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The Current Transcript for May 31, 2023

Host: Matt Galloway

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

ADRIAN TANJALA: Late last year in an adult recreational game, a player gets thrown out of the game, gets red carded, proceeds to the parking lot to take a machete out of his car and chase the referee around the field.

MATT GALLOWAY: It's only a game, parents often tell their sports playing children. Maybe tell the parents that. After a surge in taunting and abuse towards referees, volunteer refs are refusing to put themselves into the middle of increasingly hostile matches. In 30 minutes, what's behind the aggression and whether body cameras on referees might help lower the temperature. Also this morning, he was a black sailor who died in the 1800s, but his life is mostly a mystery. In an hour, how experts are doing tests on this man's remains, hoping to paint a broader picture of black communities in this country's history. And later, as fires burn outside of Halifax, residents in affected areas are being told to flee immediately and take their pets. Sometimes, that's not possible.

SOUNDCLIP

LISA PARSONS: I said we can't evacuate unless you let the vehicles through to come and get the dogs.

MG: Coming up, rescuing the pups left behind in an emergency. We start, though, with the fight over some of Canada's best farmland and the concern over how this country feeds itself. Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway and this is The Current.

[Music: Theme]

ONTARIO FARMS

Guests: Mark Reusser, Wayne Caldwell

MG: The Ontario government has been looking to plant houses in farmers’ fields. Ontario's greenbelt is one of the world's largest protected areas, made up of wetlands, forests and highly valuable agricultural properties. In a highly controversial move, the premier of Ontario, Doug Ford, and his government is opening up hundreds of hectares of the greenbelt to housing development. And last month, it went further, allowing more houses to be built on other farmland across this province. Both plans are contentious. The second proposal is now on hold. Farmers say all of this could put Canada's food security at risk. Mark Reusser is a turkey farmer in Waterloo County, also director of the Ontario Federation of Agriculture. Mark, good morning.

MARK REUSSER: Good morning, Matt.

MG: As you understand it, I mean, just briefly, tell me about this proposal. What does the government in Ontario want to change when it comes to land use regulations?

MARK REUSSER: So the plan is to allow three severances per farm property anywhere you live in Ontario. That is an enormous change from the past, probably one of the biggest land use changes in my lifetime.

MG: It allows you to break up the land, essentially.

MARK REUSSER: It does.

MG: Yeah. And what's wrong with that?

MARK REUSSER: Well, we have realized, I think, as farmers here in Ontario for a long time, perhaps 20 years or more, there are detrimental impacts of lot creation, The fragmentation of our agricultural base, increased conflicts between neighbouring land uses, the inflation of farmland values, which makes the purchase of farmland by new entrants unattainable. We've worked long and hard along with the government to manage, mitigate and minimize conflicts between farming and our non-farming neighbours by supporting a concept called minimum distance separation, which is very similar to good fences make good neighbours. In this case, it's good distances make good neighbours, in order to separate what happens on farms from what happens on primarily urbanized lots.

MG: The roots of that conflict would be what? I mean, what would be the tension between, it sounds obvious in some ways, but what would the tension be between what happens on a farm and what happens on a non-farming property?

MARK REUSSER: Things do happen on farms that don't happen in the city. The issues of noise and dust, odour, lights, large machines. Farmers when they are busy in the fields tend to work, you know, 24 hours a day. These are things that urban people aren't used to and can find problematic. And when you separate farming from urbanized dwellings, things just work better.

MG: What are the problems that you have seen if those separations aren't there? I mean, you see this in many different parts of the country where people are moving closer out of cities to, you know, rural areas and they may not know that farmers make noise and farms make noise, that there are certain odours that come from farms that you might not be familiar with. What are the issues that you have seen? Have people pushed back on the actions of those farms?

MARK REUSSER: Absolutely. Not always. It is probably the few, but the few can be a huge problem for farming. We've tried to be good neighbours, and there's actually legislation too that protects normal farm practices. But even with legislation, when you have a problematic neighbour, it makes it very difficult to farm. It’s same as in the city. If your neighbour doesn't like you, hates you, doesn't appreciate the things that you do, no law protects you completely. And farmers when they are busy are doing a lot of things that they don't have time to deal necessarily with their neighbours. They like to do what they do, what they've always done unencumbered by issues of someone who doesn't like the smell today or the noise of your tractor going by or the lights of your tractor in the middle of the night flashing through the windows. The issues of noise and dust and so on are just somewhat foreign to people who have grown up and lived in the city and then move out to the countryside.

MG: One of the other issues is around the land itself. Tell me about the soil that you farm. What makes that land special?

MARK REUSSER: I think we live in a special place here in southwestern Ontario and Ontario in general. We live in a place where there's wonderful and amazing soil capability. We also live in a climate that is moderated by three Great Lakes. We're surrounded by three of them. We are able here in southern Ontario to grow a wider variety of crops, fruits and vegetables than almost anywhere else in North America. And it does not a place like this that has those capabilities deserved some kind of protection. We certainly believe it does. Farmland is special. It's a non-renewable natural resource. When it is paved over or mined for aggregate, it is gone forever. You can't get it back. And we, I believe, for the most part as farmers, that something special like this should be protected.

MG: One of the things that has been discussed, I mean, this is a larger conversation around a housing crisis that's happening around the world, but the Premier has said that some farmers want to build additional homes on their land so that perhaps adult children can stay there, can stay on the farm, and that that would help address, in some degree that housing crisis. What do you make of that argument?

MARK REUSSER: That's always been an issue. We have dealt with it in part in the past. And for the most part in southwestern Ontario, you were allowed to put up another residence, an accessory dwelling on your farm either for your parents or for your children. The issue in this case is not that. The issue is the severance and the fact that a separate piece of property is created or in this case, three separate pieces of property. And we found in the past that when separation and severances were allowed, we call them retirement severances, severances for the retiring farm family, they only stayed in possession of that farm family for an average of less than two years and then were immediately sold to someone from an urban setting.

MG: When you say a retirement severance, I mean, that's also interesting because this is really valuable land and farmers operate, as you well know, it's boom and bust. There may not be a retirement plan beyond perhaps selling that land off and the phrase is cashing out. What's wrong with that?

MARK REUSSER: Well, it's absolutely true. And no one denies that it can be very profitable to sell land. The issue is not in a sense with individuals. The issue is with the industry as a whole. And when you fragment farmland across the province, making it more difficult for others to farm, it hurts the whole industry. And our concern really is with the whole industry here in Ontario. It's a special place. We are able to or we attempt to feed the people who live here, and we think that's important. During the pandemic, early on, for a short period of time, we ran out of food. Grocery store shelves went empty for a day or two. And I think that for a short period of time indicated to people who live here that our food supply is fragile. And when we depend on food that comes across the border from another country, we're beholden to them and that border. And is it not the sensible thing to do to utilize the land we have here and protect it and be able to feed our own people from our own land? We think that's important. I think others think it's important too.

MG: The stats are that something like 175 acres of farmland a day are lost to development, 580,000 acres in the province alone over the course of five years. And you'll see it as you drive around this province and you drive around other provinces, those development signs on farmland and the one lonely farm that's left surrounded by development. What's the future of farming in your province if more isn't done to protect that land?

MARK REUSSER: Well, I think the stat that you just used is actually a stat from the previous census. The newest census data indicates that 319 acres per day are lost. And I would suggest that if this new legislation that is proposed is passed, that number would skyrocket. And our calculation is that there is room for perhaps at a minimum, half a million severances in Ontario on farmland. And at a hectare each, that's 500,000 hectares of land which would disappear. And that is an enormous amount of land. And to put it in perspective, 500,000 severances at two and a half people per dwelling would provide room for perhaps a million a half people. If you took that same half million hectares of land and put it in an urban setting at 50 people per hectare, you could provide homes for 25 million people. So our question is this. Is that the best use of our precious farmland? We suggest that it's not. Protect what is good and place our homes somewhere else in an urban setting, around settlements, in settlements, anything that is able to protect that land which we can't replace.

MG: Mark, thank you very much for this.

MARK REUSSER: Thank you, Matt.

MG: Mark Reusser is a farmer and director of the Ontario Federation of Agriculture. It is, as he was saying, a familiar story right across this country. As the population increases, so does demand for affordable housing, especially in the greater Toronto area, also known as the GTA. And not everyone sees those protected areas like a greenbelt as off limits. Steve LaFleur is a public policy analyst with the Fraser Institute.

SOUNDCLIP

STEVE LAFLEUR: So when we're talking about construction in the greenbelt, I think it's really important to remember the context of the GTA. We've spent a long time, decades in fact, trying to be very specific about where we build, letting every inconvenience within cities stop housing. We can't do that anymore. And the reality is that in order to make up for that deficiency of housing, we need to make some decisions that aren't necessarily the decisions we would have made if we could go back in time. But we need to recognize where we are, and that's in a housing crisis.

MG: Wayne Caldwell is a recently retired professor in Rural Planning and Development at the University of Guelph. Wayne, good morning to you.

WAYNE CALDWELL: Good morning, Matt.

MG: Let's start with that. What do you make of what Steve said, that building houses essentially on rural land is a pragmatic solution to the housing crisis that we're in right now, that we keep talking about?

WAYNE CALDWELL: It's an interesting perspective, but what I would counter with is I think there are many priorities in society. And yes, housing is one of them, but so too is agriculture, so too is the food that we eat, so too is the air that we breathe. They're all priorities and they all need to be accounted for.

MG: How do you balance that? How do you balance the needs of a growing population, a population that people don't know where they're going to live and they don't know where they're going to afford to live with obviously, the need to have farmland and easily accessible, a safe, secure supply of food.

WAYNE CALDWELL: Yeah. Well, I think the first thing is to recognize there is a demand for housing. Of course, we're all aware of that. We're all hearing about it and it does need to be accommodated. In that process, it's not to say that every single acre of land is sacrosanct for agriculture and to be protected. There will be expansion of urban settings. For me, it's a decision of how we do it and do we make wise decisions in that process? Are we in fact accounting for the needs of agriculture? Are we accounting for the needs of future generations while at the same time accommodating housing? And I think it's possible to do both.

MG: You heard Mark there talk about from his perspective as a farmer, but also the director of the Ontario Federation of Agriculture, how important the land is that he farms on. What's your take on this? How critical is Ontario's agricultural land to the food security of this entire nation?

WAYNE CALDWELL: You know, I think it's really important from a whole bunch of perspectives. The first is to remember the quality of agricultural land that we have in this province. We rate lands and soils across the country for their capability for agriculture. And we have such a strong concentration of prime agricultural land here in Ontario. In addition to that, it's to remember the climate. The climate that we have is really, given how far south the southern part of Ontario is, we have a climate that simply isn't replicated anywhere else in the country in terms of its ability to produce. When you put those two things together, climate and soils, we have incredible capacity. And if you look, for example, at the amount of agricultural land in Ontario, and it’s to recognize we have other pockets of really important agricultural land across the country, the prairies, Alberta and Saskatchewan as an example. But if we look at the total value of production that comes from land in Ontario, it equals the production from Alberta or the production from Saskatchewan, notwithstanding the amount of agricultural land in those provinces is much, much larger.

MG: And is a lot of that food that's grown here in and around Ontario, is that kept in that province or is it exported? What's the story there?

WAYNE CALDWELL: It's complicated. And what I would say to that is we have a really important export industry in Ontario and in Canada, whether it be beef, whether it be hogs, whether it be wheat, for example. So we export those types of foods. And yet, if we look at the produce that we consume, I was recently looking and it's roughly two thirds of what we consume in terms of produce is imported. So we have this important export, we have this important import, and it's to recognize that both of those play an important role in the agricultural economy and the society as a whole.

MG: We've been talking on this program about, you know, the drought in California, for example, impacting the fruit and vegetable supply, that the salad that people might enjoy at this time of the year because maybe it's not being grown local just yet, might be threatened or the cost will go up, up, up because of a changing climate and what that's doing to the ability of California and Arizona to export fruits and vegetables. What sort of threat does that present to Canada's food supply?

WAYNE CALDWELL: I think that is a perfect example of the threats that exist globally to food production. And I, for example, there’s a series of maps. And people will look at climate change with different kinds of lenses, but there's a series of maps that the U.N. has put out that I like to look to, which talks about our productivity globally going up to the year 2080. And it shows areas which will lose productivity and it shows areas that will gain productivity. And we have huge areas of the planet that will lose productivity based on those forecasts. So virtually the entire continent of Africa, virtually the entire continent of South America, virtually Southeast Asia, Australia, will lose significant productivity. And of course, California is one of those areas that’s forecast to lose productivity as well. While at the same time, we have the, I don't know if we can say anything is good about climate change, but we have the potential where we may see increased productivity in this province, in this country, the southern part of Canada, where we're further away from the equator, where heat isn't so much of an issue currently, and additional heat in fact may lead to increases in productivity. And we have this dichotomy where much of the planet will lose productivity. Other areas, smaller areas will gain some in productivity, and we may very well fall into that category of gaining some productivity, notwithstanding the uncertainties associated with climate change. So again, it speaks to how precious the agricultural resources that we have in the province, not only for today, but for the next generation and generations after that.

MG: To Mark’s point, if you pave that land over, you're not going to be able to grow anything on there, let alone more things if you have a change in temperature.

WAYNE CALDWELL: Absolutely. Once it's lost, it's lost.

MG: What should we take away? He mentioned this as well. What should we take away from what happened during the pandemic where I think many people in this part of the world are familiar with going to a grocery store and the shelves are full and suddenly, the shelves weren’t full? There were huge gaps in what you could buy. What should we take away from that moment in an interruption in our food supply chain?

WAYNE CALDWELL: Yeah. Well, I think what I take away from it is a recognition that things aren't as certain as we might perceive them to be, right, in terms of our food availability and our ability to go to the grocery stores and secure what we need. I mean, we have a wonderful food system, in my view, in this country, which feeds many people and does it efficiently and, you know, really striving towards sustainability. But when something is disrupted like that, and climate change again is an example of a disrupter, things in the future will change in a significant way. And from my point of view, you know, we think about the future, we think about the next generation and beyond that, and we work to make sure that we protect those options. And when we look at it from a planning land use planning perspective, my profession, you know, we're thinking about those subsequent generations and how we address the important issues that face all of us today, the issues of our generation, and try to make sure that we're able to sustain that food production into the future. And again, in this country, we’re blessed with some fine farmland, and it's really important that we protect it.

MG: You see bumper stickers on the backs of cars and trucks and they all say farmers feed cities. There was a study done by the Canadian Centre for Food Integrity that showed that Canadians have very little understanding about how farming works in 2023. 91% of respondents said they know little or very little or nothing at all about modern agricultural practices. For people who don't live in rural areas, what do they need to understand about what's at stake here? And how important is that to help shape this larger conversation that we're having about how we use the land that produces the food that we all rely on?

WAYNE CALDWELL: Yeah, a great question. I think it's to remember that the agricultural landscape that we have in this country isn't there by accident. It's there by virtue of the hard work of generations of farmers using the land that we settled on. They're using that land with the notion of producing food. And they do so, in my view, in an economic way, an efficient way, and farmers work really hard to do it sustainably as well. And I think those things come together to give us this current opportunity that we have, which is, you know, in some ways, we're at a threshold. When we lose an acre of farmland, we lose a little bit of capacity. When we lose the generations of farmland, then we lose a lot of capacity. And I think it's for our urban folk and neighbours to realize that it's really important that we value what we have because it's not replaceable. I mean, people will say, well, you can always bring more land into production. And there's a little bit of truth in that in the sense that we have other areas of this country that could be brought into production. But what we don't have is the high quality land elsewhere, right, that whether we're in southern British Columbia or whether around Quebec City or, you know, between Quebec and Montreal, or whether we're in southern Ontario, what we have that has been farmed, that is currently farmed is no doubt the best that we have. And it's really important that we continue to think about that and that we have policies in place, that we have governments that are understanding, that we have procedures that make sure we make good decisions and that we plan well for urban spaces as well. Because if we do that well, then we equally protect agricultural land. I will often say driving into Toronto is an example. Seeing condominiums being built is one of the best things going, that intensification from the perspective of protecting farmland. Because if we do that, then we reduce the demand elsewhere.

MG: It's an important conversation. Wayne, glad to talk to you about it. Thank you very much.

WAYNE CALDWELL: My pleasure.

MG: Wayne Caldwell, recently retired professor in rural planning and development at the University of Guelph. Your thoughts on this are welcome. Email us, thecurrent@cbc.ca. We're back in six minutes with the stories of abuse facing referees in amateur sport in Canada.

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REFEREE ABUSE

Guests: Adrian Tanjala, Adam Morell, Tracy Vaillancourt

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

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

[crowd applauding]

MALE SPEAKER: No more. Now you know why we don't have referees out here, okay, because you all get on us and get on the kids and get on each other. Hush your mouths. Enjoy the game.

MG: If you have kids in minor league sports, that scene unfortunately probably sounds familiar. Referees are experiencing abuse, verbal and physical from parents, from coaches and from players. Now, some Canadian organizations are trying to put an end to this to protect their refs. That's coming up next. We'll also talk about life in flux as the fires continue on the edge of Nova Scotia.

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

FEMALE SPEAKER: Afternoon. So obviously, I've got the body camera on today. So what will happen if I need to switch this camera on, I will announce I'm activating the camera. It will capture that and the moments leading up to the incident. Okay. Have we got any questions?

MALE SPEAKER: No.

FEMALE SPEAKER: The camera is acting as a reminder of the respect that should be shown towards a match official.

MALE SPEAKER: At the end of kick off?

FEMALE SPEAKER: Yeah, brilliant stuff on cable.

MG: The soccer referee is part of a new pilot program in the U.K. On the pitch before the game, she explains to the team captains about her body camera, a small camera on her chest. She's wearing it, as she said, to remind everyone they need to respect the referee. Ontario Soccer is partnering with this pilot, and starting in July, some of its referees will also be wearing body cameras. Ontario Soccer CEO Johnny Misley says they needed to do more to stop abuse toward refs.

SOUNDCLIP

JOHNNY MISLEY: Almost 50, 60% of our referees are under the age of 18, so they're children and we're seeing a lot of verbal abuse. And then there's been a lot of reports of physical assaults. An example would be late last year in an adult recreational game, a player gets thrown out of the game, gets red carded, proceeds to the parking lot to take a machete out of his car and chase the referee around the field. This is the kind of behaviour that we're starting to see pop up, let alone a 16-year-old young official female in the parking lot after a game being assaulted by some parents. So these are the things that we've said. Enough is enough. Field signage and cute marketing campaigns only go so far. And we're doing that, but we're taking it to a level of a number of tactics, and this is one of them. Honestly, though, to actually have us as a sport, to have to have referees wearing referee cams or body cams is a pretty sad statement of where our society has come to.

MG: Adrian Tanjala has been a soccer referee since he was 15 years old. He's now 21. He's the head referee for North Toronto Soccer Club and he's with me in studio. Good morning.

ADRIAN TANJALA: Good morning. My pleasure.

MG: What's going through your mind when you hear Johnny Misley talk about his assaults on soccer referees, somebody being chased around a parking lot with a machete?

ADRIAN TANJALA: That to me is an absurdity. That is probably the most obscene, incredible boundary crossing I've heard of in the sport. But it doesn't surprise me. It's disappointing, but it's not surprising. And that's because I've experienced similar, not with a machete, but similar instances of violence myself.

MG: So let's walk through it. You’re 21, but you've already had a long career in this sport. When you started refereeing, what did you experience in those early years?

ADRIAN TANJALA: In those early years? It was a lot of verbal abuse and harassment. And that's because as a head referee, I encountered many inexperienced referees. I was like that myself when I was 15. I didn't really know what I was doing out there. I was shaking my decisions, wasn't very confident. I made poor decisions. I made mistakes. And unfortunately, I wasn't in an environment that was safe to make mistakes in. And so I had no one there to support me. I was on my own at pretty much every game I did. And some games were fine, but the games where I maybe did a worse job or maybe that parents were just more amped up on that particular day, lots of insults came out, right? I wear glasses right now. I'll 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 schoolyard, right? So this is schoolyard bullying behaviour, but it's coming from adults. And importantly, it's coming from parents who you would think would be a little bit more empathetic towards children, right, considering they've got children themselves.

MG: So I'm not, you know, devaluing that at all, those insults because obviously, they hurt and they mattered. What was the worst that happened to you?

ADRIAN TANJALA: The worst that happened was in 2021. Actually, I was 19. So only a few years ago in July, it was the very month that we had come back from the pandemic. So we were off for a long time, and I think people were very, very amped up. There was a lot of pent up anxiety there, and it was an under 18 match. It was a recreational match as well, I might add, very, very competitive. However, lots of controversial decisions. I'm ending the game and just as I've called for full time, two players are going at each other. They're swinging.

MG: They’re physically fighting.

ADRIAN TANJALA: Oh yeah, physically fighting. It's a fist fight and I've got my red card in hand, one, two. I'm putting it back in my pocket and before I can turn around, both teams have just sort of converged at the fight. Everyone's fighting everyone. I'm getting hit several times. Parents, they've come from the bleachers on to the field. You’d think they'd pull the kids away from the fight. They're not doing that. They're actually participating in the fight themselves. And at that point, after I've gotten hit a few times, I get up. I remove myself. I say, you know what, I'm not breaking that up. I'm getting my bag, my car keys. I'm going back to my car. As I'm going back to my car, I'm being followed by players and parents who've themselves come out in the fight and I'm being shouted obscenities and told this is all my fault. This happened because of you. And yeah, I would say that that's probably the worst of it, and I was very much on the brink of quitting the sport.

MG: It sounds really unsettling when you have not just players, but parents who are chasing after you having just experienced a brawl saying that all of this is your fault.

ADRIAN TANJALA: Yeah, it was. I cried in the car for an hour before I even, you know, in my garage practically once I made it home. And then I sent out a few emails to try and see what we can do, how we can deal with reporting, but it was very disturbing.

MG: What happened to those parents and those players that were involved in the brawl, but also the ones who chased you into the parking lot?

ADRIAN TANJALA: As far as I know, right, because I could not, you know, I didn't have time to take names and identifications, right, I could obviously say which teams were involved. As far as I know, in terms of accountability, each team was suspended for one match and the rest of the season went on as usual.

MG: And the parents?

ADRIAN TANJALA: No accountability as far as I'm aware.

MG: Did you think about quitting?

ADRIAN TANJALA: I did. Yeah. I was pretty convinced on it, quite frankly, for quite a few months. And then, you know, things changed later on in December and into the new Year that had changed my mind and convinced me to return.

MG: This isn't just a soccer issue. I mean, I think if you are a parent, you have seen this sort of bad behaviour, and I dare say people may have been complicit in this sort of behaviour in a number of different sports. So I want to bring a hockey referee into this conversation. Adam Morell is the officiating program coordinator with the Northern Ontario Hockey Association. He's in North Bay, Ontario. Adam, good morning to you.

ADAM MORELL: Hey, how are you?

MG: I'm well. You've been refereeing for 15 years. How familiar is what you're hearing in the course of this conversation from Adrian?

ADAM MORELL: It's honestly all too familiar. I deal with it both on an administrative side and as an official myself. So I through my day job see the abuse across the north here, and I also deal with it, I also deal with it on the ice.

MG: So what has happened to you on the ice?

ADAM MORELL: My first couple of years, you know, when I was starting to officiate, I didn't know all the rules. I was still young. I was 16, 17 when I first started. And, you know, you'd see a coach on the bench verbally berate you. Clipboards would be throwing, you'd get water bottles, sticks. And it's not just the coaches, it’s players too, right? So you'd get it from them. You make a bad call, you get the parents yelling at you. Specifically with what Adrian said there, when there is a fight, everybody is yelling at you to break it up, but there is fist flying 100 miles a minute and it's not in your best interest to try and get between them. So all the parents, again, they're blaming you for this fight and they want you to break it up because their kid made the decision and it's really not safe for you to go in, but they don't see it that way. So you take the brunt of it there too.

MG: You could imagine, and I mean, Adrian hinted at this, that somebody who sees this, somebody who's the subject of this abuse would say, you know what, I don't need this and I'm not going to be involved in this. One of the things that this abuse has led to is an inability of leagues to attract enough referees and to keep them. What has what you have seen in your league and in your association done? Do you have enough refs? Do refs tell you that they don't want to be involved in this?

ADAM MORELL: So initially, the main reason for officials leaving, we don't have a problem, I would say, getting them, but keeping them is another issue. And once they're exposed to the verbal abuse, a lot of them don't want to continue to officiate. Over a four-year span from year one to year four, we're lucky to keep 20% of those new officials from year one.

MG: What do they tell you? What do they say to you specifically about why they're leaving?

ADAM MORELL: The main reason is abuse. And I mean, we've come up with multiple ways to try and curb the abuse from the parents, and we're hoping to see success from those.

MG: I want to talk about what you're doing in a moment. But Adrian, are you seeing the same sort of thing? You're now in a management role. Is there an issue with referee retention in soccer?

ADRIAN TANJALA: I would say yes, but it's not a homogenous issue. In other words, it's not quite the same in all parts of Ontario and even in all parts of Toronto. It really depends on, I think, a number of key factors, and that's why we see differences between areas. Yes, in general, there is a retention problem, but I think that some associations, groups, districts, clubs, they can avoid that or they can help mitigate that by creating extra support for referees, making sure that leadership is visible there. Curbing abuse, that's the tough part. I think the support is a lot easier. It's actionable in that it's led. For example, at North Toronto, we've had over 80% retention of our referees, of our new referees from last year.

MG: But again, many of these referees, we should stress, are young people too. I mean, they're kids as well. They're teenagers. Adam, what are you doing to make sure that younger referees feel safer on the ice?

ADAM MORELL: So about three or four years ago, we launched a fan abuse policy. If a parent was being verbally abusive to an on ice official, they had the ability to eject the parent from the stands. If the parent refused to leave, the official ultimately had the ability to end the game and that parent or fan’s team would forfeit the game. That was our first level of protection. And then this past season, we followed suit with Ottawa and Hockey Eastern Ontario and launched the Green Armband Initiative, which was directed at 14 to 17-year-olds to wear a green armband while they were officiating out on the ice as a reminder that they're just a teenager and they don't need the verbal abuse that other officials might get or they're just teenagers and they're just starting out, just as a reminder that hey, I'm trying, but I'm going to make mistakes.

MG: Has that worked? I mean, one, you know, reminding people that they're teenagers, but also if someone is abusing somebody from the stands, throwing them out, and if you don't leave, you forfeit the game. Has that actually worked?

ADAM MORELL: We haven't had a game forfeited, but every parent has left under every incident that's been reported to us.

MG: Has it reduced abuse?

ADAM MORELL: I'm not sure if it's reduced abuse, but it's meant to deal with the people who are the main abusers in the stands.

MG: What do you make of this idea, Adrian, of the body cams? Again, this is a pilot project that's unfolding in various parts of the world, including here in Canada. The referees wear a bodycam as a point of accountability. Adrian, do you think that's an answer?

ADRIAN TANJALA: I think I'm not going to say that's not an answer, but I'm going to say that's part of an answer. And I think that we could be doing a lot more. In principle, I totally see where they're coming from. I think the idea of ensuring accountability is important. I think the idea of presenting the realities that referees face to other members of the soccer community that might be oblivious to them until the effects are realized much later on, I think that's quite important as well. So I'm going to be very clear and say that the principle of body cams is totally reasonable and I agree with it, but I think that it's part of a solution. And maybe it's step four, step five of a broader solution, but we're sort of missing step one and two.

MG: Which is the root cause of this. And so I'll ask you both, we're just about out of time, but I'll ask you both, and I'll start with you, Adrian. What has to change in the culture of sport so that people realize that it's not appropriate to show abuse, and don't talk about chasing somebody around with a machete, that it's not appropriate to shout abuse at kids who are trying to referee a game?

ADRIAN TANJALA: The answer is respect. We need to create a culture of respect. And that's sort of been my guiding principle at North Toronto over the last few years, and really, it's done in two ways. It's done first and foremost with enforcement, zero tolerance and being meaningful and serious about zero tolerance. But the other way, which I think is often ignored when we're trying to enforce our rules and policies is education. Understanding that yes, we need to be strict. And if individuals are abusive, yes, we need to remove them from those situations. But when we do that, we can't just tell them, well, we've removed you because you're abusive. We need to try and work with these individuals, get to the root cause of why is it that you're doing this, right? How can we help you understand that abuse is totally unacceptable in sport, right? How can we get you to learn from this? Really, Those are the questions we're asking side by side with enforcement. And I think that way, we're going to create more meaningful change at an individual and community level.

MG: Adam, last word to you. What do we need to do to address the root cause of what we're talking about?

ADAM MORELL: I can't echo more what Adrian said there, respect and education. But at the same time, I think, you know, it might not be the right answer, but if you bar parents from the arena for, you know, a couple of games, then you cite the reason why, they might start to respect officials a little more. And I think it would solve a lot of problems because what parent doesn't want to not go watch their kid play a sport?

MG: I'm really glad to hear both of your experiences in this. Thank you for being willing to share them. Thank you both.

ADRIAN TANJALA: My pleasure.

ADAM MORELL: Thank you.

MG: Adrian Tanjala is the head referee at North Toronto Soccer. Adam Morell is the officiating program coordinator with the Northern Ontario Hockey Association. Tracy Vaillancourt is a professor at the University of Ottawa, soccer coach at the provincial level. She's studying the mental and physical health impacts of abuse experienced by soccer referees in Canada. Tracy, good morning to you.

TRACY VAILLANCOURT: Good morning.

MG: Can I ask you just briefly first, as a soccer coach, how familiar is what you're hearing in terms of what you see? How often do you see this sort of abuse?

TRACY VAILLANCOURT: It's so commonplace. It would be a rare exception to be at a game and not see something happen. So I'm not saying it's going to be full of physical violence, but the heckling of referees is commonplace in soccer.

MG: What do you make of the idea of outfitting some referees with body cameras? Will that address what we have just heard in terms of the abuse that you describe, but also what Adrian and Adam themselves have been up against?

TRACY VAILLANCOURT: It's not going to address it per se, but it certainly serves a function. So when we look at violence across any form of violence, we know that one way to curtail it or reduce it is to create awareness. And so this morning, we're talking on a really big news program about this issue. So we're raising awareness, which is going to be really good. There's also evidence from other areas when we monitor people's behaviour, it tends to be better. So I mean, we can't equip everybody with these cameras, but certainly, when they are wearing it in this pilot, I think they're going to see better behaviour. They're not probably going to capture the really horrific things that have been said this morning, especially the one that Adrian just mentioned, but I think it's going to be an important awareness creating opportunity.

MG: Can you help people understand why children's sports gets so intense that adults would lose their minds in the stands and beyond?

TRACY VAILLANCOURT: So I just need to highlight one thing before I answer that. The impression that was given is that it's just spectators, that it's just parents that do this. Part of the culture of abuse in sport is also coaches.

MG: That's a good clarification. Yeah.

TRACY VAILLANCOURT: Yeah. And in the studies that came out of Ontario Soccer, we know that the person that's most likely to perpetrate abuse against referees is coaches. And that's also consistent with the National Association of Sports Officials. That's a United States based group that found in 17,000 American referees that it was also the coaches. Okay. So with that clarification, I think what's happened is we've changed youth sport to be more professional than it ever has been before. In the stakes are higher or the perception of the stakes are higher is there, I think that we're in a sense copying what's happening at the highest level and think that it has a place in youth sport and it doesn't. The abuse of referees even at the highest level doesn't belong there. But certainly, I think parents and coaches think that this matters, that the outcome of these games matter, and yet they really don't in the long run. What matters is that we're developing athletes, we're developing good citizens, that we’re, you know, tracking them so that they're the best they can possibly be in sport and in life. But yet, we're putting way too much emphasis on the outcomes of these games.

MG: I have a daughter who plays hockey. And in the clubhouse that she plays in, there's a sign and the sign says, your child's not going to make it to the big leagues. The referee does not have video replay. If you think that this is more than a game, you're in the wrong place in many ways. What is the impact, and you talked about this that this has on the referees, sure, but what is the impact that this has more broadly on the culture of sport if people have lost that sense of perspective?

TRACY VAILLANCOURT: I mean, there is a lot of evidence coming out, especially from the health area. So there is an intersection between health and violence. And the idea is that violence is contagious. And so the incivility that we see in one context spill over to another context. And we've seen a lot of this during the pandemic. A lot of people are saying that people are not as well behaved now, and they attribute it to the pandemic. And there could be something there about the incivility we saw just even on social media. So my concern is that if we accept this in one environment, we will accept it in another environment. And this is not the way we can live. We need to be kind to each other. We need to be civil. We need to allow for people to make mistakes and to learn. And it's just not happening. The implications are enormous, I think, for not only youth who are coming through the system, this youth system, but also for other areas of life.

MG: What accountability do you want to see for parents and to your point, for coaches who behave badly on the field?

TRACY VAILLANCOURT: So we do have to have some form of accountability. Of course, I would go with more of a progressive discipline approach just because a lot of times, zero tolerance approaches have not been shown to work and actually have shown to be more problematic in the end. But maybe, you know, we don't know this. Maybe sport is the one area where zero tolerance is the way to go. So I say that with a lot of caution. I think that we need to address the spectators for sure, but we really need to start sanctioning the coaches and we just haven't done it. So we need to start that. It needs to in a sense cause them problems to behave so poorly. They’re role models to the parents, they're role models to the players, and they are the ones who are think set the moral tone for the whole sporting context. And so I think if we clean up the behaviour of coaches, I think we'll see spectators and players follow suit.

MG: That that would be enough to change, we talk a lot about the culture of sport, but that would be enough to change that culture where to your point, for whatever reason, there are people who believe that this is acceptable.

TRACY VAILLANCOURT: Exactly. And just think about, again, so, you know, there's that old saying about like the most toxic member that you're willing to tolerate in your organization kind of sets the tone for the organization. So here, if we have the leadership accepting this and behaving poorly, then of course, we're going to see young people who are really good at watching adults behave and emulating it behave poorly. So we need coaches to set a better standard and I think that we'll see players and spectators behave more appropriately. And when they don't and if they don't, because obviously, this isn't going to be the panacea, we'll probably see, we'll probably have to address those with more targeted approaches.

MG: In the last minute that we have, what would be your word to those adults who might feel that they have been complicit in this sort of behaviour in past?

TRACY VAILLANCOURT: I find it shocking that we don't recognize that this is child abuse when we're talking about youth referees. So what Adrian described in his breakdown in the car afterwards, that was palpable for me. Like I felt that that was really harmful for him and I can appreciate why it is. In any other context, this behaviour would be called what it was, what it is, child abuse. But in the context of the sport, for some reason, it's part of the game. It's like a tolerated intolerable. But we have to change that viewpoint because it really does cause harm.

MG: Tracy, we'll leave it there. Really glad to talk to you. Thank you very much.

TRACY VAILLANCOURT: Thank you.

MG: Tracy Vaillancourt is a Canada research chair in school based mental health and violence prevention at the University of Ottawa, also a provincial soccer coach. We'd love to hear from you on this, your experiences perhaps as a referee or what you've seen on the field of play or as a coach or as a parent. What do you think of the idea of referees wearing body cameras, but more broadly, how do we go about addressing the culture that, to Tracy's point, allows people to believe that this sort of abuse is acceptable? Email us, thecurrent@cbc.ca. Well, coming up after your regional update.

SOUNDCLIP

LISA PARSONS: We need to evacuate 18 dogs and people. And the answer was if they’re humans, we have buses to go get them. If they're dogs, then that is what it is.

MG: The dog trainer Lisa Parsons wasn't going to take it is what it is as an answer. In 90 seconds, she joins us to tell us what she did to rescue 18 dogs from wildfires in Nova Scotia, just on the edge of Halifax. Plus, how mysterious remains found on the coast of Labrador are giving researchers a glimpse into the lives of black sailors hundreds of years ago. Those stories coming up. I'm Matt Galloway. This is The Current. We're back in 90 seconds.

[Music: Theme]

NOVA SCOTIA WILDFIRES

Guest: Lisa Parsons

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

SOUNDCLIP

LISA PARSONS: I just want to clarify because I've come back and there's a rumour going around that we're going to go into a fire zone and break into people's houses and grab animals. We're not fire fighters.

MG: That's Lisa Parsons standing on a plastic chair in a church kitchen. Yesterday, she was directing about 30 volunteers from all over Nova Scotia. When the Tantallon wildfire started on Sunday afternoon, Lisa rescued 18 dogs who were staying at her kennel. She did it on foot, running through the bush surrounding her neighbourhood. She is now heading up a rescue group to rescue pets that are still lost.

SOUNDCLIP

LISA PARSONS: Okay. Yes, I’ve done what I did, but safety in numbers. We're not going to go into like an active fire flare up zone to go rescue, unfortunately, a poor kitty. It's as simple as that.

[dog barking]

NANCY KNOWLES: My name is Nancy Knowles. Yes, we have been housing them here at the church since Sunday night. They arrived here in a panic with 18 dogs needing a place to stay. We said we can do this. We have a gym. You can take it over. Now they are going beyond, above and beyond to rescue any other pets that might be out there because of the fire.

LISA PARSONS: We are doing the best we can. And I'm so overwhelmed I could cry every two seconds, but I'm not going to. So let's just make it safe. All right.

MG: Lisa Parsons and her family had been sleeping on the gym floor of that church until it was evacuated late yesterday. Lisa, good morning.

LISA PARSONS: Good morning.

MG: Where did you sleep last night?

LISA PARSONS: Some lovely, wonderful people managed to put us up in their actual home with a lovely backyard so I could let the dogs out and just chill and have a bed for the night.

MG: So you and how many dogs?

LISA PARSONS: So we have four dogs at present and two cats.

MG: And in somebody's house that you just met.

LISA PARSONS: Yes. Yes.

MG: Tell me about what you have been doing in this first evacuation from your home with all those dogs you decided to rescue. What was going on?

LISA PARSONS: So our house was actually in the Westwood Hills area. So we were actually going to try and stay put in our home as long as possible with people on the outside of the subdivision contacting us saying, can you go to our house to get our animals? So we were trying to stay put as long as possible. We've got our friends, cats, dogs, you know, And then we went into another person's house, got their two cats and puppy, and then we suddenly all of a sudden went to the end of our road and saw the fire across the street and we were like, we need to get out. So we left the subdivision with eight dogs and cats, and then it just all got a whirlwind from there in regards to where do we go next? We reunited some animals and then, you know, we had to then go and try and get to Hammonds Plains where the dogs were being boarded, the 18 dogs and get them out. And yeah, it's just been a madness, absolute madness.

MG: Tell me why this has been so important for you to do. I mean, everybody has been told to get out. These are really, really desperate circumstances where people have been forced to leave, you know, with a few seconds notice in many cases. For you to do this work, why is this important?

LISA PARSONS: I've always believed in animals since I've been little. And unfortunately, I've always put the lives of animals in front of mine, ask anyone, just because they don't have an advocate. And I can't stand there and watch. It's just not in me. My family, unfortunately, sometimes look at me and just give me that look going, what are you doing? And I'm like, but it's an animal. There's no advocacy. They can't think oh my God, there's a fire and get out. You know, they're not programmed like us. They need as much help as possible.

MG: When you reunite those animals with their owners, people who have had to flee, they were told to take their animals, but they may not have had time and they may not have known what to do and it's the panic situation. You understand the situation the people are in. So when you reunite them with their animals, what is that like?

LISA PARSONS: I think I've cried every single time.

MG: I might cry if you tell me what's going to happen.

LISA PARSONS: Yeah. It's the most beautiful heartwarming because those animals, their dogs are their babies. And they’ve just been so grateful and so wonderful that we've managed to get their baby back to them. You know, these are family whether they've got four legs or two. Yeah, I think I've cried every single time.

MG: So I just have a minute or so left. Let me ask you two other quick things. One is just this is continuing, right? I mean, there's been a second evacuation, so your work continues now.

LISA PARSONS: Yes. We are currently set up at a warehouse on Corbett Creek Road where we are still getting numbers of, you know, calls, messages saying, you know, have you seen this dog? Have you gotten this dog? We are actively setting up groups to go out and search as well to see if we can, you know, find any animals and just kind of return and have some sort of normality when we do get families put back together again.

MG: And what about your own home and your kennel?

LISA PARSONS: So Pampered Paws Inn currently stands at present. At our home, we're still waiting on news. We believe it's okay, but we haven't had any official reports yet.

MG: You're doing really good work. This is quite a story. Can you just take care of yourself along with those animals, but make sure that you're safe as well? Thanks for talking to us, Lisa.

LISA PARSONS: Yeah. Excellent. Thank you.

MG: Lisa Parsons is the manager of Pampered Paws Inn in Hammonds Plains, Nova Scotia. Wildfires are still burning in Nova Scotia. More than 200 structures, mostly homes, have been destroyed in those fires.

[music]

THE EXCAVATION OF WH

MG: This is The Current on CBC Radio. My name is Matt Galloway. A leather shoe, a folded overcoat, a knife with the initials WH and a skeleton wrapped in a shroud. The remains of a sailor from the 1800s now known as WH were discovered on the southern coast of Labrador in 1987. And now, decades later, scientists and artists are coming together to solve the mystery of who he was. Here is Alisa Siegel’s documentary, The Excavation of WH.

SOUNDCLIP

[music in]

Bushra reading: I don't know your rightful name and I don't know from whence you came. All I know is it's a shame that there is no one to claim your remains.

[music out]

BUSHRA JUNAID: The story of WH simply captured my imagination and I couldn't stop thinking about him. I'm Bushra Junaid and I'm an artist and curator. I was born in Montreal, raised in St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador and live in Toronto. I'm the author and illustrator of The Possible Lives of WH Sailor. I use this actual historical figure whose remains are all that we have, and they allow us to imagine the possible lives that he may have lived. I think for me, writing the book, the narrative poem, and contemplating his history and who he might have been is a way of honouring him.

[music in]

Bushra reading: What truths would you utter from your mouth if you could tell us your story, something of your history?

[music out]

CATHERINE MATHIAS: WH had been buried in a sandbank in L’Anse au Loup and was literally being washed out to sea or about to be washed out to sea. And a concerned citizen asked if we could come down and do something with this. My name is Catherine Mathias. I am a conservator, also a geologist, and I do freelance art history work. This end of a coffin was exposed and was wrapped up in a shroud. The jacket and pants were laid on top. The great coat or overcoat was at his feet, and his shoes were on either side of the head and a wooden box as a coffin.

BUSHRA JUNAID: Other things found in the coffin included a loose key in the trouser pockets, a fur hat, a waistband, a knee length stocking and a 20 centimetre long wooden marlinspike. That's a pointed tool that's used to join together strands of rope.

CATHERINE MATHIAS: When we removed the shroud, we found the human remains, a fairly well preserved skeleton. At that point, that was turned over to the forensic anthropologist.

SONJA JERKIC: Basically, I started from the skull and worked my way down. My name is Sonia Jerkic. I was the biological anthropologist specializing in human osteology at Memorial University. A human osteologist is somebody who studies human bones.

CATHERINE MATHIAS: The clothing were fairly high quality. And at that time, one would assume they would have been sold off to other mates on the ship, possibly the money going towards family members. But that wasn't done. It could be an act of high respect if the person didn't have any family members or it could be a disease related issue.

SONJA JERKIC: He may have contracted a contagious disease and the rest of the crew, rather than wanting to take on his gear, would have buried it with him so that the disease would not have been passed on to them. Again, I had no corroborating evidence on the skeleton.

[music in]

Bushra reading: You're kinky hair and strong teeth, your knife, the shoes on your feet, the clothes that you wore, all are clues to who you were and the customs to which you bore witness. Can your bones tell us more?

[music out]

CATHERINE JERKIC: The whole portion of the skull that covers the brain was complete. The individual had a complete set of adult teeth. And from other portions of the skeleton, we came up with an age of approximately 22 years at time of death.

[music in]

BUSHRA READING: Laid to rest on the Strait of Belle Isle, you were young and short in stature, missing your forearm, for that matter. Was this the factor that led to your demise?

[music out]

SONJA JERKIC: What was most intriguing to me is the fact that when I looked at characteristics to determine racial background of this individual, they were very attributable to somebody of African background. We were able to get confirmation on that from the fact that there was preservation of a small area of the scalp with hair still attached to it at the back of the skull. So we had double confirmation of ancestry, and one that I was not expecting to find in this grave. In all of my years in Newfoundland and in all of the material I looked at, this was the only instance where I saw the remains of somebody of African ancestry.

[music in]

Bushra reading: Some may say I've got no skin in the game. Yet if it's really all the same, this child of the diaspora would like to claim you as kin.

[music out]

BUSHRA JUNAID: I claim WH as kin because Newfoundland and Labradorians are really incredible, close knit, familial. They know their history. They know what they've endured. If you travel across the island, you see plaques, memorials to the history of the place. But there's no commemoration of its black history. I grew up in Newfoundland and Labrador. I was a school child. I was always the only black child in my class. There were very few children of colour, period. My entire education, I didn't learn anything about the province's connections to my own history as a black person, as an African Caribbean descended person. And so for me, this was like tangible evidence of those real connections and those connections that dated back hundreds of years. So for me, it was important to claim WH to somebody whose life mattered, who spent time, no matter how briefly it was in Newfoundland and Labrador, and who represents the black history of the place, the black experience, The Black life on the North Atlantic. And those of us from the diaspora whose histories have been erased, this is a reclaiming. We matter. We belong here. We have a right to be here. We have been here. We have contributed and continue to contribute to this place.

[music in]

Bushra reading: What was the land of your birth? Do you remember the colour and smell of its earth? Were you born on West African soil, captured as a child and sold into slavery’s toil, forcibly transported to the new world in the hold of a slave ship? Or were you born on a plantation in the Caribbean or the American South? Did you cut sugarcane, pick cotton, plant rice through heavy rains, heat and drought? Or did you hail from much closer, perhaps the son of Nova Scotia whose parents fought for England in the American Revolutionary War, promised Land on its distant rocky shores, only to be given plots that were lifeless and poor?

[music out]

BUSHRA JUNAID: I didn't know about the role that African descended people played in the age of sale, the different roles that they played, what they carried with them. And so his remains invite us to learn more about that.

NEIL KENNEDY: My name is Neil Kennedy. I'm a professor of Atlantic history at Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador. To my mind, the significance of the WH burial is that it is a reminder of the presence of people of colour in this place, of how commonplace the presence of people of colour were in that maritime world. These are reminders of these intertwined histories, that these are not separate histories. They are part and parcel of the maritime and settled cultures of these places. And they ought not to be seen, I think, as curiosities, as marginal or separate histories. They are part of our history and deeply so.

JEFF BOLSTER: In the early 19th century, around 1815, one in five of all the sailors on American sailing ships were African-American men, West Indian men. My name is Jeff Bolster, and I'm a historian, retired from the University of New Hampshire. I'm also a seaman of many years in the North Atlantic, and I have some expertise on African-American seafaring. By around 1815, one in five of every sailor, and we're talking tens of thousands of men here on American ships was a man of colour. Most of them were free or many of them were men on the lam. They were legally enslaved, but they had taken off, sometimes with a wink and a nod of a captain who was short on labour and was happy to take a man, especially a man who seemed to have some boat savvy, even if he was legally enslaved. These are people who have very, very limited options, and seafaring was one way that men of colour could sometimes take some charge over their lives.

NEIL KENNEDY: For the white population, sailing was a marginal occupation. But for people of colour, it was very often a route to freedom, a route to opportunity, a route to masculine expressions of self-worth and routes to communication in the black Atlantic that were extremely important as well.

JEFF BOLSTER: Most of the black men were cooks, stewards, ordinary seamen, able bodied seamen. It was rare in that era for a black man to rise to an officer's berth aboard a ship. A man's position had a lot to do with how he was regarded. Ships could be extraordinarily racist places, and there were many black men at sea who were subject to horrible invective and insults and beatings by white shipmates. But there are many other instances where black and white shipmates worked together, sailed together, fraternize together, bucked their officers together. And so the best way to put it is that the ship was a workplace in that incredibly racist and slave driven era. The ship was a workplace where black men sometimes found more freedom or a partial freedom than they would have in a cotton field or tobacco field or working chopping wood for a white person.

[music in]

Bushra reading: Did the ship's captain take a shine to you, let you hang out with the officers as they dined too? Did you have special status with the crew? Did they discriminate or did they give you your do? Were you a free man or enslaved as you traversed the ocean waves?

[music out]

SONJA JERKIC: At that time period and before, if Seaman died aboard ship, they were more often than not interred in the sea. Their bodies were wrapped in a shroud and then slid overboard. But the fact that in this case, they took the time to build a coffin, to bring the individual on land, to dig a grave and to intern him in that way, all of this took time and an effort. And that in and of itself makes him special, makes him different. Was he a very good comrade? Was he a servant? Was he an active member of the crew? Something was there that made him different. What was that? It makes this special for the simple reason that human remains are always well-represented. And the very fact that one example can be found and give you a little bit of an insight into the life and times of one individual is a little bit of a miracle.

BUSHRA JUNAID: I think his story is really important because it sheds light on the contributions, the lives of African descended people of that era whose stories have not been told, whose contributions have not been shared, what he tells us about history, but what he also suggests to us about the now and the future, also wanting to encourage people to look at archives and wonder what's missing, and to read between the lines of the sort of established histories that we've all been told or thought we knew. History is more complicated than we think we know.

JEFF BOLSTER: I wrote a book about African-American semen. But every place I went for years researching that book, well-meaning archivists and librarians would tell me that I wasn't going to find much. They were just convinced black and white people, male and female, old and young, that I was going down a dead end. There just weren’t going to be black sailors. In other words, modern racial conventions had played with them and they misinterpreted the past even as archivists and librarians. In light of that, it turns out that black seamen were extraordinarily common. More than that, there were so many pictures, images, photographs, line art of black sailors that I found in the U.S., in the Caribbean, in Europe, that they'd been hiding in plain sight. Our assumptions and especially our assumptions about the past are often wrong.

SONJA JERKIC: Any new investigations that are done, if it's possible to extract DNA from the teeth or from the bone, the cortical bone, they may be able to get corroborative genetic evidence for sex, for ancestry, racial ancestry, and be able to pinpoint it more accurately. Where did this individual come from?

JENNIFER POULIN: I'm about to analyze threads from the clothing of WH. My name is Jennifer Poulin and I'm a senior conservation scientist at CCI, the Canadian Conservation Institute. I'm going to look at his clothing and the threads and the fibres and try to investigate and find some tiny details about them and maybe what dyes they were using, what mordents they were using, what was he spilling on himself. We've got the fibres. We've got how the threads were made. We have specialists that are looking at how the clothing was made, how the pattern was cut. And hopefully, using all that information together, we can find out where he was from. We need to bring him back. We need to give him his people again or make his life better in some way. It's a very delicate situation. This was a person. This is somebody’s child. This is somebody's brother and he met a tragic end early. If we can do something with science to bring him back to personhood, to make him a real live person again on the page and on the screen, then he isn't forgotten at all. He's somebody that we remember. It's important for Canada as a nation. It's important for our children to know.

[music in]

Bushra reading: Did you carry ideas of democracy and freedom, ideas shared with your plantation bound black brothers and sisters when you encountered them? Did you father children, a son, a daughter?

[music out]

JENNIFER POULIN: I'm going to put the extracts, so tiny little amounts of them, and I'm going to put it through my instrument and I'm going to see what the black and blue and possibly yellow dyes were. I can't wait to identify these colours and hopefully we can find out where he was from.

BUSHRA JUNAID: I would love to see us find out more about who WH was. Where did he come from? Who were his people? Who his living descendants are. And once we know that, to come together to determine what should happen with those remains. I would love to see him receive a dignified burial and some kind of marker near where he was found that represents the role that he plays as an African figure found in this part of the world. I imagine community coming together and enacting some rituals on the Labrador coast to see him home again.

[music in]

Bushra reading: I don't know from whence you came, and I don't know your rightful name, but you remain. Respect is due. It's time that you were laid to rest anew.

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MG: That documentary, The Excavation of WH, was produced by Alisa Siegel with the CBC Audio documentary Unit. That's The Current for this Wednesday. Q is up next on CBC Radio One. Just a reminder, if you missed anything on the program or other programs, we direct you to the CBC Listen app. It's free wherever you find your apps. I'm Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening. We'll see you tomorrow.

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Wednesday May 31, 2023 Episode Transcript

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