with science's dark legacy is a much, much better one.

MG: Just in the last few minutes that we have, let me ask you just a few more things. One is what's the better way forward then? If there's the opportunity perhaps to reinstate some indigenous names for birds and other animals, there's the possibility that you could have better names that actually describe the bird that we're talking about, what's the better way to move forward if we're looking to rename some of these species?

ED YONG: Yeah, a lot of people have suggested reinstating indigenous names and I think there's a lot of merit to that. It can be difficult. Like in North America, for example, a lot of birds range of a very large areas that cover the lands of many different indigenous groups. So whose names do you pick? But I think you can take a leaf out of what indigenous groups have done with their names. A lot of Indigenous names are beautifully descriptive. They might be double or even triple meanings. They might, you know, for a bird, they might be an onomatopoeia that describes the bird’s call, but also reflect something about its habitat or its behaviour or its appearance. These are names that respect the creature, and I think that's the key. A lot of people in this debate say eponyms honour a person and an animal's name is the wrong venue for doing that. These are not statues, they're not streets, they're not buildings. They are living things with their own histories, their own agencies, their own lives and their own works. Tying an entire species to one human individual, they argue, is wrong.

MG: And I guess just finally, I mean, that whole process speaks to what you said at the very beginning, which is how you see science in some ways, that science isn't this, you know, ossified forming concrete, it can't move, that it is a living discipline that is connected with society, not distant from society.

ED YONG: Absolutely. And that's beautifully put. I think that the way we do science reflects our values as people. And there may once have been a time, a time that continues today, where it seems completely natural to name an entire species after a single individual as a way of honouring them. And I think a generation of naturalists, of wildlife enthusiasts and of scientists are starting to say, hang on, is that okay? You know, is this the right way to respect the natural world? And they're arguing, no, no, it's not. And I think that that will lead to a change in how we do things.

MG: How's the birding going? New adventures in birding.

ED YONG: It's really good. I mean, last evening, a Cooper's Hawk probably, maybe a sharp-shinned hawk, I'm telling you, this just landed on the lamppost next to me. I had a beautiful morning walking through some redwoods carrying a pacific wren. If you've never heard a wren, if you’ve never heard one of these birds, it makes like the most complex songs of other birds, you know, sound like the Jaws theme. It's so beautiful. You know, like I said, I'm very new to this. A lot of birders talk about these sort of primal experiences that really hooked them, and then I wonder if that was mine.

MG: It is such a pleasure to talk to you about this. The story is fascinating, but it speaks to, in many ways, issues of our time that go well beyond how we name birds and how we think about birds. Ed Yong, thank you very much.

ED YONG: Yeah, thank you so much for having me.

MG: Ed Yong is a science writer for The Atlantic. He mentioned that pacific wren. And the first thing I thought of when he mentioned that was, what does that bird sound like?

SOUNDCLIP

[bird tweeting]

MG: Cats across the nation turning their heads toward the radio wondering what that is. That's a pacific wren. What do you think about the idea of renaming birds whose names are tied to dark parts of history and perhaps don't say anything about the birds themselves? Your thoughts are welcome. You can email us, thecurrent@cbc.ca. That sounded like spring, didn't it? Coming up after your regional update.

SOUNDCLIP

MARK MACKINNON: Yeah. And you can hear it getting louder and louder and it feels like it's coming towards you. And then the best ending, of course, is the explosion, which means it's been hit out of the air by Ukrainian air defences. Unfortunately, when you hit something like that out of the air, pieces of metal, burning metal falls to the ground and that has resulted in some injuries, some fires and a couple of deaths in the last few days.

MG: That's what it sounds like in Kyiv. Over the last few days, that city has been bombarded by Russian attacks for days and nights on end. The Globe and Mail's Mark MacKinnon is there now. He'll join me next. And I'll speak with a Canadian who has spent much of the last year on the frontlines in Ukraine. I'm Matt Galloway. This is The Current. Back in just 90 seconds. Stay with us.

[Music: Theme]

UKRAINE WAR UPDATES

Guests: Mark MacKinnon, Brandon Mitchell

MG: Hello again. I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

[drone sounds]

MARK MACKINNON: First, you hear a buzz like maybe you can hear in the background right now. It sounds like, the locals call them mopeds because they sound a bit like food delivery bikes flying through the air. There is one there.

[drone sounds]

MG: That’s a chilling description of a drone attack on Kyiv from yesterday's Globe and Mail podcast, The Decibel. The Globe's senior international correspondent Mark MacKinnon has been reporting on the war in Ukraine. But as you just heard, the battlefield now sounds like it's right outside his window. Mark MacKinnon joins us now from Kyiv. Mark, hello.

MARK MACKINNON: Hi, Matt.

MG: I was tucking myself into bed last night and I think you were being jolted out of your bed at the same time because you tweeted, loud again over Kyiv. What has it been like over the last few days and nights in that city?

MARK MACKINNON: It's been fairly sleepless. I mean, I think in the last six nights, we've only had one night where there were no Russian attacks overnight. And in addition to that, there was one attack during the day. And it's almost getting to be a bit of a pattern. If you manage to sleep well, you can sort of go to bed early ish. In my case, that’d be sort of 10 or 11:00 at night, not my usual bedtime. I really try and catch a few hours of sleep before the alarm sound, which usually happens around 2 a.m., and then depending on the type of incoming, whether that's the drones you heard in that clip, which usually take about an hour to reach Kyiv, or cruise missiles, which come a lot faster, then sometime after the siren, you start to hear the explosions. And thankfully, most of those explosions, almost 90% of them have been successfully Ukrainian air defence. Unfortunately, though, as I mentioned in the earlier part there, you know, even when they shoot something out of the sky successfully, bits of burning metal fall to the ground and people have died in Kyiv this week.

MG: Tell us about what happened because yesterday, I guess the attack in Kyiv was deadly in part because of that falling debris and the fact that people couldn't seek shelter, right?

MARK MACKINNON: Yeah. And this speaks to, you know, Ukraine has been through over the last year, 15 months, an incredible number of air raid sirens. At the start of the conflict when I was here, every time a siren sounded, everybody went running underground. But by one calculation, the first 365 days of the war, there were more than a thousand alarms. So you can imagine that. You know, humans can get used to anything. So you get used to having air raid sirens in your city at some point and it becomes something you just tend to ignore. And so a lot of the shelters that were available to Kyiv residents at the start of the war, frankly, it wasn't just this one. There are a lot of shelters in the city that are no longer operating because someone's supposed to show up and turn the key and they've got a bit blasé about it too. And people have stopped showing up at the shelter. They’ve stopped unlocking them. And so on Wednesday night, early Thursday morning, unfortunately, a young family was running to their local shelter in a district of eastern Kyiv and the shelter was locked. And while the husband of the family of three was running around trying to find someone to open the shelter, a Russian missile was shot out of the air by Ukrainian air defence and that half of a Russian missile effectively landed on a group of people who were waiting outside the shelter door. And three people died, including a nine-year-old girl.

MG: And so people have told you there's no reason to go to the shelter. When these attacks are unfolding over the last few days, what are people doing?

MARK MACKINNON: Well, most of us, frankly, the recording that you played, I made that from my bedroom here at the Globe apartment in Kyiv. And most of us just stay in your apartments. You try and move away from the windows, obviously. The rule of thumb is to put two concrete walls between yourself and the outside of the building. So in many cases, that's a bathroom or a corridor. And that, as imperfect as that is, that feels safer in a lot of ways than running. There’s subway shelters, to be clear. There’s a network of subway shelters in Kyiv that are still functioning every night as bomb shelters. But to get there from, for instance, from my apartment, means running several minutes under open skies. And you don't know necessarily what's coming and whether you have those few minutes. And also, not all of us can be jolted awake and immediately start running. It takes a few minutes to sort of get your wits about you, realize, you know, what you're supposed to do, gather maybe a bag of things together. So it feels like you don't have time for that, frankly. And so people tend to just go into the corridors, into the bathtub or whatever feels safest for them. But others, often people with young children are trying to sort of stick to a routine. So when the alarm goes, we go into the basement or we go into the shelter. And a lot of it's often families who are caught out in the open sky.

MG: As you understand it, I mean, what's the Russian objective in targeting Kyiv in the way that it is? This is a city that has largely been seen to be safe relatively compared to, you know, perhaps other parts of the country. What's going on right now? What is Russia trying to do?

MARK MACKINNON: It's hard to understand from a sheer sort of economics or mathematical perspective or a military strategy perspective because they are flowing in vast amounts of expensive technology, military technology at Kyiv almost every night these days, and very little of it is getting through to its target. It's having no impact on the ground in terms of the frontlines in eastern and southern Ukraine. So the only sort of background that you can put this against is that the Ukrainian military, for several weeks now, everyone has been anticipating that they're going to launch a major counteroffensive using these new weapons that the Western allies, including Canada have given to them, sophisticated tanks, sophisticated rocket launchers. And there's a sense that the Russian offensive in places like the Donbass region has stalled and now it's Ukrainians turn to try and launch a counterattack. And so that's the context here. Now, what Russia's trying to achieve, whether it's trying to show that if you raise the stakes, we can raise the stakes, whether it's intended as some sort of message to Ukraine's allies in the West to sort of hold back Ukraine from trying to retake Russian occupied territories, it's hard to discern, but that is certainly the background here, is there's a sense that Ukraine's about to go on the offensive and Russia is upping the ante, not just with these nightly attacks on Kyiv, but also by moving nuclear weapons into neighbouring Belarus for the first time since the end of the Cold War.

MG: There's also been these drone attacks on Moscow. What's going on there?

MARK MACKINNON: This is a very interesting development because for the past 15 months, most of Russia, almost all of Russia has felt very, very far away from the frontline. And I lived in Russia for a few years in the early 2000s, and I have friends there and contacts there. And frankly, their lives have been largely unchanged by this war 800 kilometres away, a thousand kilometres away to the far eastern border of Ukraine. These drone attacks, obviously, there's an element of revenge. Ukrainians who have been unable to sleep because of the attacks on their country, the attacks on their city, take obvious delight in seeing the same thing happening in Russian cities, especially in Moscow, the heart of Mr. Putin's regime. But yeah, I think that's very psychological. Again, none of these drones are doing much damage, but it's bringing the war to Moscow, raising the stakes for Mr. Putin, showing that he's not invulnerable, but also, you know, making the Russian population hopefully think about this war that they seem to broadly support.

MG: Is that war spreading, do you think? There have been attacks on Russia just beyond Ukraine's border as well. So broadly, what's going on, do you think?

MARK MACKINNON: I think there is an attempt here to, so the attacks you mentioned were carried out in the neighbouring Belgorod region, which is just across the border from Ukraine’s eastern Kharkiv region. And these were carried out by two units of Russian citizens fighting on the Ukrainian side under the control of Ukrainian military intelligence. And so these strikes into Russian territory are meant to yes, to bring the war on to Russian soil. I also think this may be, and this is speculation, but preparations again for the same counter offensive that we were just talking about. By showing that the Russian border in places like Belgorod is poorly defended, you're forcing the Russian military to move units around from the frontline in eastern and southern Ukraine where most of the Russian military is deployed to start defending places like Belgorod that have been sort of poorly defended until now. Evidently, that spreads the Russian deployment along the more active frontlines even thinner, and perhaps creates an opportunity for this counter-offensive that everyone's expecting.

MG: We'll let you go shortly, but just in the last minute or so that we have, how much is at stake in terms of what happens over the next few weeks and months with that counter-offensive, but also with what we've been talking about when it comes to Kyiv and to those drone attacks in Moscow?

MARK MACKINNON: There's a sense that this counteroffensive is going to be a very important moment. Obviously, there is, you know, there's the military component and how much land, if any, can Ukraine retake? Can they punch a hole in the Russian defences? And there's the psychological element as well and just sort of the people here have been through 15 hard months. When a place like Kharkiv or Kherson gets liberated, it lifts spirits. Obviously, it helps the government of President Zelensky's popularity as well. But also, there's an element of needing to deliver to show Ukraine's allies in the West that these weapons that have been supplied are effective and that the strategy of arming the Ukrainian military works and can lead to Russia being pushed back, can lead to Ukrainian victory and therefore they should keep doing it. Because if the counteroffensive stalls, doesn't work, doesn't happen, then the question becomes, okay, how much, you know, are we feeding a stalemate and does that make any sense?

MG: And does that impact the morale at home as well in Ukraine?

MARK MACKINNON: Absolutely. I mean, people here have, you know, everybody talks about we'll do this after the victory. We'll celebrate after the victory. Everybody is, you know, focussed on the idea that this is a winnable war, that Ukraine is winning. It's important to demonstrate domestically as well that this is going in a positive direction. This isn't going to be an endless war. You don't have to contemplate whether you want to live your whole lives, your children's lives under these kind of attacks. There is an end point even if it's not, you know, in 2023, but we're working towards an end point. That's obviously very important for people's morale.

MG: Mark, thanks for this. Take care of yourself.

MARK MACKINNON: Thank you, Matt.

MG: Mark MacKinnon is the Globe and Mail's senior international correspondent, and he was in Kyiv. When Brandon Mitchell was 17 years old, he joined the Canadian Armed Forces in New Brunswick. He was a reservist, but his time in the military just lasted a few years. He'd never gone to a conflict zone or fought in a war. His life took another turn and he ended up in Europe, living in Sweden as a stonemason. But when Ukraine was invaded by Russia last spring, Brandan felt he had to go and help. And that's where he spent most of the last year, on the frontlines in Ukraine. He's on a break now. He's with me in our studio in Toronto. Brandon, good morning.

BRANDON MITCHELL: Good morning. Thank you very much for having me here today, Matt.

MG: Thanks for being here. Begin at the beginning. Why did you decide to volunteer to go to Ukraine?

BRANDON MITCHELL: Well, on the third day of the war, Mr. Zelensky asked for volunteers. By the fifth day of the war, I made a decision. I internalized that I would go and help. I didn't know what I would do. I have no combat experience, but I knew I had to help. I thought maybe there would be a man in his 70s, maybe if I was lucky enough to live longer than that, that a man incomplete, somebody that would wonder, what could you have done? I'll never ask myself that question.

MG: And you decided within a couple of days that you would go.

BRANDON MITCHELL: Yeah, I did.

MG: I mean, people could help in any number of ways. And we'd spoken with a lot of people in Ukraine who found themselves helping in various ways. You know, not all of them are going to the frontlines. Why did you feel like that was the thing that you could do, that was the contribution that you could make?

BRANDON MITCHELL: You know, I went there with an open mind of humility. It's very relevant to me. I'm a member of the 12-step program. I'm what you call a recovering addict. I celebrated 11 years clean and sober in Bakhmut in January.

MG: Congratulations.

BRANDON MITCHELL: Thank you. I went there with a complete open mind to help. I learned over a year from 26 on, I was a bit of a bad boy before. I learned a lot about community service. Now, doing the right thing for the right reason, I've had to learn that. That wasn't raised into me. That wasn't inherent. I got asked to join the medical battalia and that was my chance to help.

MG: What did your family and friends say?

BRANDON MITCHELL: My Auntie Jennifer is my mother and I was very scared to go. I called her up on about the seventh day of the war, eighth day of the war, and I told her that I would go help somehow. And I cried my eyes out and I told her I wanted her to be proud of me. And she told me she was proud of me in everything I've done in my life. And then I wasn't scared anymore.

MG: So where did you go? Explain how this works. You decide you're going to volunteer. And we met people in Poland who were travelling from all over the world who were going in to fight. They were volunteers as well. Where did you go?

BRANDON MITCHELL: Well, it all started on the Internet. I was put into a chat group, an app called Signal, and there was over 150 people there. They talked about going next week, next month, next year, next life. I lived in Sweden. There was five of us that made an agreement to meet each other in Krakow. That was the 14th of March, and we crossed over on the 16th.

MG: Did you know what you were going to do when you crossed the border into Ukraine?

BRANDON MITCHELL: Not at all.

MG: I mean, I ask you this in part, I said that you were a reservist, but you were only in the military for a few years.

BRANDON MITCHELL: Four years. I told the boys I went with combat medics. One was a nurse. They'd been to Afghanistan. They were fresh out of the army. They got offered to join Hospitalus, a combat medical battalia, a non-paid volunteer battalia. They asked me if I wanted to come with them. And compared to them, I was scared I wouldn't stack up. And they said, no, we like you. You're good. And I made the choice to go with them. And we went to Kyiv and signed up our battalia.

MG: So what was the training? Again, you have no experience really in this.

BRANDON MITCHELL: No. None.

MG: What was the training that you were provided with so that you're not just thrown into a war zone as a medic in an important role, so that you're thrown in with some skills?

BRANDON MITCHELL: During the Battle at Kyiv, we lived in a very prominent church called St. Michael's. We lived in the basement there. I was put on a course for about 10 days. They had nothing in English. It was all in Ukrainian. There was an American nurse who was very inspirational to me. Her name's Rebecca. She created an English language syllabus for training for us. For 10 days, I learned everything about tactical medicine, controlling bleeding, controlling air ways, to handle the casualty, to transport a casualty. There's different stages of care. I think that was 10, 12 hours a day.

MG: What is it that people who haven't been there don't understand about what you were involved in and what you saw?

BRANDON MITCHELL: Well, it shook a lot of my understandings. There's people there who never chose the military. They never chose this war. There's amazing people in Ukraine we don't have, the typical person who joins the army. There's people, cosplayers, IT workers. This does not compute with NATO’s big, strong man. And they're there too. Do you want to serve or not? Some people ran, some people stayed.

MG: You mentioned that you spent time on the frontlines. You were in Bakhmut.

BRANDON MITCHELL: I spent nine months in Donbas, mostly Soledar and Bakhmut.

MG: What was it like being there on the frontlines? People know the names of these cities because of the carnage that has unfolded there and what has been left, if anything, of those cities. What was it like to be there?

BRANDON MITCHELL: It's really calm until it's not. Northeast of the town of Soledar, that's the majority of my war in one place. I spent a month in hospital. I got blown up by a Russian minefield.

MG: What do you mean blown up by a Russian minefield?

BRANDON MITCHELL: I drove over two Russian anti-personnel mines to evacuate people out of that town. I've done army evacuations of wounded soldiers to an ambulance or to Bakhmut hospital. Whatever the scenario required, my biggest fear was that when I would get them to the ambulance point and I had to go again, I was scared that I'd get scared, that I wouldn't do the right thing, that I would freeze in fear and I wouldn't drive forward again.

MG: Can you go back to, you said you spent a month in hospital.

BRANDON MITCHELL: Yeah.

MG: What happened? What were the injuries that you suffered in this?

BRANDON MITCHELL: Well, during the day, working on the Russian side of Soledar, driving through is quite hectic. It was coming towards Night-Time. We were essentially making our last run to get civilians out. We got nine on the previous run. There was four children. My car drove over two anti-personnel mines, not vehicle mines. Every glass and component was shattered. I remember a brief sensation of heat, a yellow flame. I didn't know it at the time, but one of the pieces of glass pierced my right eardrum and went in quite far. I've lost most of my hearing in my right here. I suffered what I'm told is a traumatic brain injury. And I had a brief period of something called blast lung where your capillaries will bleed.

MG: How are you doing now?

BRANDON MITCHELL: I do have cognitive decline and some days were worse than others. I would catch myself slurring my words or walking funny. Eventually, I think it's changed my personality. I'm much shorter with my words. That's what my brain works like now. It can do everything, just a little bit slower.

MG: Do you regret at all going?

BRANDON MITCHELL: No. Never. Not at all.

MG: You answered that immediately.

BRANDON MITCHELL: Yes. Well, you don't know what I know. You know, you haven't seen the people. I've got friends there, you know.

MG: You’ve said we in Ukraine a few times.

BRANDON MITCHELL: Yes, we.

MG: What affection and what tie do you feel for that country and to that country now?

BRANDON MITCHELL: Many people often say to me, I'm so proud a Canadian is over there. I feel represented. I'm not proud to be Canadian. I'm grateful. I'm proud of my friends. I'm proud of my work there. And if somebody wants to be grateful for what we're doing there, that's more appropriate to me. So yeah, I do have a sense of pride. I've seen some things that people shouldn't see. I've seen people do things that they never thought they were capable of doing.

MG: What do you want Canadians to know about this war? It's grinding on and there does not seem to be any resolution to this, no end to this conflict in sight. For people who are watching this from here, again, knowing what you know, what do you want us here to know?

BRANDON MITCHELL: I want Canadian people, if they choose to support us, thank you. But certainly don't oppose us. And I might not like everything that our government does or America does, but I would say it's infinitely better than the alternative. And right now, for Canadian money, government policy, certainly America's, it's costing them nothing but money. I can't appeal for the Ukrainian people. I'm not Ukrainian, but they deserve better.

MG: Are you going to go back?

BRANDON MITCHELL: Yes, sir. Next month.

MG: And for how long?

BRANDON MITCHELL: I don't know. I didn't go there assuming anything. I'm just going to do the best I can.

MG: Be safe. And I'm glad you're here and glad to have the opportunity to talk to you. Brandon, thank you very much.

BRANDON MITCHELL: It's been an honour. Thank you very much for having me.

MG: Brandon Mitchell is originally from New Brunswick and spent the last year as a medic on the frontlines in Ukraine.

[music]

REFEREE MAIL

MG: This is The Current on CBC Radio and the CBC Listen app. My name is Matt Galloway. Earlier this week, we spoke about referees facing verbal and sometimes physical abuse particularly in amateur sport. Many of those referees are teenagers, and many sports organizations say the abuse has become so bad that sports clubs can't keep enough refs. I spoke with Adrian Tanjala. He's a soccer referee in Toronto.

SOUNDCLIP

ADRIAN TANJALA: I wear glasses right now. I wear them on the field. And oftentimes, that leads to a lot of implications that I'm blind, I can't see. I've been called four eyes from adults, and I think that's incredible. The last time I was called four eyes before that, I was 10 years old in the school yard, right? So this is school yard bullying behaviour, but it's coming from adults and importantly, it's coming from parents.

MG: He also told a story of being chased out to his car after making one specific call by some of those parents. Next month, Ontario Soccer will begin outfitting some of their referees with body cameras. Karin Marley, senior producer here at The Current, is with me in studio with some of your reaction to this story. Karin, good morning.

KARIN MARLEY: Good morning, Matt. So the first letter is from Jenny Hunter, who says, “My three children play a variety of sports, from dance to soccer to triple A hockey. My experience has been that all parts of the sport are negligent when it comes to accountability. Parents, coaches, players and referees need to be held accountable for behaviour and for letting games get out of hand. I've seen hockey games become dangerously violent, sometimes refs not making calls in an effort to let the game clock run so the arena schedule doesn't get too far behind. I've seen coaches using profane language at children, refs and other parents.”

MG: Katherine Tate writes, “I recall attending many hockey games when my son was 10 to 14 years old. The referee called an offside or something. The spectators went wild, calls of Can't you see? You must be blind. Sad to say I joined in, swept along by the mob feeling. Fortunately, one of the parents stood up and shouted at us, what do you think you're doing? That ref is a child and is doing his best. Sit down and watch the game. We all sat down feeling very sheepish. How grateful I felt toward that parent who had the nerve to make us see ourselves. Mob mentality is very contagious. Ever since then, I've been very cautious when there's a crowd.”

KARIN MARLEY: It's a really interesting perspective.

MG: Yeah.

KARIN MARLEY: Good to hear that honesty. So Sinead Holstein writes, “I used to ref soccer until I was 17 or 18. That was 20 years ago. I refereed fairly high level, including some local men's games. At 16, I was reffing an under boys, under 12 boys provincial gold medal game and had the male coach and a dad of one team tell me that they were going to find me in the parking lot after the game. I threw them both out. I then had to have a meeting with the Ref Association and was told I overreacted because I should have known they weren't actually going to follow and hurt me despite both men saying they would. I feared for my safety on more than a few occasions reffing youth soccer, but never the men's games. It's heartbreaking that 20 years later, we are still having this conversation.”

MG: David Fielding had this suggestion. “At the start of every game, our players should line up, bow to each other and shake hands. Prior to this, the parents and coaches of the opposing team should meet, bow and shake hands. Immediately before and after the game, the spectators should respect a moment of silence in which they bow to the referees.”

KARIN MARLEY: And this is from Mike Stuart. “I'm a soccer parent to players and refs and have coached. Refereeing is a terrific way for teens to gain leadership experience, truly one of the best aside from coaching. It does come with these drawbacks that have been mentioned and I have seen parents and coaches challenge refs in their early teens in unfair ways. Clubs play an important role in changing the culture of their parents. There are parent meetings and player contracts that are signed and parental behaviour with refs, including coaching from the sidelines can be addressed here. Moreover, the home team can also assign a field marshal. At a tournament held this past weekend in Ottawa, I was the head field marshal and one of the primary duties of the marshal is to ensure the ref is protected from heckling.”

MG: Very interesting and some interesting suggestions and as you said, honesty as well. Karin, thank you very much.

KARIN MARLEY: You're welcome.

MG: Karin Marley, senior producer of The Current. If there's anything you hear on the program that you'd like to comment on, do get in touch. You can email us, thecurrent@cbc.ca. That is The Current for this Friday. Q is next on CBC Radio One. We were talking earlier about birds and birding. We’re going to leave you with some music from the musician and avid birder Jarvis Cocker. Here’s Jarvis Cocker and his band Pulp and The Birds in Your Garden. I'm Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening. Have a great weekend. We'll see you on Monday.

[Song: “The Birds in Your Garden” by Jarvis Cocker]

Friday June 2, 2023 Episode Transcript

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