Homeless people face risk of fire, or frostbite, as temperatures plunge

Guests: Nicole Mucci, Sarah Rehou

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I generally don't sleep at night. I just have naps here and there and I just check on people and I do have a few can sit up just like so cold so cold. There's a gentleman that just lost nine toes because of the weather.

MG: That's Alicia Peltier, just one of several dozen people living outside in tents and under tarps in Prince George, British Columbia. This week, temperatures in that city are hitting as low as -44 with the wind chill. And the frigid weather is forcing many who live on the street to grapple with a tough decision. Risk injuries by starting a fire to stay warm or get frostbite. Earlier this week, our producer Anne Penman joined Dave Ham with the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users on East Hastings Street in the Downtown Eastside to talk about how they manage fire risk with dropping temperatures.

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VOICE 1: Hey, guys. How are you doing? Not too bad. thanks. So we're gonna see Crystal. She's been one of the fire captains on the block. So she's one of the people that we have fire extinguishers with. And so people know that she has that if they need it and. They're trying to make it to the city and the fire department pays for the fire extinguisher kits. We've bought some during the programme that we had with the city, but now that funding is gone, so we're kind of sitting in a spot where we can really afford the fire extinguishers. Hey, Crystal. She's not home? And that's that's that's how bad it is [unintelligible].

VOICE 2: Hi.

VOICE 3: Hi. I think I've [unintelligible] and heater. Heater. That's it. I can't move around much because I'm in a wheelchair, so I sit in bed and cover up with blankets.

VOICE 2: Do you have the propane on all the time?

VOICE 3: Yeah. Now, that night, though. Night time, I shut up in the sleep because of fires. Because I wath for fires. So. But during the day I have it done. You know, a lot of propane and how to handle it.

VOICE 2: Where you'd rather be?

VOICE 3: Inside.

VOICE 2: And there's no hope of that right now?

VOICE 3: No. So...

VOICE 2: Sorry.

VOICE 3: Yeah. That's okay. Yeah.

MG: Yesterday we spoke with Captain Matthew Trudeau, the public information officer for Vancouver Fire Rescue Services, about the situation on Vancouver Vancouver's Downtown Eastside.

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We've seen a record number of fires, outdoor fires in the area, and obviously really concerning for the people who are sleeping and sheltering inside of these tents, just creating a very significant risk inside for igniting combustibles, igniting any kind of flammable or combustible liquids inside. We're seeing extensive uses of generators, propane tanks in open flames with these colder temperatures inside tents making a very dangerous situation. We have reported many injuries right now. This past weekend, we had several tent fires. We did have an individual who had a butane device explode right in front of his face, burning his face hands. So we are seeing those injuries as results directly from the cooler temperatures and people trying to stay warm. Our our fire prevention staff, our fire crews are out daily. And any open flames is being extinguished. We are providing people who are in tents with areas in information for shelter locations and for warming centres which are open throughout the night and throughout the day. Across the city.

MG: From Toronto to Winnipeg to Edmonton, there have been more fire incidents than usual at homeless encampments so far this winter. Nicole Mucci is with the Union Gospel Mission in Vancouver. Good morning, Nicole.

NICOLE MUCCI: Good morning. How are you?

MG: Well, I'm well. And I tell you, this is one of these stories that puts holiday stress into perspective. Tell me it's been bitterly cold few days out in Vancouver. We've watched the snow, the dropping temperatures. We just heard from a woman in a wheelchair with a propane tank to heat her tent. Tell us, what did it look like last night for people living in tents on the Downtown Eastside?

NICOLE MUCCI: Well, we had another bitterly cold night last night with a compact snow, black ice. And really, one of the things that we know, our community members who weren't able to access shelter were dealing with was having to make the difficult choice between potentially getting frostbite or hypothermia or trying to stay warm by lighting fires or lighting candles. And neither of those options are good at union gospel mission. We're doing our best to try to keep people indoors and safe. But the reality is, is there's not enough space for everybody who needs it.

MG: Yeah. So tell us more about that. I mean, what what is the general plan in Vancouver when temperatures go below zero to keep people from freezing on the street?

NICOLE MUCCI: So the city of Vancouver operates emergency warming activated shelters once it hits about minus one and then once it hits negative five, they have warming centres that open up. However, the reality is, is that it can be dangerous before those temperatures hit with freezing rain. And when our community members are faced with consistent exposure to elements, they're not always able to dry off fully. They have weakened immune systems overall. And then when we're looking at this extreme cold that many, many folks, not just those who are experiencing homelessness, but everybody in Metro Vancouver isn't really used to the danger increases exponentially.

MG: Yeah, as we mentioned, this is a problem that extends beyond Vancouver, beyond B.C. and in Edmonton, for example, temperatures have dropped to below 30 and 40 degrees. We spoke to Lawrence Braun Woodberry. He's the director of the Bissell Centre in downtown Edmonton. Take a listen.

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From my office in downtown Edmonton, I have seen four different tent fires. These fires result in pillars of smoke rising high in the sky. Just last week, we had a fire in encampments just outside of our building. That fire resulted in the explosion of propane tanks. And the melting of a nearby car doors front panel. Very fortunately, nobody was hurt. And and there was very little property damage beyond the vehicle. However, these these are common fires are very scary and put in a lot and put a lot of people in great risk. There have been five confirmed deaths in a cabin fires in Edmonton in 2022 and 65, fires that Edmonton's Edmonton's fire service has responded to. Well.

MG: Well, the Bissell Centre is developing a partnership with Fire Services in Edmonton to distribute things like handheld extinguishers and and sand to these encampments. But in Vancouver we just heard from a man talk about funding for fire extinguishers being cut, which happened over a dispute with the city. So Nicole, what are the city's fire officials doing to help mitigate risks?

NICOLE MUCCI: From what we've seen, the fire department is often out there during the day talking to folks, encouraging them to seek shelter indoors, letting them know that they are able to help them get to where they want to go. But like you've said, unfortunately, that funding has been cut and there are less fire extinguishers available. And a lot of that burden is now on the community members to do their best to try to protect one another.

MG: Okay, Nicole, sit tight. I'd like to bring in Sarah Rehou, who into the conversation. She's the senior research coordinator at the burn unit at Hamilton Health Sciences, who has done with the has working with the homeless population. Sarah, good morning to you.

SARAH REHOU: Good morning. When temperatures are having me.

MG: Well, thanks for being on the on the programme. So tell us when temperatures drop below freezing, what options to homeless people have in Toronto and Hamilton to try to stay warm?

SARAH REHOU: So, I mean, unlike Vancouver, where I believe the number I mentioned was minus one, in Toronto, actually it's -15 degrees is when is when warming centres open. So that's something we're actually trying to get change because like the person before was mentioning, there's so many things that exposure of risk of injury that can occur. So for example, frostbite, not being able to dry off to sitting around in wet socks, then you get risk of injury, you lose toes, lose limbs, that kind of thing.

MG: But it's interesting and you point that out, that in Vancouver, it's, you know, minus one is when you're activating these these warming centres. And in Toronto, it's it's -15 or colder. Why the discrepancy?

SARAH REHOU: That's a great question, and I'd like to know the answer to as well. I know that in Toronto, that -15 number was chosen in the 1990s, and they based that on the weather conditions during which three unhoused people died in 1995. Average minimum winter temperatures in Toronto and some severe winter weather conditions and a sample size of three is just far too low to make a scientifically grounded decision, especially when there's so much research out there that demonstrates the risks of hypothermia at temperatures that are less than ten degrees or even less than minus five degrees.

MG: And we asked the city of Toronto for a comment. They wrote in part that warming centres are activated when an extreme cold weather alert is called by Toronto's medical officer of health. Based on a forecast from Environment Canada of mighty of -15 degrees or colder windchill of -20 or colder. But yet we've pointed that out. And sir, as you're saying, that's just not good enough. Well, it paints a picture of what you've seen at the burn unit when it comes to the homeless population in this decision is with we've talked before but between the risk of fire and the risk of frostbite.

SARAH REHOU: At the burn centre over the last number of years. I think we see a range of things. Far most common I think is frostbite injuries and especially those people for different reasons might not want to come to hospitals and sometimes we'll wait it out a little bit longer and it gets worse. It gets worse, and then there's not much you can do by the time that they come to hospital. And so that's what you kind of see with frostbite and then with flame injuries. You see some minor, minor ones. And of course, unfortunately, you see the big the big burns that come in as well.

MG: Nicole, from your perspective in Vancouver, you've been working on the Downtown Eastside for years. How often have you seen this where people are getting hurt from the fires set that they're using just to to to stay warm?

NICOLE MUCCI: It's consistent. And that's where the issue lies, is that we know that winter comes every single year. And like Sarah stated, the dangers don't change. And in fact, they are there. Once you had any anything below freezing where folks can experience both frostbite or burns from fires. We actually had a tent go up in flames just this weekend at an encampment at Cub Park in 2021 in North Vancouver. Just on the other side of the bridge, a woman lost her life, unfortunately, due to trying to stay warm and lighting a fire, lighting some candles in her tent. Every year, every winter since I started at Union Gospel Mission. Somebody from our community has tragically lost their lives due to fires and encampments and trying to stay warm. And the reality is, is that people shouldn't have to choose between potentially, you know, having dangerous and serious injuries due to frostbite or hypothermia or putting their lives at risk to try to stay warm.

MG: Sarah, I know you've worked with outreach workers and those living on the street to create a fire safety manual specific to encampment living. Tell us, what did you learn as you were developing this, this, this manual?

SARAH REHOU: I learnt a whole lot of things, to be honest. And starting from the beginning, from the conception of the manual, the most important thing was to involve people who have lived experience because they are the ones that are knowledgeable about what it's like living outside, what kind of fire hazards they see, tips and tricks and that kind of thing. So that was first and foremost and some things that I was surprised about or because I'm unfortunately housed and I just didn't do something that way. And in general, it was a refresher thing for me about fire safety.

MG: And Sarah, from your perspective, I mean, are people are they aware of the danger that they are facing when when they are having these fires in these encampments?

SARAH REHOU: I think generally, yes. But like those mentioned earlier, people are forced to make a choice of. Survival as either your freezing or potentially getting a brain injury. That's really what it comes down to. So the fire safety man was really about trying to mitigate these risks. And those situations might not always be ideal. You just try to make it safer.

MG: Yeah. And I guess the message that we're hearing over and over again is that people want to be inside. So they call. Give me your perspective. And in from Vancouver, [unintelligible], you're expecting more extreme cold this week. So how many people are you turning away from your shelter each night and where do they go?

NICOLE MUCCI: So what we have actually seen since the beginning of 2021 is that on average we are having to turn away around six people a night and on the nights when it's not technically cold enough or the warming centres to be open. So it might be below minus one, but not quite feel like minus five. Those are the nights when we have a massive turn away as earlier during the polar vortex in January 2022. On our worst night, we turned away close to 40 people because we simply didn't have the space. Over the last few nights, we have done our absolute best to try to make extra space and keep people inside because we just simply cannot send folks back outdoors if they don't have what it takes to be safe or if we aren't able to find them. A warming centre. And the need in Vancouver is so vastly outpacing what's available in terms of support services for folks who are unhoused that the rest of this winter looks really dangerous.

MG: Hmm. Well, and let's have a reality check here, as pointed out. Winter is nothing new in Canada, nor is homelessness. So how do we find ourselves in this situation? Are there some cities, Sara? Are there some cities out there that are doing a good job of trying to mitigate the risks of fire for people who are homeless or or who are doing a better job of getting people indoors during the winter.

SARAH REHOU: I think every city can definitely be improved upon. But in terms of fire safety risk, like in Vancouver, with handing out fire extinguishers and understand the funding might have been cut for that and think that- sorry, in Winnipeg they're handing out fire barrels, so barrels where you can actually start the fire in them that we contained. You can gather around the fire and keep warm that way instead of, you know, sometimes what people do is that they might start a fire inside their tent. That way they can stay warm, but also hide the fire from people who might be walking by and report it. And of course, that's just super dangerous, right?

MG: Right. Nicole, this is the time of year when people draw up their wish lists of things that they'd love to see, loved to get or start thinking ahead to the new year. What would you like to see happen so people aren't forced to choose between frostbite and dangerous fires to stay alive?

NICOLE MUCCI: I think if we could create a wish list, the top thing on our wish list for Metro Vancouver and really across the nation would be more housing, more supportive housing, because this isn't a one time issue that we're looking at. Homelessness is ongoing, it's been increasing, and the lack of affordable, supportive housing options for individuals who are unhoused just simply isn't there. There isn't the same kind of supply as there is the amount of individuals and their lived experience should speak into what these housing supports could look like. In B.C., they recently announced that 90 more units of supportive housing will be coming available in March. And while that's a wonderful start, we really hope to see more because at the end of the day, we can provide as many mitigation tactics as possible to individuals. But what we know would ultimately keep them away from the risk of frostbite or fire would be having them safe and having them housed.

MG: Hmm. That sounds like a great wish. Okay, let's end it there. Nicole and Sarah, thank you both for talking to us today. Really appreciate your time.

NICOLE MUCCI: Thank you.

SARAH REHOU: Thank you so much.

MG: Nicole Mucci is the spokesperson for the Union Gospel Mission in Vancouver, and Sarah Rehou is the senior research coordinator at the Burn Unit at Hamilton Health Sciences. The CBC News is next. Then.

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Well a good panettone, it shouldn't be too dry. It should be well reasoned. Not to have your hands. Pleasant when you eat it. You should feel the butter, but it shouldn't melt. Not sticky, but still a little wet inside at all. Humid. Sometimes some mistake there are in the panettone, as is the people used too many aroma instead of staying in the natural ingredients or just adding vanilla or making the candid fruits themself. And that's that's sad.

MG: That's sad indeed. Slicing into a panettone. A Christmas morning, a tradition for the lucky. But what goes into making the Italian sweet bread? Well, we're going to take you to the source. I'm Mark Kelly. You're listening to The Current. We're back in six minutes. Stay close.

Why purists say a chocolate panettone just isn’t a panettone

Guest: Megan Williams

MK: Hi, I'm Mark Kelly and you're listening to The Current.

[Music: Theme]

MK: Still to come, the fascinating story behind the famous Tom Thompson art forgeries. But first, who's hungry? I've got a delightful, fluffy Christmas treat for you. Panettone.

[Music: Theme]

MK: Well, with Christmas just a few days away, the usual bake gifts of gingerbread cookies, shortbread and Christmas cake are making the rounds, and more and more somewhat new additions to Yuletide baked goods, at least for non Italians, the panettone. It's a tall, brown, sweet bread loaded with candied fruit and raisins. CBC's Italy correspondent Megan Williams took a deep dive into the doughy world of panettone, including joining a jury to select the best panettone in Rome. She survived that bunfight and is here to tell us more. Megan, good morning.

MEGAN WILLIAMS: Good morning.

MK: I've heard you reporting, you know, migrant issues, political scandals. But how how in the world did you get the gig to be on the Panettone jury?

MEGAN WILLIAMS: Well, as most listeners probably know, Italy is a food obsessed country and there are a fair number of culinary competitions. And as a foreign journalists, I guess you could say, I have the good fortune of being asked to participate in some always alongside people, I should add, like chefs and food writers and food historians who actually know a lot about what they're talking about. I'm familiar with the canons of Italian cuisine, having lived in Italy for so long, but I was definitely in the amateur camp on this jury.

MK: Okay, Megan, so so my personal disclosure here is I have never actually tasted panettone. What? What am I missing?

MEGAN WILLIAMS: Oh, what are you missing? Panettone for a long time had a bad rap as being sort of this stale, sweet bread that nobody really liked. But if you have a proper panettone, it's moist, it's delicious. This sort of stretchy interior with candied citrus suspended in it and raisins. And it's really a delicious Christmas bread.

MK: Okay, so. So bring me into the competition now. I get the idea of what I'm about to taste now. Now, set the scene about what this competition actually looks like.

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[Indistinct chatter]

MEGAN WILLIAMS: So picture a dozen or so judges sitting around a table in this little darkened auditorium in the historic centre of Rome. And beside us is a stack of 24 panettone. Now, in Italian, the plural ends with a letter I, so you say panettoni, and this singular ends with the letter E So it's panettone. So the panettoni that we were judging were all made by Rome pastry chefs. Not the kind you get in a supermarket. And they were the classic version which contains candied citrus and raisins and nothing else, and some of them with nothing on top except a cross indent, which is the Milan version, which some experts would argue is the real panettoni. And others had other things on top, like sugar pellets and almonds, which is the version from Torino or Turin, northern Italy.

MK: So you've got a lot of a lot of variables, a lot of things at play here. So what exactly are the criteria then for judging?

MEGAN WILLIAMS: Well, each of us got an evaluation form with the different categories, so we had to judge the aesthetics. So that's the colour, how fluffy and consistent it looks, the shape. Panettone need to be dome shaped. Then there was the tactile sensation it needs to feel spongy and moist. You actually, you know, they encouraged us to to touch it and and squeeze it and then how it smells and tastes and the balance of flavours and aromas. And finally, the quality of the candied fruit and raisins that are that are suspended inside it.

MK: Wow. That is so many things making it at play here. And so for for each of these criteria, then each category gets a mark. Is that how it works?

MEGAN WILLIAMS: Yes. We were instructed to give it a mark out of ten. But before we even begin, this debate erupts about how to weigh the panettone.

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[Indistinct chatter]

MK: What? What? What are they debating here? They help me out with this one.

MEGAN WILLIAMS: Well, this debate went on for about 10 minutes and it was about the weight of a panettone. It has to be more or less one kilo and, you know, just within a very short margin of one kilo. But the debate that arose was is is that weight with or without the circular paper wrapping? So after this prolonged discussion, they decided it was without it. So here they are peeling off the paper of each pound of 20 before they serve it. And then. The servers who were dressed in traditional black and white formal uniforms, ceremoniously sliced the panettone, and they placed it on a silver tray. And they go around the whole whole table presenting presenting the silver tray to each of us to visually assess it before giving us a slice that we can touch and smell and taste.

MK: Well, at the anticipation is getting to me here, Megan. Okay, so how did the panettone do?

MEGAN WILLIAMS: Well, this was a really hardcore set of judges. Italians in general give out low marks. My kids used to come home from school very excited with with report cards that had, like, six and or maybe the odds seven out of ten. Grade inflation apparently hasn't crossed the Atlantic yet, but these judges were failing most of the panettoni. There was a lot of sighing and eye rolling and head shaking going on, especially from this trio of rotund male pastry chefs at the end of the table who were just, like, categorically unimpressed by almost everyone. And one of them is a milanese pastry chef, Jean-Luco Forsto, who was part of this little group. And he explained to me why he was flunking most of the contenders.

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These aren't low cost panettone from the supermarket. These are expensive $50 or more. And if people are going to pay that, it should be top quality. Frankly, most of these aren't. Some even just melt in them was a turn off way too acidic.

MK: So some of these some of these are just being failed because of their smell. Well, I mean, what is it that makes a good panettone?

MEGAN WILLIAMS: Well, I put that question to another juror, Marion Lashlait, and she's a French award winning pastry chef at the Michelin starred restaurant here in Rome called The Palazzo. And here's what she had to say.

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When I call it Panettone, it shouldn't be too dry. It should be, well reasoned. Not too heavy in your hands. Pleasant when you eat it. You should feel the butter. But it shouldn't melt. Not sticky, but still a little wet inside at all. Humid.

MK: Okay. Now that. That's the good panettone. So with the good panettone, I'm sure comes the bad panettone. So what's the bad side?

MEGAN WILLIAMS: Yes, as I mentioned, if it's dry, it's bad. And I think a lot of people have had those panettone, you know, the kind that someone's brings to an office party that they got on sale the year before, just before the expiry date. But what also makes it bad, at least the artisanal ones, the expensive ones from the bakeries are artificial flavours or aromas, as she calls them.

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Speaker 4: Sometimes the mistake they are in the panettone is is the people used to many aroma instead of staying in the natural ingredients or just adding vanilla or making the candid fruit themself. And that's that's sad.

MK: Too many aroma?

MEGAN WILLIAMS: Too many aroma, too many ingredients. It really is just supposed to have natural vanilla. So that's why a lot of the jurors were failing these panettone because they had orange or almond flavour in it.

MK: Okay. So you were clearly sitting on a jury with people who take food very, very seriously. But as you said yourself, you are an amateur who had to taste and I guess smell and touch 24 panettone. I mean, that's a lot of panettone it to keep track of. So how did you manage to separate one from the other?

MEGAN WILLIAMS: Well, I didn't. I didn't. I mean, 24 is just way too many panettoni to judge. It's a sour dough, sweetbreads. So you're tasting slightly different mother yeast that each bakery creates. But other than that, it was essentially the same recipe 24 types. So to give you a sense of how I did, here are a few snippets of my judging process.

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Speaker 3: [indistinct chatter]

MEGAN WILLIAMS: I felt like I was tasting butter. But in fact, she just pointed out that it's probably a little bit the acids from the yeast or something, but there's just this this kind of aftertaste that's not that pleasant. And this one apparently is too pale. All right. We're halfway through number 12. What can I say? Moist.We're on number 14 now and I am feeling a little sick. I'm starting to do what you do with the wine tasting, which is spit it out. The number 18 was just disqualified because there's supposed to be one kg and it was only 700 grams. Were on 23. We got one more to go. I feel sick. Yellowy eggy colour, but we'll see how it tastes. Tasteless or you know what it is? It's too sweet. Just the the sweetness overwhelms up. I really am sounding like an expert and I'm not.

MK: Wow. Megan, I thought you had the dream assignment by judging panettone, but now I'm starting to feel kind of queasy along with you there. But you were judging the classical version of the panettone with just the candied fruit and raisins inside. But now there's an amazing variety of them now with all sorts of nuts and creams and berries. Tell us about that.

MEGAN WILLIAMS: There is and this is a point of friction with Italian culinary products and not just Italian, but traditional food products that originate in a certain place and a certain time with specific ingredients and procedures that then move beyond their birthplace and get either contaminated or enriched, depending on your politics. But they get transformed into something else. So there's always this tension as food evolves and it exists with the panettone as well.

MK: As you said it evolving beyond its birthplace. Where where was it born?

MEGAN WILLIAMS: It was born in Milan, probably in the late Middle Ages. The first written records of it date back to about 1600. But like a lot of traditional dishes, there's folklore and legend that swirl around its origins. I went to Milan to meet with some pastry chefs there, and here's one Giuseppe [unintelligible] law whose family has been making panettone for generations, telling me the Milan Panettone Genesis story.

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The panettone. It was born in Milan in the 1400s when the pastry chef of the rulings for the family, a man named Tony birhted the dessert. So had to come up with another one with the ingredients he had on hand like eggs, sugar, butter and yeast. And they called it the bread 'il pane' of Tony. Pane-ttone.

MK: The bread of Tony. I wouldn't have I, I would have thought that that's a joke if somebody told me.

MEGAN WILLIAMS: Yeah, well don't believe it. I mean it's, it's a legend, but I don't think many people actually believe it.

MK: But is that essentially the same recipe that exists today?

MEGAN WILLIAMS: Yeah, yeah. The recipes are the same. The form has changed. The first panettone were a lot flatter. They were still the sour dough product. But. But they weren't as high. And the tall round one sold in supermarkets is really the result of the move towards the industrialisation of food production. Here's food anthropologist Analisa Cavalieri explaining how that came about.

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The panettone, as we all know today, was invented by the pastry chef Angela motta, who founded the famous mass produce brand. It was a kind of publicity stunt. They decided they could save a lot of space in the factory ovens by making them taller and skinnier and sucked them more easily. But also the shape would stand out more in stores is a pure.

MK: This has become a staple, as I mentioned, here in Canada, too. I mean, the popularity of the panettone. I mean, you walk into bakeries or even grocery stores now and you'll see these walls and walls of them. So at what point did other ingredients start to be added to this traditional dish?

MEGAN WILLIAMS: Well, it's really linked to Italian post-war migration. But within Italy, the south to north migration, where southerners moved to northern Italy for jobs and worked in bakeries in northern Italy and learnt the very complicated process of making the panettone. It takes about 48 hours. It's an elaborate process. And then, you know, decades later, some of them moved back to Rome or Naples or even Sicily and opened businesses there and started making them in where they came from.

MK: So there are these regional then versions of that. And how do they compare to the to the Milanese version?

MEGAN WILLIAMS: Well, just like the Milanese, a version is true to its tradition and its city. It's you know, Milan is is a very elegant, sort of restrained city. The southern Italian versions reflect southern Italy, where everything from food to architecture is more baroque, even rococo, like over-the-top southern Italians don't hold back. So along with the oranges and lemon bits, you've got almonds and berries and coconut and even pineapple and all sorts of custards and icing. Like Limoncello or Nutella custard in the middle, you know, oozing out. And, you know, their versions are just like bring on the flavour. They've really left the box, so to speak. The Milan, the Milanese original part, a tiny box.

MK: But to the to the Milanese see this as a as a sort of a bastardisation of the panettone.

MEGAN WILLIAMS: Oh, yeah. I mean, there's a lot of I mean, along along with a sincere desire to protect the tradition. There's a lot of sort of northern Italian snobbery that that would be the viewpoint of the Southern Italians to do with this product. But even pastry chefs who do these newfangled versions still acknowledge the importance of the traditional one. I got up at three in the morning a few days ago to to go see how a penitent is actually made in a pastiche area. Pastry shop here in Rome called the Pastiche Area vowed to remove Skull. He makes one of the top ranked panettone in the city. And that particular morning volunteer was actually making a chocolate version with cocoa in the batter. And chocolate chips added here. Here you can hear the the mixer slapping the dough. And here is what [unintelligible] had to say about the different versions of Panettone.

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With chocolate, with cherry with pistachio. You can do. You can put your creativity to do whatever we want. But please don't call panettone. You can call it [italian speech] pastry product, which is that. So this is that the correct name that we can add to this kind of product.

MK: That really gets the mouthwatering pastry product with yeast. Tuck into that.

MEGAN WILLIAMS: And you know I've got to add that Walter Moskos panettone with - well you know pastry product with yeast - with sour cherries and poppy seeds made la Repubblica newspapers page of top panattoni in Rome this this December. So you know even you know so so-called official sites that are judging these products still call them panettone. None of them are following those rules.

MK: Okay. So I've got to ask, who won the Rome Panettone contest in the end?

MEGAN WILLIAMS: Well, in the end, it was actually the very first of the 24, which, you know, maybe because it was the one that we could all taste clearly, because after that sort of, you know, panettone, doughy fog descended at least over my brain. But it was very good. And it was from a small bakery outside of Roma suburban bakery called Spiga d'Oro, not far from the Rome airport. So, you know, young bakers, it I mean, it was a blind contest, but I was I was glad that that particular group of bakers won.

MK: So with this panettone fog, are you going to be eating panettone and that panettone this Christmas or have you had your fill?

MEGAN WILLIAMS: Well, I had had my fill. And I'm certainly not going to be eating the classic panettone, which I just had too many of. And honestly, I probably shouldn't be admitting this on the air, but I'm kind of partial to the ones from Sicily. They're delicious. We have a couple in our kitchen right now, one with chocolate and pistachio. Pistachio and the other with pear and modica chocolate, which is this kind of sweet, crumbly chocolate from the town of Modica in Sicily. So I you know, I'm looking forward to eating those at Christmas.

MK: For a panettone rookie than I am. I can't wait to try some myself, although I feel that it's really not going to live up to the stuff that you were dressed, you were tasting in Italy.

MEGAN WILLIAMS: Oh, I think you can find some really good versions in Canada now. So, you know, just just read the ingredients carefully.

MK: I'm a man on a mission now, Megan, and thank you. Thank you so much for telling us as I love this story. It's great. Thank you so much.

MEGAN WILLIAMS: Thanks, Mark.

MK: And we've now coined a new term doughy fug. That's Megan Williams. She's the CBC's correspondent in Rome.

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MK: Well, you know what they say. When Matt Galloway is away, Il Tamburino will play. Coming up after your regional update, finding a fake how art, forgery and the Canadian Art World Collided. I'm Mark Kelly. You're listening to The Current. We are back in 90 seconds. Don't go anywhere.

How one of the Group of Seven became an art fraud sleuth

Guests: Jon Dallendrea, Karin Marley

MK: I'm Mark Kelly and you're listening to The Current.

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VOICE 1: Last fall in Toronto, an unusual event. Members of the Ontario provincial police gathered to pay tribute to a painter. And that painter was Al Casson.

VOICE 2: And many years ago, he received a badge from the OPP here. I am going to authenticate this evening by giving you something in writing.

VOICE 3: I got your cash. Thank you.

VOICE 2: And that is your warrant card.

VOICE 3: What is known as the [unintelligible].

VOICE 1: Doing all this detective work for free.

MK: The police. That was from a 1979 segment on a CBC show. You might have heard of. It's called The Fifth Estate. It's a it's a really good show, actually. And there's quite a back story to how a member of the Group of Seven became a sleuth for the Ontario Provincial Police. And the ramifications of the tale still cast a shadow over the Canadian art scene today. Jon Dllendrea tells the story in his new book, The Great Canadian Art Fraud Case, The Group of Seven, and Tom Thompson Forgeries. John's also the senior fellow and Massey College chair emeritus at the Art Canada Institute. He joins me this morning in studio. Good morning.

JON DALLENDREA: Good morning.

MK: I love this story. It's a great book. It's a great yarn. It's a beautiful book. I want you to set the scene, bring bring our listeners into the tent, because it was 1962. There's an art auction in Toronto and it really blows the lid off this art art fraud case. Tell us what happens.

JON DALLENDREA: So this is this is the biggest auction house in the country. And that that fateful night, there were some 250 people in the auction room. And the auctioneer, Ben Wardprice, was selling one after after another, after another of quite famous paintings. And in the middle of this, the art critic for the Toronto Star, Elizabeth Kilburn, stood up and said, Where did all these G.H. MacDonald paintings come from? And then then a prominent collector, Sheila mackenzie, who is sitting with her, stood up and started. And exactly the same, she said, they're fakes and, you know, they're fakes. And Wardprice, then slightly flustered, had demanded that they identify themselves, which they refused to do. The auction staff tried to throw them out of the auction room, which they refused to leave. And then Wardprice kind of sanctimoniously said, we'll continue this auction. Despite the presence of a couple of communists, to which he got booed by the audience for his bad manners.

MK: But it blew the lid off, I guess at the time was one of the worst kept secrets that that that the Canadian landscape was being flooded with forgeries of Canadian landscapes.

JON DALLENDREA: So it was a flood. And the flood was first identified by Russell Harper, who was the chief curator of Canadian art at the National Gallery of Canada. Why? Why did Harper see the flood? Because people started bringing in paintings for authentication. It wasn't just, as Harper described it, one this week and one next month. It was a flood. So so the flood at the time of this outburst in the auction house really hadn't hit the public consciousness broadly. But that evening and Robert Fulford and others were in the audience and then started to write about it. And it became the great Canadian art fraud case that it captured attention in the media right across the country.

MK: And yet, let's fast forward a couple of decades. When you come in contact with this box, this beat up old box that ties together the art fraud case of the early sixties with a book that's just been released. Tell us about the importance of that box and how it tied this story together.

JON DALLENDREA: So the first first bit is just simply to say take your fast forward of the decades. Virtually no one had any memory of the art fraud case I talked with with prominent collectors and art historians and dealers, and nobody remembers. So. So what is that commercial? It was a rainy day, so it was a rainy day on a Saturday. And I had an art dealer in Toronto called me and said, I've got a box full of stuff that some as he described them dodgy picker just brought into my store and it's the kind of stuff that you always find fascinating, the mysterious things at the edges of the art world. And he said, Come on out. I went down and saw it. And and here's this box full of papers and personal writing and clippings from the newspapers and at the the person's death certificate and and articles from, from describing the art fraud case and not the foggiest clue of who this person was. And that then started I turned it down because I was working at something else. And I went home and my wife said, Just do me a favour. Go back and buy it because you're going to drive me. I will not use the language you use. You're going to drive me completely crazy if you don't. And that was that was the beginning of what was this all about.

MK: And that box belonged to someone originally named William MacGregor. And he ties in and becomes a significant player in the canny in the great Canadian art fraud case. Tell us his role.

JON DALLENDREA: So his life is you know, I hope when when you and I pass on to our reward that the memory on this earth of us will be more than one tacky cardboard box full of papers.

MK: Who knows?

JON DALLENDREA: You never know. Maybe not. Maybe not. We come and we go. So his life was in there. His birth certificate was in there. His death certificate was in there. His his writings were in their catalogues from exhibitions where he had exhibited have letters back and forth with the National Gallery of Canada. There's there's this image in the box, if that's not mixing the metaphors. But there is this image of of somebody who could have been really, really important in the art world and was totally forgotten. All right. So In the box, as an example, was the catalogue from the National Gallery of Canada, 1935 Exhibition of Canadian Art. And they're on the third page of that catalogue is William Firth. MacGregor And if you read the names of the others who exhibited in that exhibition, they, they were the, the, the principal players of the Canadian art scene. So. So here's this guy who came from Scotland, brilliantly trained artist, worked at the Vancouver School with Fred Varley, one of the members of the Group of Seven had painted, exhibited whatever. And then his career just- he disappears to only to reappear in the 1960s living in a rooming house on Church Street, according to his own testimony, living basically on on canned sardines and scraping out his life and painting a few paintings that he was hired by some dealer to produce, which he thought were just, you know, being given away or sold as souvenirs or something. And then he finds himself at the centre of the art trade.

MK: Because he could paint some pretty good knockoffs.

JON DALLENDREA: It was it was really good. So one of the witnesses in the trial was a White Jackson, who the sort of founder and godfather of the Group of Seven, because many of the paintings that had been faked were Jackson paintings. And so Jackson on the stand, seeing one painting after another, he would say, That's awful. I would never would have painted that. That's disgusting. Then those little ones over there, those are rather good. Those were the work of William Firth MacGregor.

MK: Now, this would come under the scope of the Ontario Provincial Police and a fellow by the name of James Erskine. So in the 1979 piece, we played off the top of the Fifth Estate. Fifth Estate interviewed Erskine. And for that story, listen to this clip.

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VOICE 1: I understood, Fran, but I didn't know anything about art. And the attorney general had a complaint from the National Gallery of Canada. But the number of fake paintings that were being sold in Ontario and in some other parts of Canada, but they seemed to originate from Ontario.

VOICE 2: And so you went looking for an expert?

VOICE 1: I went looking for an expert, and I obtained a list of possible experts, and he was head and shoulders over the other persons I considered.

MK: He, of course, was AJ Carson, one of the one of the Group of Seven that is hired by Erskine to be a special adviser. How did these- so you've got this this hard scrabbled cop and then you've got one of the the group of seven working together on the case. How did they get along?

JON DALLENDREA: So it's a great story. We have we have firsthand evidence of how they got along. So, first of all, you need a kind of visual image of James Erskine. He was young at the time, six foot five, kind of looked like John Wayne or sounded like John Wayne and looked like a cowboy. Right. And Erskine thought when he was appointed to the anti rackets branch that this was you know, this was gangsters and racketeers and other. He never imagined for a moment that he was going to get immersed in the world of Canadian art. One of the great things that got found in the course of the research is that Carson's daughter, who's now in her nineties and just an absolutely delightful human being that became a good friend, called me one day, said come up to the house. And I came up to the house and she brought out a one of those old sort of black I don't know what they were made out of, sort of fake leather briefcases and opened the top. And inside it are some 30 plus 90 year old 90 minute A-side audio cassette tapes. This was a oral history recollection by Carson of his entire life. And about six of these tapes were specifically about the art fraud. And one of them to get to the point one, one of them was of a dinner party with Carson and his wife, Erskine, and his wife and Allen Collier, the artist friend of Casson's, who recorded these tapes during dinner. And I suspect there was one or two glasses of good wine that were done over dinner as the conversation got really interesting. And he started telling stories and Erskine talking about how he knew absolutely nothing and he needed somebody. And I don't know who did it, but somebody pointed him in the direction of Casson. And in the end of that story, they became fast, fast friends and just, you know, the kind of the you can see the visual piece. We just actually sold the rights to the film rights to this to the book. You can you can imagine the visuals of your Casson is a normal sized human being. You've got Erskine who towers it at six foot five. And together they're they're probing the depths of the art world.

MK: So they end up cracking the scheme. Explain to our listeners then how this scheme was working, the forgery scheme.

JON DALLENDREA: So the there's a whole series of stories. Some of them are well fleshed out and some of them art. But but there were two dealers involved. One was a chap by name of Lesley W Lewis, who ran a gallery called the Haines Gallery. He had a a half brother in England, and since the 1940s, they had been flooding the Canadian market, which was what the Europeans called junk European art. And nobody in the Canadian business much cared about it because it was junk European art. All of a sudden, when the bread and butter of the main dealers in Canada started to be affected by fake group of seven fake Thom Thompsons, they got all self-righteous about it. And so the other the other dealer was a character named Neil Sharkey. Great name. If you could be an art, but be sure.

MK: Absolutely.

JON DALLENDREA: He he was hanging art for Lewis in the in the word price galleries and he knew he testified in the trial. He said, I knew they were fakes and I knew I could do better one. Enter William MacGregor, who he had known just through getting some pictures framed. And so he talked MacGregor in. He would bring him books, a White Jackson's book called A Painter's Country. And so Willie did wonderful little copies of the paintings and that book. Sharkey took them away, kind of dressed them up with fancy frames and brass plaques and rub a little dirt on the back and make them look older and then run them through auction at art price. And so it was first Russell Harper, and then it was this flood coming through. And then that's where you started this conversation is with Betsy Colborne and Elizabeth standing up saying, where's this coming.

MK: From and how lucrative was this business?

JON DALLENDREA: So here's here, you can do the arithmetic. So Neil Sharkey pays MacGregor $5 to paint a copy of Hey, Why Jackson or Tom Thompson? It goes to auction and it sells for 950. That's not $9.50. That's $950. And some of the most expensive ones went for sort of 1500 dollars.

MK: And it was unbelievable. And I love the trial itself where you've got Carson up there. As you mentioned before, a white Jackson is is up on there as well. They what what for you was the highlight of that trial?

JON DALLENDREA: So I think a lot of it was the personality of Erskine and and Erskine and and Carson. But the other the other bit and one of the serendipitous bits of the research is a number of the principal characters in a long ago fraud case are still alive. Were still alive. So the the the special prosecutor in the case, Mr. E Patrick Hart, who became the youngest justice of of when we used to have a Supreme Court in Ontario, he had been asked by the premier of Ontario to be the prosecutor in the case because John Roberts did not want this case touching the Premier's office because Ben Ward Price was described by Erskine as a big time conservative. So not for a minute suggesting that there was any, any and nefarious doing coming out of the Premier's office. But the Premier simply did not want to have this connected to his office one way or another, whether Ward Price got charged or didn't charge. And so I had the opportunity, the privilege to interview Pat Hart twice. He died just a few months ago. So he was in his nineties when I sharp again sharp as a tack and remembered all of the stories and one of one of the bits that I on the second interview, I said to Mr. Hart, the one piece that I cannot understand and I've been at this research for four years, is why did Ben Wardprice the auctioneer not get charged? And he sort of sat back and paused for a minute and he said he said, you know, Erskine and I talked about it a lot. We talked with the attorney general about it and we concluded we had enough to charge but not enough to commit to convict him. So we were not going to ruin a man's life simply because we thought we had enough evidence. So Wardprice went scot free.

MK: There was one part I love when I'm reading through this and it was the desire. It was really telling how people were buying forgeries because they just so desperately wanted to have a Thompson on their wall or one of the Group of seven on their wall. And there was a great clip that or quote that came out when in the exchange in court. Would you agree? And this is Carson being asked this, would you agree? There are two types of people, those who admire a sunset and those who admired themselves for admiring a sunset. And he says, yes, yes, I see what you mean. These people were buying names, just names, names and nothing more. What's the significance of that?

JON DALLENDREA: So so why Jackson on the stand did a similar bet. He said that when people he sees that art is art. My wife is a painter. So this kind of resonates with me. And he said paintings are lines on a canvas or a board. And you look at them and you decide that you like them. That's what you should do. You look at what's on the canvas of the board. You don't look down in the bottom left corner or the bottom right corner to see whose name is allegedly signed on it. And so this is the, I mean, this is another whole part of this story is how some artists get to be worshipped and other artists who are every bit as good or sometimes even better than the worshipped artists are gone and forgotten and are never appreciated.

MK: There's a beautiful scene, too, in the courtroom how it was, you know, transformed into essentially a de facto gallery with all these forgeries on display that were there, whatever happened to all those forgeries.

JON DALLENDREA: So that's the question that gets asked most often. So back in 2016, I wrote a piece before the book. I wrote a piece for the Literary Review of Canada, and then my wife and I were off she was off painting in South Cornwall in England. And we got an email from the publisher saying that they'd received an email from a woman in Germany, of all places, who said she had a friend in Toronto who owned a large collection of art that had been purchased at the time of the art fraud case by her, by the person in Toronto, his late father, his name was Dr. Gordon Chambers. He was the single largest buyer in the sixties. At Wardprice, I acquired the Chambers collection of 23 paintings, 23 from 2020 324 sure frauds and three questionable. But it was a time when when the old supply and demand write. It's a time when supply, you know, picture were easing up under the Canadian centennial. Canadian material history has become interesting art history. People want them on the wall. And there's the classic bit which is recounted in the book when when one prominent collector family, rather, in North Toronto, had a white Jackson come over to view their treasured Jackson, which they had on the wall, and their neighbours learnt that the great white Jackson was coming over to see this painting. They all came for a cocktail party, right. And as cast and tells the story. Jackson came in. Jackson, who enjoyed a good glass of scotch, Jack Jackson came in, had a couple of glasses of scotch and didn't look at any of the art in the wall. And at one point walked over while looking at the at the owner and reached over and took the painting off the wall. Took a pen out of. His pocket, turned it over and wrote, I did not paint this painting a white Jackson. And the owner said, See, darling, now it's worth more. We'll hang it the other way. So, so great. A great story. But the but the dining rooms of Forest Hill and the Annexe and and Rosedale and whenever there's still lots of stuff hanging out there.

MK: But what ultimately because I know that that that the the painters themselves took great umbrage to the fact that there were so many forgeries out there. What was the harm caused by having these forgeries in circulation.

JON DALLENDREA: So totally undermined the art market. Right if you have no confidence that that the use a way Jackson as the example you have no confidence the Jackson painting that you just took your hard saved money and bought for $1,000 it was worth $1,000 or was worth the $20 that the frame cost. So your question about where did it go? So the people who had had their art borrowed, if you will, to use in the art fraud case had it returned to them. The paintings that were were seised from ward price, from the dealers. They were in Erskine's basement. So in the tape of the of the dinner party, Erskine gets talking about how he's being sued by Ben Ward, Price and others to get the paintings back. And and he said, I'll be damned if I'm going to do it. They can sue me. The value of these are they're worth $10 each because that's what the frames they want to spend a lot of legal legal money have. I'm getting back $10 paintings. We don't know where those paintings are. There's there's there's 100 plus paintings still floating around out there. And that was the tip of the iceberg because Carson in the tape said that one night Erskine got a call from the attorney general who's had enough stop. You found enough paintings. And apparently, according to to Carson, Erskine was quote unquote, mattos hopps. And Carson said we could have had 500 paintings in that courtroom rather than the hundreds that were there. So there's a flood still rolling around the ocean of art.

MK: Yeah. I'm curious because I mean, you're capturing a moment in time in Canadian art history, but today, are there still forgeries hanging on the walls that police the people you have have have paid top dollar thinking that these are the real Tom Thompson or groupies?

JON DALLENDREA: Absolutely. Sure. That's that's just the the short answer is absolutely. I mean, there was an example, I don't six months or so ago that an API Jackson painting showed up at at a not at one of the mainstream highly credible auction houses like Collie Arbiter hopefuls or Washingtons. It showed up at a sort of second tier auction that doesn't really deal that much in art. And this was at hey why Jackson painting that was painted on board that the grain on the board was vertical rather than horizontal. And and Jackson on the stand was showing a painting that was on that kind of vertical grained board. And he said, I never paint on that because it works against your painting. So I actually called the the auctioneer who had this painting and said, you just might want to get this double checked because I don't believe this painting is right. I got an email back a week or so later saying We spoke to our expert. He thinks it's okay. It's sold for $40,000. So somebody has $40,000. A pretty questionable art hanging proudly on a wall somewhere.

MK: So so for people out there listening who may not have a time, Thompson hanging on their wall, but they want to stay one step ahead of the forgers. What advice do you have for them?

JON DALLENDREA: Yes, I it's a question that gets asked often. What is the what is particularly the maybe that collectors and also the newer collectors trying to get into this market. How do you how do you do it with confidence? And I don't think there's a you know, there's an absolute ironclad answer to that other than deal with a few highly reputable dealers, deal with a few of the mainstream auction houses and pushed the provenance question really hard because provenance can be very nifty developed you your fake labels on the back and this was given to me as a as a graduation present by my mother in 1969 when I graduated from the University of Toronto. And and we've had two experts see it. They say it's good. That's not provenance, that's hearsay.

MK: I think you're I think your phone or your your email is going to be popping and saying, John, I need your help.

JON DALLENDREA: It already has, but I'm staying out of the art authentication business.

MK: John, it's as I mentioned at the outset, it's a great book, it's a great story. And as a journalist, I really appreciated the investigation you put into this pursuit. And it's a beautiful one. It's beautifully illustrated with real art, and I really enjoyed it. It's called the Great Canadian Art Fraud Case, The Group of Seven and Tom Thompson Forgeries. John, pleasure to talk to you this morning. Thank you.

JON DALLENDREA: Pleasure was mine. Thank you.

MK: Jon Dellandrea was with me here in Toronto. I'm Mark Kelly. And you're listening to The Current. Earlier this week, Canadian author Neal Pasricha was on the programme and he spoke to Matt Galloway about his new book. Our Book of Awesome.

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I just see myself as one of many people around the world. We're trying to provoke people into simple practises. They can do in the morning. They can do at lunch. They can during the evening to try to cultivate a more positive mindset.

MK: Okay, let's think positively with Neil Pasricha. He shared stories from his life and stories shared by his readers about the little moments that make their day. So we asked you to share your own examples of awesomeness. And here to help me read some of your responses is the current senior producer, Karin Marley. Good morning, Karin.

KARIN MARLEY: Good morning, Mark. So many delightful little tales here. Kathy Doiron is in Charlottetown, P.E.I., and she writes, I look after my three year old granddaughter. Once a week, it's hard to describe the feeling of love that I receive from this little person as she wraps her arms tightly around my neck and says, Oh, Grandma.

MK: Beautiful. Well, quite a few notes came in from grandparents, and other common theme was nature. Don Cameron writes, I live in the country with some space around me. I had just come into the kitchen. The sun was shining. I noticed movement. It was a deer. I looked out the window and raised my hand in greeting. The deer turned its head away from me towards a bush and began nibbling on the ends of the branches. Awesome.

KARIN MARLEY: We got a lot of stories about animals. Here's another one from Dorian Olson writing from B.C.. Getting up in the morning is often the hardest job of the day, especially in the winter, when it's dark and cold outside. I have a springer spaniel who is now three years old in the morning after I listened to the 7:00 news on the radio. He knows when the signature music starts, it's time for me to get up. He puts his front paws on the bed and wags his little tail till the bed shakes. He howls with excitement until I throw the sheets back and put my feet on the floor. Then I say, Go and get my slippers. He goes, where? I left my slippers the night before and brings one back. The slipper does have a little bit of slobber on it, but I say, good boy, give him a pet and ask him to go get the other one. He obediently runs off to find where I've left the other one and brings it back. The slipper is equally wet and slobbery, but the whole process brings a smile to my face.

MK: What a morning routine. Well, Marilyn Hall writes from Waterloo. I buy a half dozen items or so at the bulk barn on a regular basis. Each item has its own special container in our cupboards, and each container is a different size. When I'm there, I try to estimate how much of each item to buy to just fill the container waiting at home, taking into account what remains in the container to begin with. Almost every time I hit the sweet spot of purchase, the exact amount to fill the container to the brim. I get great joy from this.

KARIN MARLEY: That's awesome. And Annette Graydon is in Grove, Ontario, and writes about her $20 coffeemaker that gives her joy. It was a covered purchase, but out of desperation, I had developed the habit of going out pretty much every day to get a coffee from the corner shop. Walking or biking over to grab a coffee was a delight to me, then gone with lockdowns. I saw this tiny coffee maker and decided to give it a try. I make one coffee every morning and it is always perfect and delicious. And Catherine Lalonde in Yukon, says our segment had perfect timing. She writes, It's -47 or so in Dawson City this morning. So when I was getting bundled up to go to work, I decided to dress just a bit warmer than I normally do. My usual mindset is that I'm in the car just going to work. No need to dress as warm as I probably should. But this morning I wore my insulated overalls, my warmest mittens, my fur hat, my neck warmer, and a scarf. As I was driving down the big hill on my way to town, I lost control and slid into the ditch and was fully stuck in the snow. I had to get out and walk the last kilometre or so into town and I was dressed for it. Celebration of a small joy.

MK: How Canadian get with that? That's fantastic. Karin, thank you so much. And thank you to everyone who wrote in. You can always reach us to share your thoughts on any of the stories you hear on The Current. Email us at thecurrent@cbc.ca or reach us on Twitter at The Current. CBC Well, that's our programme for today. q is up next on CBC Radio One. You just heard about the role of a member of the Group of Seven played in uncovering art fraud in this country. We've got more can come for you because you can never get enough a can. Coming up in this half hour, we're going to end with the Canadian Christmas classic. This is The Bare Naked Ladies, featuring Sarah McLachlan with their medley of God Rest by Mary, Gentlemen and We Three Kings. Only Three More Sleeps, Folks. I'm Mark Kelly. Thanks for listening to The Current.

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The Current Transcript for December 22, 2022

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

Homeless people face risk of fire, or frostbite, as temperatures plunge

Why purists say a chocolate panettone just isn’t a panettone

How one of the Group of Seven became an art fraud sleuth

Thursday December 22, 2022 Full Transcript

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