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The Current Transcript for September 28, 2022

Host: Matt Galloway

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

Our reality is this writing remains the most dangerous profession in most places, much more dangerous than military life.

MATT GALLOWAY: When Salman Rushdie was stabbed while speaking on stage earlier this year, it was seen not just as an attack on the celebrated author, but also on freedom of expression. Last night, a star studded line-up of his friends and colleagues gathered in Toronto to stand with Rushdie and defend the freedom to write and read widely. In 30 minutes, three of those friends on why Rushdie's fight is their fight and why they're worried about the state of discourse today. Also this morning.

SOUNDCLIP

I don't want to go back in this hospital and never because a lot of my partner, my sister, my my brother live the same thing that's live to Joyce, you know.

MG: It's been two years since Joyce Echaquan died in a Quebec hospital after broadcasting online the racist abuse she faced while waiting for treatment. What's changed since then when it comes to the health care indigenous people get in this country? Not nearly enough, say those on the front lines. We'll hear why in an hour. We start, though, in Nova Scotia, where for many the lights are still out after Fiona. Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway and this is The Current.

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Storm Fiona’s lingering emotional impact

Guests: Michael Ungar, Lorenda Ebbett, Kathy Ingram MacKinnon, Ronald Michaelis

MG: Well, over the past few days, we've been checking in with communities in Atlantic Canada in the aftermath of post-tropical storm Fiona. Today we're in Nova Scotia where the storm damaged swaths of the province's farmland. Lorenda Ebbett is the owner and operator of Abbott's Meadowbrook Farm and Tatami, Nova Scotia. Lorenda. Good morning.

LORENDA EBBETT: Good morning.

MG: How did this storm impact you and your farm?

LORENDA EBBETT: Enormously. We have lots of damage. I guess we rely heavily on electricity. A big part of our business is we raise livestock and we sell it for meat products. So naturally we have lots of inventory that's in freezers that you are concerned about. And the livestock themselves, they require water. There's many of them that are housed in buildings that with a water pump running, they just don't have water and and they wouldn't survive otherwise. Things like the feed that we mail to feed the animals every day we need, I guess we often do use the tractor to to mill that and use the energy from the tractor anyway. But all of that stuff, caring for animals and looking after them. For us, it's more of a hardship when you don't have your electricity.

MG: Do you have any sense as to when the power is going to be back on?

LORENDA EBBETT: Um, I guess last night they did some updates on the outage map and it's suggesting in this area that some people may receive their power on Sunday and some may receive it on Tuesday. But personally, I feel those are still optimistic dates because of the extensive damage that there is with the broken power poles and downed lines and not just power lines, but of course the phone lines are down as well that landlines and Internet service, I don't know what the situation is of those towers, but there's many providers that their Internet service is not working. And all of those things like we rely on so greatly to run businesses and communicate with one another.

MG: So if this goes on for a week or longer when it comes to no power, but as you say, all the other infrastructure parts as well, I mean, what's going to happen with the farm?

LORENDA EBBETT: With our farm? I mean, we're coping fairly well. We've managed we have three different generators that we have managed to round up. In fact, my husband arranged to get a generator from a gentleman in Bridgewater yesterday that no longer needs his because they have power and it is large enough to run everything here at this property. We have two properties as well. So that becomes the other challenge, right? You have to have infrastructure both places. We have a poultry abattoir as part of our business, which is not only important for our free range chicken and turkey sales and being able to process those, but we have several other customers that we provide that service for as well. And many of them are licenced producers that do several hundreds or thousands of birds a year and without our service. And, you know, we have Thanksgiving right around the corner and people it's, you know, to put off your your processing of those birds. It's a bit of a challenge, one, will people even be able to have their birds for Thanksgiving if they want to celebrate that holiday? We're not sure. All these birds, they need to be done in a certain time frame or window because, just they get bigger, for example, like everybody wants and you try to arrange things at that the right age and being processed at the right time. And so, you know, there's all those risks for people the longer they keep their birds. And we are trying to do what we can to try to get things fit back in for people. And that's one reason we borrowed this large generator is so we are going to try tomorrow to attempt to run our poultry abattoir with this generator power and start to get some of our birds processed and get some birds done for some of our other customers that are waiting to have them done.

MG: I can hear it in your voice. It's a lot of stress. These are going to be difficult days ahead. I really appreciate talking to you, Lorenda, and I wish you the very best of luck. Take good care.

LORENDA EBBETT: Thank you.

MG: Lorenda Ebbett is the owner and operator of Ebbett's Meadowbrook Farm and Tattoo Miguel, Nova Scotia. Kathy Ingram MacKinnon lives in Neils Harbour in Cape Breton and owns a number of rental cottages along the coast. Kathy, good morning to you. Good morning. I'll ask you the same question. What sort of damage was done to your properties by the storm?

KATHY INGRAM MACKINNON: Well, one property, one I have two separate cottages, like in different locations. One, the the cliff side. I lost about two feet of the cliff. So that's all eroded. And what we did was check that out. The cottage itself didn't get damaged, but the erosion was a concern for safety. We fenced off an area so that people can't go beyond that and that we have that one is going to be able to be rented because we do have a lot of people who come in here to do work and accommodations are limited. Yeah, my other cottage is not so fortunate. It's one whole wall came in and then the windows and most of the rocky boulders that are on the coastline there, they're all up in our field, in the yard, in all different areas. And then that won't be open for quite some time until we get some contractors in and carpenters.

MG: And you had- I mean, this is one of the properties had I saw the photos of all of the sea foam that had just come roaring through the cottage.

KATHY INGRAM MACKINNON: That's right. And that is the third one. And that is a property I manage for a gentleman and that the adjuster has not been here yet. That certainly won't be open and I'm not sure what they're going to tell us. The wind broken, the back door and there's wind and an ocean came all in through. So that place, if if we can ever get it open, I mean, the structure is standing, but what are they going to tell us? I'm not sure.

MG: Lorenda was just talking about that. I mean, the business aspect of this, this is people's livelihoods and this is your livelihood as well. What does this mean for you?

KATHY INGRAM MACKINNON: Well. Well, actually, I'm a I'm a retired R.N. but, you know, this is my supplement and this is something we've had for since 1999. And well, I guess I do have rental disturbance coverage. If if the insurance say that, you know, that is something that they will cover. So the interruption hopefully will be whatever I had booked. I may--

MG: Kathy, you still there? Oh, I think we might have lost Kathy. The phone lines, as we've been hearing, have been a bit janky as well. So we will wish Kathy the best and move on from her. Kathy Ingram macKinnon is in Neils Harbour in Cape Breton. Just across from her cottages is the Victoria Co-operative Fisheries Plant. It's a major employer in Neils Harbour. Roland Michaelis is the operations manager there. Roland, good morning to you.

ROLAND MICHAELIS: Good morning.

MG: Your plant is right on the waterfront, right? Yeah, it is right at water level, essentially. So tell me what this storm did to your operations.

ROLAND MICHAELIS: Well, the the storm basically came in through the building. You're to go to a four foot high concrete wall at the base of the building and basically just folded in half and, you know, water entered the building and, you know, did a significant amount of damage inside the building. So there's a huge loss. The water went up, you know, the property far enough that it removed some of the refrigerated containers we have and moved those around. And obviously all the power, concrete buildings, everything is all compromised. So we've got a major, you know, obviously an insurance claim and major damage.

MG: And all of these injuries, in spite of the fact that I mean, you're right there, you know, you have experience with storms. And so there was mitigation efforts that were put into place to try and protect the property from.

ROLAND MICHAELIS: Absolutely. So there's a huge sea wall here. We also have a 16 inch concrete wall that's at the edge of the wharf to stop, you know, large waves from coming over and, you know, contacting the building. A lot of the building has been designed, like I said, the bottom part of the building, it was probably 12 to 14 inches thick concrete, all designed to withstand some impact. They're on the building are all designed to handle a significant impact. But this is, you know, one of a kind event here and. You know, just something we just couldn't he couldn't handle. So. The problem is the equipment inside is all, you know, sophisticated equipment. It gets wet and it's electronic, it's computerised. And, you know, like you said, significant amount of damage still. This is a facility that employs about 100 people. There's probably another 50 people that we have in our trucking company that go along with this plant that are sick stations. And there's a 120 local fishing vessels that provide their product to us, you know, that we process and sell.

MG: Tell me more about that. I mean, because Kathy and Lorenda both talked about the damage as well, being not just specific to them, but there's a spinoff when it comes to the community for your plant. I mean, what does it meant to the community there?

ROLAND MICHAELIS: Well, the big thing now for the community for for, you know, the rest of the communities that we get this plant up and running as fast as we can, you know, these the fishing season is largely over here. But when it starts in the springtime, like I said, this place needs to be fully functional. People around here, they rely on this for employment. Obviously the harvesters that are out here fishing, they rely on this sport to process their product and make it marketable. So like I said, it is an important thing in the community.

MG: And you're already meeting with contractors and engineers to try and get get the ball.

ROLAND MICHAELIS: Yeah, we've we had the engineers in yesterday. The building inspector was in yesterday. We have contractors already on site. The insurance company hasn't been here, but we've had to go ahead and make repairs. You know, there's more weather coming. There was a significant amount of rain yesterday. And so that we, you know, mitigate some of the, you know, damages and, you know, any other damage that can occur. We need to kind of get the building weather tight, first of all, and then get it repaired. So it's everything's ongoing right now. And I mean, you can look around the community. There's bulldozer, excavators, the county is working here. Power companies are.

MG: You getting any sleep?

ROLAND MICHAELIS: Yeah, a little bit. We finally got power at their home yesterday, so thanks to Nova Scotia. Power. But, yeah, I mean, it's busy.

MG: It sounds it. I really appreciate you taking some time in the middle of this to tell us about it. It's important. And I wish you the best of luck.

ROLAND MICHAELIS: Thank you.

MG: Roland Michaelis is the operations manager at the Victoria Co-operative Fisheries Plant in Neils Harbour, Cape Breton. Recovery from a storm like Fiona is underway, as you're hearing, across Atlantic Canada. But once the debris is cleared, the emotional impact of this devastation is going to linger. Michael Ungar is the Canada research chair in Child, Family and Community Resilience at Dalhousie University. He's in Halifax this morning. Michael, good morning to you.

MICHAEL UNGAR: Good morning, Matt.

MG: What is the emotional toll on a community after a natural disaster like this? Again, we've just heard from people talking about their own properties, their own businesses over the last couple of days. We've been talking about the weight that this has had on people. If you take a look at a community, what's the impact of this?

MICHAEL UNGAR: So what you'll see, of course, is exactly what you're getting at is this ripple effect that that we have a sense of collective loss, of collective identity, that has a history when, you know, major, whether it's a business like what you've just had described there, Neal's harbour or faith communities, a hub for that or a service club or indeed a park, all these things, they sort of just strip away the community's identity. But but also that that that sense of, you know, we live well when we have routines and a sense of security and also a sense of efficacy or control over the world around us. And when our neighbour sort of experiences that in a big significant loss, it ripples across. We have that sort of secondary or vicarious experience of our our experience of safety and security also being shattered. So, you know, one can imagine that these communities, whether you were directly hit by the waves or not, there is going to be a sense of collective loss as well.

MG: And again, that can be someone's individual property and their physical property. But as Roland was saying, 100 and some plus people work through that fishing plant in Neils Harbour, and they're now out of work as people try to scramble to get that plant back online. I mean, it sounds obvious in some ways, but how does that impact the rhythm of somebody's life if their livelihood is snatched away from them and they don't feel any sense of control in that?

MICHAEL UNGAR: Well, you're getting really at the roots of the way that we feel resilience or the way that we deal effectively with trauma is through that return to routines, the sense of continuity of that. We, you know, we know where we belong. We have the same relationships. We also have a you know, people will talk about like what makes me future oriented or optimistic about the future. It's not something that just happens inside our minds. We don't sort of, you know, say to ourselves to be positive. It comes from that that very habituated, normal day. Something happened. I fed my cattle. I went to work. I met somebody on the street that I meet all the time. And that kind of creates that sense of, well, my world is predictable and therefore tomorrow will be somewhat I can anticipate tomorrow and know that it's going to be okay too. So for these communities, getting, you know, getting the schools open, getting the jobs back, getting people, you know, back to even electricity. And, you know, that's wonderful. Nova Scotia power folks are out there on the street, on the roads. All of that adds to that sense of it's a psychological intervention as by the way, and it was very interesting, several your guest mentioned, for instance, the insurance adjusters and and we've seen this say after the Fort McMurray wildfires, which devastated their communities. One of the first and most helpful things that people experience was the insurance adjusters went to the shelters where people had been displaced, too, in several cases, and started those claims. And that, I'm going to argue, became a psychological intervention against trauma, because suddenly people feel I can return to my community, I can get on with my life, I can start rebuilding, I can reconnect to my community.

MG: But that rebuilding is interesting. Again, we've had conversations over the last couple of days with people who have loved where they have lived, right on the shore of the ocean. It's been, you know, part of their lives, their entire lives. And a couple of people said after this, they're not going to rebuild their that they wouldn't go back to that area. What is the impact of that lingering trauma when you're trying to rebuild and you're trying to figure out where to rebuild?

MICHAEL UNGAR: Well. Well, on one hand, it's obviously that the ocean, the waves, the noise is going to be triggering for people if they've really had that brush with death or complete destruction of their lives. So that move perhaps inland is in a sense protective and that would be somewhat expected. But, you know, there's also something sensible about this as our climate changes, as we're seeing these storms become more and more frequent. In fact, what we we just sort of don't want to see, as this was sometimes referred to as toxic positivity, this unrealistic assessment of the risks. So while it's extremely hard for communities that have had these wonderful, you know, lifestyles of being very close and sort of intimate with the ocean and the environment. But part of that is also going to demand change. And to the extent that communities can, you know, re-establish and this is where I sort of, you know, the research I do is and how can communities re-establish new routines in both sort of formal connections, but also the institutions. So, you know, when when Calgary buys out a lot of land on the floodplain after some major flooding and asks people to, you know, insist that people relocate, it's painful process, but it also sets the community up for future resilience. And it's also the of course, as individuals ourselves, we do these informal things. I mean, it's everything from, you know, the small little things like the dog parks that keep us connected to our our neighbours, the community clean ups. Or maybe it's as trite as the fact that we leave a key when we're off on vacation, we leave a key with a neighbour to check, checking on our house. But what people will need to do, and this is, I think here in the Maritimes we're particularly good at this is sort of sew back the fabric of our communities through these small acts of generosity and kindness and connexion. Some of that will be institutional through the businesses that restart and the government supports and this type of thing. But a lot of it's also going to rely on just people, you know, re-establishing the routines and the lives that they need to get on.

MG: We're just about out of time, but that's a long road, right? I mean, if you're speaking to people in the communities that have been devastated by this storm, they have a good patch ahead of them before that sense of community is rebuilt.

MICHAEL UNGAR: And I think that, you know, the trick certainly is to not feel like you're forgotten. We often hear that post-disaster, that people feel like they slip off the front page news. And, you know, that's where local municipal governments are often, you know, really good or local service initiatives, local service clubs step into that that gap and just keep reminding people. And, you know, the insurance adjusters come out, things get settled, things get better. But we are talking about if this follows the course of other disasters, we're talking, you know, six months to two years as the cycle goes through.

MG: Michael, good to talk to you. Thank you very much.

MICHAEL UNGAR: All the best.

MG: Michael Ungar is Canada research chair in Child, Family and Community Resilience at Dalhousie University. He was in Halifax where you CBC News is next. And then celebrated authors, artists and literary figures gathered yesterday to show solidarity with Salman Rushdie after the brutal attack he faced on stage last month. We'll hear from some of them about the importance to protect freedom of expression. That's coming up in six minutes. I'm Matt Galloway. And this is The Current.

Novelist Ian McEwan, director Deepa Mehta and publisher Louise Dennys on the fight to preserve free speech

Guests: Deepa Mehta, Ian McEwan. Louise Dennys

MG: Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway. And this is The Current.

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MG: Still to come after the death of Joyce Echaquan in a Quebec hospital. Indigenous people in that province demanded change. It's been two years and they say those changes have not come. But first, some of the literary world's biggest names on freedom of speech.

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MG: Yesterday I was part of a special event in support o f the freedom to write and read and in support of Salman Rushdie following the violent attack on his life on stage in New York State. The event was put on by the Toronto International Festival of Authors as well as Pen, Canada, Penguin, Random House, Canada and the Writers Trust of Canada. And they invited an all star Line-Up of authors to read from Rushdie's work and stand up for fr ee expression.

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VOICE 1: Full disclosure and no surprise, I am a Salman Rushdie fan. Not only do I admire his writing, his turn of phrase, his wit, his brilliance, but also his essential humanity.

VOICE 2: When writers have been friends for more than 40 years, the emails between them have a familiar shorthand. "I'm sending", he wrote. "It's slow". Then, he added, "Writing is slow too".

VOICE 3: The creative act requires not only freedom, but also this assumption of freedom. If creative artists worry, if they will still be free tomorrow, then they will not be free today. If they are afraid of the consequences of their choice of subjects or of their treatments of those subjects, then their choices will not be determined by talent, but by fear. If we are not confident of our freedom, then we are not free.

VOICE 4: And in this age of information, this age of information, overkill literature can still bring the human news. The hearts and minds. News from China, from Japan, from Cuba, from Iran. Literature brings the base metal of information.

VOICE 5: For so many writers. This era has been anything but free. Libel chill. The courts being used to bankrupt writers and publishers. Prison cells, torture, assassination attempts, assassination itself.

MG: That's John Ralston Saul. And before him, Deepq Mehta, John Irving, Ian McEwan and Adrienne Clarkson. Salman Rushdie had been living under threat since Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini condemned him to death for the novel The Satanic Verses in 1989. After years in hiding, Salman Rushdie had been living a more public life. In August, he was stabbed repeatedly. He is now recovering from serious injuries. At yesterday's event, the journalist and Nobel Peace prise winner Maria Ressa also spoke and she surprised the audience with this story.

SOUNDCLIP

I was the speaker who followed Salman in Chautauqua right after the attack. The intended impact of the attack against him was to affect the community, to make people afraid. It was a 3000 seater amphitheatre, and it was actually the people in the audience who came up to stop the stabber. The police were too far away. Not only was the community traumatised, but, you know, do we go on? And I think from his reading, you can actually always see. Of course you go on. Our world has gotten crazier. But I think that that's the spirit, right? The impact is supposed to make you afraid to make you quiet and. I got up on the stage after and and we weren't quite yet.

MG: The attack on Salman Rushdie brought out in stark and brutal ways the threat to free expression. After the event, I sat down backstage with three people who took part in the readings. Deepa Mehta is a Canadian director whose movies include the Oscar nominated film, Water. She also made the film version of Rushdie's Midnight's Children. Ian McEwan is a bestselling novelist. His new book just out this month is Lessons. And Louise Dennys is a longtime Canadian publisher and editor for Salman Rushdie, including of his upcoming book, Victory City. Here's our conversation. How is Salman Rushdie doing?

DEEPA MEHTA: He's recovering. He's recovering slowly. He's recovering medically, slowly. They don't quite yet know the full extent of some of the damage. He may lose an eye. Still, the trauma was obviously huge. But he's recovering slowly with the great support of his beloved wife and friends.

MG: Have you spoken or emailed with him?

IAN MCEWAN: I've spoken with him directly, but exchange few emails and had emails from Eliza, his wife. And the sense one has is that he's still there and he's going to be back. And he's a man of immense courage, great spirit and great humour and sense of mischief. I sense that is all still ticking away nicely.

MG: Deepa, you were nodding when he said mischief and humour.

DEEPA MEHTA: I know, because when he answered mischief, that's I thought, my God, that's one adjective of God to use in my talk today. Is that that's so-so mind. It's actually his eyes glint with mischief and it's so beautiful. So I'm glad that still there. I mean.

MG: What was your reaction when you heard the news?

DEEPA MEHTA: I was in Delhi when I heard. It was the middle of the night. The phone rang. It was a friend of mine. I still can't believe it. There's a part of me that just. I don't want to believe it.

MG: He don't want to believe it?

DEEPA MEHTA: No, I don't believe that it happened. Of course it did. I mean, it's it's so shocking.

MG: What do you remember about finding out about.

LOUISE DENNYS: This? I was called about 7 a.m. by a friend, Deepa, and that called me from India very soon after that. You called us?

DEEPA MEHTA: Yes, I did. [Unintelligible].

LOUISE DENNYS: Yes. And the world sort of blanks out when someone, a good friend, is so horribly attacked. And at that point, we didn't know if he would live or die. It was just terrifying. Right. And so the news that he's pulling through, I mean, he has you know, he's he's extraordinarily tough minded. And I think that that even helped him pull through physically. He wasn't going to let it get him down.

MG: Were you surprised, Ian, that this happened all those years after the fatwa was unleashed? Because I think a lot of people perhaps thought mistakenly that that that was in the rear-view mirror.

IAN MCEWAN: I think it perhaps it was always in the Rear-View mirror, but it was still us. I was completely astonished. I mean, I was in northwest Scotland with my wife and. We were just coming down with COVID. She was in another room and she let out a kind of shriek when I ran in thinking she'd stabbed herself with a pair of scissors by accident. She said, I can't even tell you. And I said, Tell me. And at that point, one's phone becomes alive with the posse, the World Planetary Posse of friends, supporters who drew round him post fatwah. And that cohort had to learn the language of free speech. We had taken our freedoms for granted many ways in the West in the couple of years that followed, when his protection was at its most intense, and the secrecy of where he was was so well held by all those friends, never revealed. We refined the language and his in that time that I learnt that. All the freedoms we have freedom of assembly, freedom of voting, freedom of the franchise and so on. All are underpinned by one other freedom. Freedom of expression. Because all our freedoms had to be thought and spoken and written down at some point. Ask any feminist, activist or environmentalist still fighting various fights now, and when it goes under an autocracy of one kind or another, anyone who's a member of PEN will know how indeed the great resource of free expression is shrinking. So at that moment, salmon studying, I think, just activated all of us. It was a surge of communality.

MG: You know, you mentioned the idea of taking it for granted before that. Do you look back and wonder why you took it for granted?

IAN MCEWAN: I think we lived an easy life.

LOUISE DENNYS: In the seventies.

IAN MCEWAN: We no longer thought religion was a big deal for those of us in the secular, modern world. And then suddenly the very people that we most supported, like Muslims in Bradford who are under some degree of persecution, were burning books. So there was massive confusion, suddenly. I remember going on television with one of those book burners to have it out, because whatever else they were suffering, as Heine had said, once you start burning books, you'll soon be burning people.

LOUISE DENNYS: And there had been a coming since then. But I think for anyone who had been around the fact that had been part of that activation then I mean, this was a huge reactivation that even in recent times we have been a little lax, perhaps in terms of our recognition that free speech and the freedom to write and read is the fundamental. And it was a horror. I and I think for some of us, we had always been waiting for it. I felt in myself. I said, Oh, God, it's finally happened.

DEEPA MEHTA: Mm hmm.

MG: But he he was very insistent and being more out, being more public. I remember the first time I interviewed him in New York, and it was cloak and dagger. You couldn't see where you're going the last time. I mean, he came into the studio with a publicist.

DEEPA MEHTA: Oh, he's.

MG: Not looking over his shoulder?

DEEPA MEHTA: No. He made that decision that he couldn't live his life in hiding. I mean, that he had to speak out. He had to continue to write. That was his job. That was his responsibility in the world. And he took on also the added responsibility of making sure that he could fight for other people as well. So he became president of PEN. But I think it was a very deliberate decision. He could not spend his life in hiding.

IAN MCEWAN: He wanted a normal life.

DEEPA MEHTA: I wanted parties. And there was.

LOUISE DENNYS: Something that happened that is very interesting. And we'd spoken about it maybe a couple of weeks before the attack. I was in New York and we were having dinner, as Louise knows, with Solomon and Eliza and and he said, I have this foreboding about what's what's happening in America. And he said, in New York, it's really bad now. So the fact that the attack happened in America, a place that he actually chose over India, over England, to feel safe. Has shaken me up because we always thought Canada and America were the safe places to be. He did, too. And what does this mean about safety? I mean, for me, safety, yes. Is important. Freedom of expression is important, but it makes us all vulnerable. And that is the big question. You can't have freedom of expression if you don't if you don't have the courage, the way Salman has had, to speak out.

IAN MCEWAN: Or that you have had to.

LOUISE DENNYS: I mean, you know, one of the dilemmas that I despise and Salman has always helped me with that and made me laugh about it, is that that my work is considered controversial. I hate that word. You know, it's such an easy thing to do. Just give to somebody and then just ignore them because they have that label. And that label is like, well, should the sorry, I don't know, whatever disturber. And the world has changed. I mean, it's not India that just happened. It didn't happen in Saudi Arabia, the stabbing. It didn't happen in Iran. It didn't happen in the Philippines. It happened in America.

DEEPA MEHTA: And it didn't feel out of its time that it was happening now. That it has come back up again in the kind of rage and dislocation that is sweeping across America and across the world.

LOUISE DENNYS: And across the world.

IAN MCEWAN: I think there's a paradox. If you remember, 89 was the year of the fatwa, was also the year, the fall of the Berlin Wall, ten months later. And in many ways, freedom of expression was expanding. Dictatorships were falling.

DEEPA MEHTA: Yeah.

IAN MCEWAN: Now. And what worries me most about the attack on Salman is it is much more consonant with our times. This is the age of the death threat. Yeah. The ease with which people feel. This is also the age of the school shooting across the United States.

MG: Also the age of libraries pulling books, book banning and challenging books.

IAN MCEWAN: But in terms of someone wielding a knife determined to kill, I think all the casually given death threats slightly narrow the field of possibility for actually doing it.

DEEPA MEHTA: Absolutely.

IAN MCEWAN: And also now it's a shrinking resource when it was once a blossoming. So there's something emblematic about this attack. And the irony is that it should be against two men sitting on the stage who were talking about freedom. I mean, that freedom of expression.

MG: What kind of child is that create? When we came for an event where people were talking about the importance of not being silent or being defined forced, but but at the same time, you could imagine that there are people who are saying, hold on a second, this is a different climate and we're going to put a pause on.

DEEPA MEHTA: Yeah.

MG: On what we're putting out.

DEEPA MEHTA: That is the most one of the most dangerous things to consider because libel, chill, book banning chill, death threat a chill is one of the most insidious means of ensuring that free speech is destroyed. But we're seeing in Canada in ways we have never seen before, book banning and libraries being forced to remove books from the shelves by the community. And we got to fight it. Every time we hear of it. So, I mean, writers will keep writing and publishers have to keep publishing. And libraries have to be havens for books and bookstores.

IAN MCEWAN: Institutions have to stiffen.

DEEPA MEHTA: Their they have to stiffen their own [unintelligible].

IAN MCEWAN: Just doing their work.

LOUISE DENNYS: You think they will?

DEEPA MEHTA: Institutions have to stiffen their will. I think he is absolutely right. I think we have to require that they do that constantly.

IAN MCEWAN: I'm thinking here of universities who often cave in on the attack on free speech. So publishers have done it. Festivals have done it.

DEEPA MEHTA: Yes.

IAN MCEWAN: So the need for institutions to sort of smarten up and get a bit more literate about the language of freedom of expression is really, really important.

MG: You wonder whether they will, though deeper, you know.

DEEPA MEHTA: And I do wonder because of what would happen to me about just a year ago. I mean, I was in Canada, wasn't in India, where water was banned and, you know, effigies were being burned.

MG: You're talking about when funny boy.

DEEPA MEHTA: Yeah, the funny boy came out. I mean, I've never had the death threat. I never expected to have death threats in Canada and in Toronto. And they were so ugly and so virulent, it was required that I get to big huge guys and it was really scary. And, and I, I think I wouldn't have survived it without, you know, David and and actually Salman.

MG: You can have it resolved and you can say, well, no, we're going to continue to make the art that we're going to make. But when those threats are that close in your own hometown, is there at all a part of you that starts to rethink as an artist what you're doing?

DEEPA MEHTA: Absolutely. I mean, and that's why that's why I'm terrified. Is that because I feel I'm I'm making a compromise and I am. I mean, I was offered a film to do a fabulous script about Nat King Cole. And I actually got a call saying, don't do it because you're not black. And you might get into trouble. And, you know, three years ago I would have said, I'm going to do it, forget it. But I thought about it and I said, no, because I don't need it. That's the reality of it. I mean, I hope I get over it, but certainly I think what happened with Silver has shaken up. All the bravado I had and all the my fierce nature, I would say, has been compromised.

MG: What happens, Ian, if that chill comes into place for for artists?

IAN MCEWAN: Well, I think we knew, you know, from our contacts back in the eighties with writers and translators, intellectuals in Central Europe, just that kind of fear. And it's not cowardice. These were people with families and, you know, and it was the state, not your fellow citizens. Once it becomes your fellow citizens.

DEEPA MEHTA: Yeah.

IAN MCEWAN: Whipped up in these Twitter storms of loathing and hatred, all written, you know, people sitting on the edge of their beds just freely typing this out. Then I begin to think of another kind of restriction on freedom that I might want to impose if I was king of the world, which is to say no one can write anything on the Internet unless they give us the where they are, who they are. Immediately I hear the response, Yes, but how can resistance movements thriving in Morocco or in Egypt or whatever? So we have somehow I don't know how we get round that. It is so depressing.

MG: Maria Ressa talked about how she was the person who was following Salman Rushdie when he was attacked on stage, that she was reading and speaking right after him, and that the intent of that attack was to frighten people so that you wouldn't go out there.

DEEPA MEHTA: Absolutely right.

MG: And then she went out and she talked as she talked about it here. And there was a stage full of people who talked about that. Yes. Are you optimistic that defiance will turn that around.

DEEPA MEHTA: Whereas Margaret Atwood said today, I, I think one has to work hard to be optimistic. It is a kind of private fears. And Ian raised the question of institutions, institutions like universities who have in the past been upstanding, upholders of freedoms of speech. And what is frightening to me is to see how they are literally abstaining from that responsibility because they're afraid of lacking disappointing donors or getting cancelled. You know, it's an attack from within on free speech.

IAN MCEWAN: I think there will be pushback. The trouble is, when you get a populist politician with a large amount of support, the ease with which he or she could whip up crowds and Twitter crowds and so on is awesome, is terrifying. That shift to the right recently, Sweden, Italy. You know, it's worrying.

DEEPA MEHTA: It's really [unintelligible].

IAN MCEWAN: Worrying. We are in a tough spot, but we mustn't fool ourselves in the West. We are not in the position of the Philippines or Saudi Arabia or China or Russia spectacularly repressing itself, as it were. While Putin is in charge and while we still do have more or less breathable air, as Salman said, we have to gather our forces.

MG: What do you think, I mean, just finally, one of the things that people talked about a lot on stage was the generosity of Salman Rushdie in the generosity that he showed you here in Canada when that film came out. What is it that that you think people need to know about what he said to you, what he offered you?

DEEPA MEHTA: Get off Twitter. Don't be quiet. And the other thing that I really remember is because I was I was surprised about that. But, I mean, Louise knows that. But the people that I knew, who I admired, who I considered friends, all just disappeared. So I thought that if the liberal group, you know, the writers and filmmakers just disappear when something like this happens, then, oh, who is there? And so he said, that's not surprising. Don't be disappointed. Lower your expectations about what you can get.

MG: They encouraged by what you saw here. I mean that a room full of people are there to support him. But also there was on who's on that stage there, too, to talk about it.

DEEPA MEHTA: That is encouraging. But that just it's a handful. It's and that's what that's the reality of it. I want to be encouraged. I'm really tired of being. After the pandemic and after the stabbing of of being discouraged. But the reality is, I don't I look around and I don't feel my God. I mean, I feel apprehensive.

LOUISE DENNYS: Yeah, I think we all have every reason to be apprehensive in this present time. And all this all the questions you have asked are absolutely true. I mean, to what degree we are self-censoring the problems of chill that are creeping in, the very understandable fears we have. That's a pretty scary time. But we have an extraordinary I mean, today we saw an extraordinary group of writers speaking out so vividly themselves about not just about the kind of very special dear human being that he is, but also about the power that he has brought himself to, speaking out and defending. And we can do no less. He's done it for the last that he is putting himself in great danger. So at least one can do is the least we could do is stand up and be read and not be silenced.

MG: I'm really glad to have the chance to talk to you all. It feels like an issue of our time in some ways. And what happened to Salman has led to a much more immediate conversation, it feels like, about this issue. Thank you very much.

IAN MCEWAN: Pleasure.

DEEPA MEHTA: Thank thank you. Thank you.

LOUISE DENNYS: Thank you so much.

MG: Deepa Mehta is a Canadian filmmaker, Ian McEwan, who bestselling novelist Louise Dennys is the longtime Canadian editor for Salman Rushdie. We were speaking yesterday in Toronto. Well, coming up after your regional update, indigenous people in Quebec called for change after the death of Joyce Echaquan. Now, two years later, they're not sure their voices have been heard. We'll find out why and talk about what needs to change coming up in 90 seconds. I'm Matt Galloway. This is The Current.

The discrimination in health care faced by Indigenous people

Guests: Glenda Sandy, Nakuset, Dr. Samir Shaheen Hussain

MG: Hello again. I'm Matt Galloway and this is The Current. It's been two years since the death of Joyce Echaquan. The 37 year old woman from the Atikamekw nation had gone to hospital with stomach pains in Joliette, Quebec. The staff were dismissive and insulted her with racial slurs. She streamed it all on Facebook Live. Her death caused an uproar and calls for change in the treatment of indigenous people in Quebec's health care system. But many say that two years on, that change falls short. Glenda Sandy is now a free public health nurse from the Kawawachickamach community in northern Quebec. Nakuset is the executive director of the Native Women's Shelter of Montreal. And Dr. Samir Shaheen Hussain is a montreal paediatric emergency physician and assistant professor at McGill University's Faculty of Medicine. He's also the author of Fighting for a Hand to Hold Confronting Medical Colonialism Against Indigenous Children in Canada. Good morning to you all.

GUESTS: Morning.

MG: Glenda Sandy. We spoke with Joyce Echaquan's family and they said that they wouldn't go to the hospital in the wake of her death because they didn't feel safe. Do you think two years after Joyce's death that Indigenous people feel safe seeking out health care in Quebec?

GLENDA SANDY: Yeah. Well, for me having, you know, not really been on the front lines for a while now as an Indigenous woman, I do still feel kind of hesitant and fearful at times when I walk into a hospital setting because I'm not sure how I will be treated, whether I'll be listened to, because, you know, there are there was question there. There are two sides, the extremes of two sides of reaction coming from employees of the mine that there is systemic racism. Others that were more understanding and supportive of what was happening, that were allies to us. So I'm not sure that we're quite there yet. I do still hear just from my own entourage that there are still stories of support that are coming out of people not being treated right and in the hospital setting.

MG: Dr. Shaheen Hussain, you're right there on the front lines. And so what do you see in terms of change for medical professionals a couple of years after Joyce Echaquan's death?

GLENDA SANDY: Yeah. I mean, I think what's important to keep in mind, you know, is that the history of medical colonialism is a long one. It's basically, you know, coincides with the history of colonialism in Canada more broadly. So we're talking about, you know, decades, hundreds of years. And so things are obviously not going to change overnight. That being said, I think there's the distinction between the change that we're seeing slowly, as Glenda mentioned, on the front lines and, you know, the contrast with what's happening at the governmental level. But on the front lines, I do get a sense that while there is still a lot of resistance, a lot of denial of the reality of medical colonialism, the reality of indigenous anti-indigenous systemic racism. There's also many healthcare workers, health care providers who who want things to change and who are actually taking proactive steps to making that happen, including, for example, by, you know, pushing for the implementation of Joyce's principle. And there are divisions in the department and the faculties in their institution.

MG: And to come back to that change and where the leadership is in that change. But Nakuset, from your perspective, whether it's what you hear from the clients at the Native Women's Shelter in Montreal or more broadly, have you seen a change at the ground level? Has any change been been really realised in the last couple of years? That's meaningful.

NAKUSET: You know, I've been doing this job for over 20 years, the Native Women's Shelter, and I think it's been consistently bad. And what happens is that we always, for the longest time, have staff accompany the clients to the hospital, and it is the staff that have to bring incident reports about what happens. And I think that there are some hospitals that are more positive experience, and then there are some that are absolutely horrible. And what is interesting is that, you know, it is the staff that come back and are traumatised by what they have seen. And then I always wonder, well, if you're traumatised, how do you think this Indigenous woman feels right? Like you do your best to try to fight it and then you try to get some kind of accountability for the behaviours that these health professionals bestow on our clientele. But unless you literally capture it on camera, it's like it never happened.

MG: So just briefly, give me an example of that. What would that look like? And I know this is really difficult to talk about, but what would that look like in terms of what happens when somebody tries to go and get care? Now.

NAKUSET: There was a woman at the shelter that had been raped. She went to a particular hospital with two French speaking student nurses. We have the McGill Nursing Clinic at the Native Women's Shelter. We have a nurse that comes in two days a week with her students. So the students, two students brought this woman to to the hospital and they refused to see her. They said, this woman doesn't speak English, therefore we can't give her any services. And the nurses said, But we will do the translation. And they refused to see her. So being raped is absolutely horrible. Getting treatment, getting thrown out of a hospital because of a language issue like that. If that's not systemic racism, I don't know what it is. And, you know, we have to, you know, write stuff down, put in letters of complaint like it's an ongoing thing. I literally tell the nurses that come to the shelter, make sure that you have one nurse that is camera ready, that is ready to record what happens. Worst case scenario, everything is great, but in case it doesn't go well, we have proof.

MG: Glenda Sandy One of the things that was put in place in the province to try and prevent things like Nargis that was just describing is compulsory sensitivity training for health care workers. This is an online course. It's 90 minutes. Can you just briefly describe the course for us?

GLENDA SANDY: One thing I can I can describe it as is completely inadequate. It does not do anything to even remotely come close to what we are trying to address here. There. It wasn't very well done. It does not include Joyce Echaquan. It does not include other historical, you know, colonial practises that were that were done on indigenous people. There was no mention of the coroner's report, no mention of the joint commission on, you know, the truth that was brought out there, medical experiments in residential schools, things that would have started to get any discussion going through. For, you know, for indigenous people to voice the truth that that we know. It just it fell short of it. And it it honestly felt like a high school, my high school history class, you know, over 25 years ago.

MG: You said it does more harm than good.

GLENDA SANDY: It does, absolutely, more harm than good because the way it was presented there, non-indigenous experts, quote unquote, experts that are telling our story and pushing more of their version of our history. There the very little indigenous perspectives that were shared were not used in the right way. And it it put it perpetuated that image of, you know, we're not even good enough to share our story. It has to be told by experts. No, it didn't do anything to to for me to change the law, only to feel that it was a step in the right direction.

MG: Nakuset, is sensitivity training the kind of thing that is needed to to bring around the change the people have been calling for, not just for the last couple of years, but for years before that. When it comes to the treatment of indigenous people in Quebec's medical system.

NAKUSET: You know, I love the idea of training. I think that this current training needs to be scrapped and that a new one needs to be created. And the thing is that, you know, there's a lot of, you know, Indigenous organisations that already have training go to Quebec, native women, they prepared one. There's different organisations that can literally just hand it over. But what you need is it to be compulsory and then you need to have an exam because if you can't pass the exam because sometimes it feels like the training is sort of like voluntary, you you don't really have to like pay attention. You know, you can like be on your phone while it's going on. Like it needs to be as serious as like a first aid course.

MG: As far as serious as a first aid course.

NAKUSET: Well, because I know when we train the staff the first day there's an exam, you don't pass the exam, you don't get your card that you are first date. Right. So that's what I'm talking about, that it could be like any other kind of course that you've taken in university. You have to have an exam. And what I would like to see is not only a written exam, but then an oral exam that would be given to a group of elders so that they can tell the elders what they've learnt. You have to almost check for people's when you do have to check for people's biases and that isn't happening.

MG: Dr. Shaheen Hussain We heard from the office of the outgoing Minister of Indigenous Affairs who said in a statement that training for health care workers is one response to this terrible tragedy. If the communities feel it's not adequate, we need to improve it. What is in the best case scenario? In the ideal scenario, what would that training look like? What would it include to address the issues that we're talking about here?

DR. SAMIR SHAHEEN HUSSAIN: And I think, Nakuset said the important points. I think, you know, training needs to be kind of like, you know, a competency based training. You know, there has to be some kind of outcome that can be measured. But I have to say, you know, that the the the ministers, the outgoing minister's comments are, you know, are quite disingenuous and, to be honest, dishonest and and outright, you know, offensive, because the issue with this compulsory component of the training is that there's hundreds of thousands of health care workers who are expected to do it. And yet there's absolutely no analysis around contemporary colonialism in Quebec and Canada. There's no overview of medical colonialism. There's no discussion of anti-indigenous systemic racism in health care. There's no mention of cultural safety or Joyce's principle or the importance of Decolonising health care. And so, you know, when you have a training like that that's still being rolled out actively, as Nakuset said, it needs to be scrapped, but that's not happening as that is still being rolled out. It's basically, you know, a video that might have been ahead of its time in the eighties or nineties, but it today it essentially undermines the rails and actually goes against, you know, important indigenous led health efforts to change things, especially since Joyce Echaquan's death in 2020. And so ultimately, you know, what it's doing, it is basically sabotaging the tangible goals of Joyce's principle. And I think many people actually have argued that training, you know, borders on pure and simple political and social propaganda based on a very, very selective retelling of history in Quebec. And that's, you know, really harmful for health care providers, because we're not being told what we need to be told to be able to provide culturally safe and dignified care, you know, for indigenous people.

MG: You said that earlier this was a leadership issue. The Premier, Francois Legault, who's the incumbent campaigning to be re-elected, has repeatedly denied the existence of systemic racism in a debate, said that the issues surrounding Joyce Echaquan's death had been resolved, then had to address that again and say that he believes more work needs to be done to combat racism. Where do you see the failure of leadership when it comes to creating the context and the conditions for this change to happen?

DR. SAMIR SHAHEEN HUSSAIN: I mean, I think you hit the nail on the head in the sense that the failure comes from an outright denial of of systemic racism existing. And that's not you know, that's been the case for across all of those kinds of back party before they came into power. He held that position because at least 2017 and the issue is that if you don't acknowledge something, then how are you going to be able to to address it? Right. In 2013, the National Collaborating Centre for Indigenous Health issued a report called Understanding Racism. And one of the things that they highlight there is that that, you know, systemic racism basically can be reproduced by failing to redress structural inequities. So it's not a matter of just the kind of, you know, being kind of proactive, make sure that that things aren't implemented in a in a bad way. It's also failing to redress inequities that already exist. And that's the issue here. That's what is often neglected in Quebec and in Canada. You know, Murray Sinclair, who presided over the Great Reconciliation Commission, often has this line where he says systemic racism is a racism that's left over after you get rid of the racist. And I think that's important to understand how systemic racism functions in terms of, you know, laws, policies and practises. But the one nuance I would make is that individuals with power can actually shape systemic racism. And then when you have people like Premier Lago and other members of his Cabinet who systemically, you know, systematically deny the existence of systemic racism, that in of itself causes harm. And so to answer your question in terms of what can we do? I think what we need to do is take you know, take the leadership from indigenous, you know, health care workers, educators, frontline workers who have been working on these issues for years. And tangibly, we have a blueprint. We have voice as principal. It's been, you know, submitted to the governments both federally and at the provincial level. And so we need to follow and implement Joyce's principle. That would be a tangible first step that can be taken across the board.

MG: Glenda Sandy, what do you want to see when it comes to leadership to direct change on this issue?

GLENDA SANDY: I think, you know, for me, you can't change what you don't acknowledge. I was given argument that, yes, there is systemic racism in the province. Once that's done, I think, you know, will have a sort of be on a better footing to make widespread change throughout the system. Yes, there is progress. Yes, there have been changes made in different regions of Quebec, but it just hasn't had that same impact all over. I think that that should be sort of widespread and. You know, adopting Joyce's principle. Those are concrete steps that anybody looked at. There are concrete steps to address in the current context of health care for indigenous people, indigenous health decision that.

MG: Address this principle. I mean, this is the idea that indigenous people would be guaranteed equitable access to health and social services across the country.

GLENDA SANDY: Exactly. And, you know, there are things that we can implement. And they're you know, they're not. Far fetched ideas are very, very concrete, positive ways that we can move forward. And it was I think it was written in a way of coexistence. And ensuring that everybody, you know, for Indigenous people have equitable access to health care.

MG: What has to happen just practically in your community? What has to happen to make sure that people feel comfortable in going in and accessing care?

GLENDA SANDY: But I think creating the space for it, I mean, for my community and coach too much, you know, we've adopted it. Our clinic has adopted Joyce's principle. There is a lot of a lot of development. And in creating our own cultural safety training for nurses and not just nurses, but other health professionals, social service workers that come in so that we share who we are as a nation.

MG: And that's made a difference. You've seen a change there.

GLENDA SANDY: It's starting to. Yes, there's more talk and there's more openness to to addressing. You know, it's not everyone that denies it. There are a lot of allies that are with us that want to work with us to ensure that the health care services that are offered, social services that are offered in our community are being done in the right way.

MG: What about for you, Nakuset? I mean, again, we're talking big picture, but if you go close in to what your team sees in hospitals with your clients, what has to change specifically so that those clients feel as though and not just feel but actually get equitable treatment.

NAKUSET: Okay. So let's say, you know, I have a magic wand. This is what it would look like. So if the leader, Francois Legault, would tell all his institutions effective immediately, we are now implementing Joyce's principle as well as the recommendations from the [unintelligible] Commission. Everyone has to have their contracts changed that they're going to abide by this. You have six months to do it. If you do not do it, you'll be let go. I think that is the way you could do it quickly. And I think that after living through this pandemic, we can see how society can just stop and adapt to the pandemic. We can do the same thing. Like if the government wants to do something, they will do it. The fact that he is not doing it is saying We don't care about you. Things that are going on kind of work for me and you know, I don't want to force any kind of change, so we're just going to pretend it's not happening. I'm sticking my head back in the sand. You know, I mean, I'm an executive director. If I need my staff to do something, I call a meeting and I'm like, effective immediately. This is the new policy that's not happening on a government level.

MG: Dr. Shaheen Hussain You've talked about incremental progress, but do you see the conditions for real progress?

DR. SAMIR SHAHEEN HUSSAIN: I mean, I agree with what Nakuset had said, I've just said I think the issue is it's kind of, you know, shifting culture. In fact, when I write about medical colonialism, I refer to it as a culture or an ideology that's rooted in systemic acting against racism, that uses medical practises and policies to establish, maintain and or advance a genocidal colonial project. That culture in medicine is significant and played a significant role in perpetuating medical colonialism. So that culture really, really has to have to change because like I said before, the instances of abuses and medical violence as a result of medical colonialism are longstanding. And so I think the thing that needs to happen, you know, whether at the local level or at a provincial level or a national level, are often also addressed by them are basically three things. Looking at the past, present and future. You know, looking at the past, there has to be reparations, there has to be repair done for the harms that have been caused by the medical system, by the health care system. Today present we have to decolonise health care and ways of doing that include adopting choices that you know, Joyce's principle. And then today and moving forward you know those of us who work as settlers in the health care system have to respect the autonomy and self-determination of indigenous peoples. And that is the way things are going to move forward. So is is the culture ready for that? I'm not sure. I think there are many people who are ready for that, but not quite. That just said, if the leadership at a provincial level, at a governmental level, is not going to be endorsing that approach, then it makes things a lot more difficult. And it gives cover to people working in health care who don't want to move or don't want to change to basically, you know, stick with the status quo. And the problem is, is that that status quo is harmful. It causes suffering. And as we saw in the case of Joyce Echaquan, it can actually lead to people's death.

MG: Nakuset, we're just about out of time. Just a few seconds left. I know that you're going to be speaking at a vigil in Montreal in memory of Joyce Echaquan. How do you hope people will remember her?

NAKUSET: Oh, yeah. I mean, that's a that's a loaded question, right? I mean, I think that, you know, just as a mother. Right. Like your biggest fear is not being there for your children. She had seven children that are left behind that have to deal with this absence. Seven children that, God forbid, they should be sick and have to go to a hospital. And the fact that there is no sort of olive branch to the community. You know, Francois Legault's comments were so insensitive. So I think that, you know, I'm really hoping lots of people are going to come tonight so that, you know, when her husband is watching TV, he can see like, oh, wow. Montreal cares. Montreal. Montrealers got out and were there in large numbers to support Joyce Echaquan, to support the Joyce's principle like that, that will be seen. Hopefully the government will see that and be like, Oh, perhaps we should do something.

MG: It's great to speak with you all about this. We'll leave it there. Thank you very much.

NAKUSET: Thank you.

DR. SAMIR SHAHEEN HUSSAIN: Thank you.

GLENDA SANDY: Thank you.

MG: Glenda Sandy is a narcotic free public health nurse from the Kawawachikamach community in northern Quebec. Nakuset, executive director of the Native Women's Shelter of Montreal and Dr. Samir Shaheen Hussain is a montreal physician, assistant professor at McGill University's Faculty of Medicine. That's the current for this Monday. We're going to leave you this morning with a preview of something that we talked about earlier. And that's Salman Rushdie. He has a new book coming out. We're talking about events held yesterday to support him and the importance of freedom of speech. Louise Denis is his longtime Canadian editor. And from last night. Here she is reading from Salman Rushdie's upcoming book, Victory City. I'm Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening to The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

So a little bit of context to start. Two brothers, [unintelliglbe], will become the first kings of the legendary 14th century city in southern India, Biz Nagar a.k.a Victory City, have after visiting the beautiful young prophetess [unintelligible] received from her a bag of magic seeds and a promise that from them, a great city of tolerance will grow. After they had come to the designated place and scattered the seeds, their hearts filled with great perplexity and just a little hope. The two brothers climbed to the top of a hill of large boulders and thorn bushes that tore at their peasant clothes and sat down in the late afternoon to wait and watch. After no more than an hour. They saw the air begin to shimmer as it does during the hottest hours of the hottest days. And then the Miracle City started growing before their astonished eyes. The stone edifices pushing up from the rocky ground and the majesty of the Royal Palace and the first great temple too. All these and more arose in old fashioned splendour and stared down towards the palace and the royal enclosure spreading out as far at the far end of the Long Market Street. The mud, wood and cowshed hovels of the common people also made their humble way into the air at the city's periphery. In those first moments, the city was not yet fully alive. Spreading out from the shadow of the barren, bordered hills. It looked like a shining cosmopolis whose inhabitants had all abandoned it. The villas of the rich stood unoccupied. The canopied market stores were empty, awaiting the arrival of florists, butchers, tailors, wine merchants and dentists. The river rushed along and the banks where washer women and washer men would do their work, seemed to wait expectantly for some action that would give meaning to the place. In the royal enclosure, the great elephant house with its 11 arches anticipated the coming of the tuskers and their dung. Then, life began and the hundreds, now thousands of men and women were born full grown from the brown earth, shaking the dirt off their garments and thronging the streets in the evening breeze. Stray dogs and cows walked in the streets. Trees burst into blossom and leaf and the sky swarmed with parrots. Yes, and crows. There was laundry upon the riverbank and royal elephants trumpeting in their mansion and armed guards. Every one of them a woman at the Royal Gates. This is what it must feel like to be a god, Booker said to his brother in a trembling voice. To perform the act of creation, a thing only the gods can do. We must become gods now, Hookah said. To make sure other people worship us. He looked up into the sky. There you see. He pointed. There is our father. The moon. No. His brother shook his head. We'll never get away with that. So that's morning, everything. I'm just going to read you the final words. The Pampa Campana at the end of a long life of 247 years will write in her record of these times, which will be found buried one day. Four and a half centuries later, in the ruins of the great city. Pampa, I have lived to see an empire rise and fall. How are they remembered now these kings and queens, these tyrants. They exist now only in words. While they lived, they were victors or vanquished or both. Now they are neither. Words are the only victors. Only are words describing things remain. Their deeds will only be known in the way that the writer sets them down. All that remains is the city of words. Words are the only victors.

[Applause]

Wednesday September 28, 2022 Full Transcript

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