The Ben Mulroney Show - A plea for a life – 670 days in captivity and counting.

Episode Date: August 6, 2025

- Matan Eshet - Tristan Hopper - Craig Baird – Canadian History Ehx If you enjoyed the podcast, tell a friend! For more of the Ben Mulroney Show, subscribe to the podcast! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠���https://link.chtbl.com/bms⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Also, on youtube -- ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@BenMulroneyShow⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow Ben on Twitter/X at https://x.com/BenMulroney Insta: ⁠⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠⁠ Twitter: ⁠⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠⁠ TikTok: ⁠⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠⁠ Enjoy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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that killed over 1,200 Israelis and saw 250 Israelis taken from their homes, kidnapped, and treated in the most inhumane ways, absolutely imaginable. And not for nothing, it was 670 days ago that I started my radio career on October 7th. I am linked to that day, and I am forever an ally of the Jewish people of this city and the state of Israel. And we've seen some images in this war that have been burned into our minds from both sides. We've seen pain and suffering from both sides. But very recently, we saw yet again on full display the barbaric nature of Hamas. when they paraded out, one hostage in particular, and that is Eviatar David, who was seen as a shell of his

former self in a tunnel underneath Gaza somewhere, and they were toying with him, telling him to dig his own grave. This is a person. This is a human being. This is a person with family who saw these videos and who've been hoping for the best, only to see that. And so we're joined now by one of Eviatara's family members, Matan Eschette. I have spoken with a number of family members of people who, Israelis, who were kidnapped

and abducted, and those stories have ended in many ways, the safe return. the death while in captivity. Your story with Eviatar is that you saw his face, you saw his body, you saw proof of life, but he did not look the way he used to as his cousin. Tell me what you felt when you saw that video. I was horrified. Evatal barely looks like a person. He doesn't look like himself at all.

He barely sounds like himself. I can barely call it even a proof of life. He's on the brink of death right now. You can see how thin he is. He looks like images from death camps from the 1940s. And we are so scared for his life right now. And what did you, to add insult to injury, the Hamas terrorists who were recording the video,

had him dig what amounted to his own. grave. That is a that is a particular type of perversion that I cannot connect with. What went through your mind when you saw that? It drove me to insanity, pushing him to dig his own grave, which is inhumane for every person and other. those conditions when you starve him so almost to the brink of death and the thing drove me insane as well as there's a moment the terrorist acts like as acts like he's sharing his food and you see the hand of the terrorist and it's so big it's muscular or chubby and it's the same size as a vatar's legs yeah and how can you say they're in the same conditions when somebody

looks like a human being and the other persons look like a keratin. Eviatar is one of 20 is really still in captivity and Eviatar's brother spoke at the United Nations Security Council urging

the United Nations to put pressure on Hamas to release Eviatar as well as the rest of the hostages. It doesn't feel to me like the UN is the place for that any more. It may have been the body

that could have done that, could have had the will to do that back years ago but in this of conflict, at this time it feels to me like it is, it's not the right vehicle. They aren't the right people. My sense is that a request would fall

on deaf years. I think we might have lost him again. Matana, are you there? Oh, there go. Fantastic. Oh, I thought. Yeah. So what do you think? How did you think? Yeah. Tell me. We feel the same. It's time and time again that we talk to the UN. It's not the first time that a family member have met people from them. And it's like talking to deaf people or to walls. They don't, I don't think they even try to listen to us. They gave us the stage because they have to in the end. But I spoke with a lie.

after the after his speech and he said they it looked like they listened for a few minutes but then they went on and spoke only about the israel side of it they didn't spoke about Hamas deliberately um starving of at all they are not talking about the fact that Hamas is the one who's preventing uh Palestinians and gossens to get the humanitarian aid that israel is giving them it's like they decided who is the bad person in this situation and they don't care. Yeah, they've got their villain. They've got their villain and they're done.

They're going to just let the show play out as it is because they've assigned the roles. Matanichet, I'm so sorry. I wish we could have more time. I'm sorry that we had those technical issues. But on behalf of everyone at the Ben Mulroney show, we support you and we respect you and we're so very sorry for what you're going through. thank you very all right you take care welcome back to the ben mulrini show gang thanks so much for sticking with us you'll remember the last election was prosecuted uh with two stark uh and completely different

visions of uh of how to run the election the irony is it wasn't prosecuted on two completely different visions of the country very very similar but how the uh the elections were run completely different. Pierre Poliyev was appealing to young people and their anger over the last 10 years. And Mark Carney was appealing to older Canadians and the fear that they would have over a Donald Trump administration and its impact on Canada. Well, one side won, the other side lost. Mark Carney won. And Tristan Hopper of the National Post did some digging.

and concluded that Mark Carney is pleasing older people and basically nobody else, which I got to say surprises me given the people I have been talking with. So let's welcome Tristan to the show. Thanks so much for joining us again on the Ben Mulrney show. Thanks for having me. Yeah. So honestly, the way I'm hearing it in the press and the way I'm hearing it on social media and the circles in which I travel,

in the city of Toronto, you would think that the honeymoon for Mark Carney is not over. So he is, yeah, on the raw numbers, he's doing quite well. Not quite to the honeymoon that it would be typical for a brand-new prime minister in his position. So he's still sort of behind what would be happening for, as Steve Harbour or for Justin Trudeau in his position. But, yeah, polls have him, if there was an election called tomorrow, he would probably easily win a majority versus having a narrow minority. But what surprising me about virtually all these polls, and particularly the Leje poll that I mentioned, which is just from three weeks ago, is a very stark divide in how seniors view Mark Carney, in which it's crazy high approval rating.

I mean, old people like this government, unlike any other government in Canadian history. Yeah. And then anybody under 65, that Lejean poll in particular just had straight division. So if you could have an election without old. people. This would be a normal. Half people would still, half of, half the Canadians would be conservative, half would be liberal. So that legible, I think, was 58% over 65, supported Mark Corning. It's 56 to 28. It's 56 to 28. So this is an absolute blowout for the liberals. And then both cohorts for the 18 to 34 and the 34 to 65, you know, two cohorts that usually don't

have a lot in common in these types of polls. Both of them are equally divided. Yeah, it's a statistical, it's a statistical heat. It's 43 to 42 for 18 to 34 and 41 to 40 for 35 to 54. It's basically been a continuation of what it was during the election. And the thing I point out is this makes Canada, no one's corrected me yet. I keep asserting this is the only Western country on earth in which you have dynamic like this, in which the average 25-year-old is more likely to vote conservative than the average 65-year-old. Nobody else does that, at least among our West. You can sort of find it in Argentina and parts of South America, maybe parts of Africa,

but nowhere else in the sort of so-called developed world. Tristan, what I find fascinating is how many people are willing to predict the outcome of the next election today, Almost like they're forgetting the communal whiplash that we all endured over the final months of the Justin Trudeau government and the ascension of Mark Carney. We didn't know which way was up on any given day, and we didn't know what was coming down the pike over those six months. And now people are so willing to predict it's Mark Carney, it's his to lose in the next election, forgetting he still has to govern a country. that is pretty much being held together by all the crises that we have inherited. Yeah, yeah. So, and on the issues.

So if you're just looking at it at it demographically, I mean, that election was the people going to the both thought they were doing for different reasons, as you mentioned in the intro. Older people thought, this was the anti-Trump election, and everybody else was voting for the same reasons they've been saying for years, I can't afford a house, you know, cost of living, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You know, I'm 18, I can't get a job. so those people are still the next election

they still have the same political conceits and that hasn't changed all that much so when you see that Mark Carney's approval rating has gone up that's just because more old people like him you know there's some exceptions obviously but generally from the statistics it's just because the old people love him even more than they did during the federal election at this particular time

so yeah if you if you notice more confidence in the conservatives then it would seem like they deserve you know, they've plunged 10% in the poll, their leader is doing community forums in the middle of Alberta somewhere. It's because a lot of the people who voted conservative in the last election are still very much on the conservative team. You haven't had the drop off.

Certainly, you haven't had the drop off that has been common to other conservative leaders. Yeah. Aaron O'Toole dropped off a clip. Andrew Shear dropped off a cliff after the election. It hasn't really happened this time. Yeah, and look, I have no idea if the conservative party is going to double down on Pierre or if they're going to turn the page. I'm not a member of the party.

I'm not privy to any information. But the party itself, I think, I mean, the best thing for it to do right now is not a whole heck of a lot. Just let this party govern. And if Mark Carney can live up to the very high expectations that he placed on his own shoulders, then it will be his election to lose. But stranger things have happened than people not living up to expectation. Yeah, so I would just point to, I mean, there's an advocate's at a poll at the bottom, very pollster,

and they pointed out, if you look at the issues that are most important to the under 54 set, and particularly the 18th, the 1834 set, those are the issues in which the conservatives are still dominant. So, you know, when it comes to the trade war, people favor the liberals over the conservatives, but when it comes to the issue of immigration, affordability, housing affordability, they're still, among the general electorate, they're still like 50%, 50%, 60% over the liberals. So, you know, if the county government

can't deliver on this issues and I think housing affordability hasn't gone great, you went from campaign promises if we're going to fix housing affordability, we're going to bring in modular homes, we can send, you know, into a community with helium balloons.

Last party made up. But anyway, now you have the housing ministers saying, well, you're not going to fix this thing overnight, right? And we're not actually going to bring down housing prices. So, yeah, if there's no movement on that file, if there's no movement on affordability, if it's two years from now, and you still can't get a job, a summer job at the age of 18, yeah, the circumstances that define the last election aren't really going to change. Well, yeah, and you're going to have, listen, you're going to have a whole bunch of 16-year-olds, people who are 16 today who are going

to be 18 in a couple of years. And if they can't get a job, you know where they're going to line up. And you're going to have a lot of people who voted in the last election who, because of the simple passage of time, will not be there to cast a vote next time. So whatever coalition the liberals cobbled together last time, they're going to have to go back to the drawing board and come up with something else for the next election. I can just say anecdotally. I live in Victoria, which I understand is not like the rest of the country. But I've just noticed the young people just seem more uptight. I live next to a high school and, you know, there's no

drinking, there's no drugs, there's no loud music, they're all buttoning up their callers right to the top and, you know, carrying briefcases to school and not making a lot of trouble. And it's all the old people who are, you know, drinking in public.

They've got briefcases because when I was in high school, my dad came back from a trip to Africa and he came back with a briefcase and I used that to go to school. And fortunately, I went to school when we were all nerds. There was, there were no jocks, there were no bullies.

So I was, I was safe in the school with my briefcase. Had I been in any other school, I suspect somebody would have taken it from me and possibly whack me over the head with it. And you're saying that there's an entire school of kids packing briefcases? Yeah, I've just noticed this among the, you know, the sort of 14 to 18 set that I've sort of run into socially, that they all seem to be much, much more grounded, particularly as compared to the, you know, the old people around here who were just spinning their wheels. So, I don't know, you can sort of ask your listeners, ask yourself, do the kids.

They're all listening to Billy Elish, which is basically just elevator music. They all seem to calm down a lot. I mean, they are politically supporting Tories, but they act like, you know, your typical sort of 1970s are a Tory. All right, well, we will dig down and we'll do a massive expose here on the Ben Mulroney show. But in the meantime, Tristan Hopper, thank you so much for being here. here. And, of course, you can read Tristan Hopper in the National Post. We'll talk to you soon. Students, eyes front. Put your phones down. Class is in session. It is now time for the professor to join us.

Craig Baird, obviously not a real professor, but proving every single week that he brings the educational value to the Ben Mulroney show with the knowledge that he drops weekly on his podcast. Canadian History X. Craig, welcome back to the show. Oh, thanks for having me again. So we're talking today about this moment in time, this commercial that was designed to raise media literacy in Canada. And I, of course, remember the commercial, but I didn't know it was called the House Hippo. Yeah, and I mean, the funny thing with that is it was made to kind of teach people, don't

believe everything you see on television and all it well i mean it did do that but it really just made people really want a house hippo yeah in their homes so kind of did the opposite of what it intended yeah it's uh yeah so yeah so just so what you can remind people there was this moment in time in the late 90s uh where when you turned on your tv you might have seen a commercial with what looked at the time very realistically like a miniaturized uh hippopotamus that was living in somebody's house. And the point of it was exactly what you just said. Be dubious and question what you see because what you see might not be the truth. But instead, people just doubled down and wanted to really own one of those things. Absolutely. Yeah. And it was created by concerned

children's advertisers. And so they hired Spin Productions to put this together. And they decided that it would be kind of a good idea to have some large animal as a small animal in a house. And they had various ideas like a giraffe or moose, but eventually it decided on a hippo. And a lot of work went into this. They kind of based it off those old hinterland, Who's Who, from, you know, years ago. And interior shots were shot in a home in Toronto. So somewhere out there, there's somebody living in a home where the house hippo was shot, and they probably have no idea that that was actually their home. And then they kind of just got footage, stock footage, and they synced it up and matched the lighting and everything. So it looked like one hippo. And it just became this massive thing.

It became part of like Canadian culture. I mean, I own two house hippo shirts because it's just something that has endured long after the commercial. And then actually 20 years later, another version of the commercial came out to kind of teach about media literacy and social media. And, you know, the house hippo is still beloved to this day by many, many Canadians. But you know, what you've just described is a very Canadian thing where this moment that nobody expected came and grabbed everybody's. I mean, the attempts by people in media to do that on purpose and fail are myriad. And the fact that it happened accidentally and we as Canadians did not take advantage to turn the house hippo into a cartoon or into a TV show or into a series of books or into merch like that. The Americans would have done that.

we just let it we enjoy it for what it is and we then let it go and then we require you to remind us that it happened I think there would probably be about four house hippo movies by now if it was in the United States

Oh absolutely Absolutely Was there only one commercial There was just the one The original commercial And then kind of the new commercial 20 years later But yeah it was just that one commercial

That was made and it was just It aired all the time And it was just one minute It kind of aired in children's programming and elsewhere. When you said that kids everywhere wanted one of those and they couldn't find one, it reminded me of when I was a kid, I was watching a special that was on ABC, hosted by Kirk Cameron, getting people excited for the sequel to Back to the Future, which took place in the future.

And as part of that future, people had hoverboards. Mattel made a hoverboard. And Robert Zamekis, the director, decided to have a little fun. with the kids watching and he instructed the writers to make it sound like this was an actual technology where you could actually buy a hoverboard and I told my dad I don't want anything else for Christmas I want a hoverboard he could not find one he was going on a trade mission to Japan he said if there is one it's in Japan and I will find it and he came home goose eggs snake eyes he had nothing for me and then I find out that Robert Zemeckis was toying with my

emotions. So that, the Mattel hoverboard from Back to the Future 2 was my house hippo. You and me both. Oh, you thought it was true too? Oh, 100%. Yeah. After seeing that movie, I wanted to hoverboard completely. No, but I was watching a documentary where the most trusted man for people of my age, Kirk Cameron, told me it was true, told me it was real. Yet again, Hollywood I still want one. I still want one too. All right, let's move on to your show from this week. Who is Tom Sukinen? Well, Tom Sukinen was a Finnish farmer. He was living in Saskatchewan, but he had previously lived in the United States with his family. And his house had burned down due to union activities in a mine in Minnesota. So he decided to go to Saskatchewan,

kind of find a homestead and start a new life for his family. But while he was gone, his wife was actually placed into a mental institution where she eventually died. And his children were put into foster homes. So he wasn't able to reunite with his family because they were kind of scattered to the wind. And he just chose to remain in Saskatchewan. And he had a prosperous farm for quite a while. But after a trip to Finland, he decided he wanted to return to Finland. And he could have just bought a ticket back to Finland and sailed back.

But what he decided to do was build a ship on his rural property in Saskatchewan that would take him back to Finland. So using just brute force, his skills of mechanic, he built the ship over the course of seven years using And pretty much his entire property, plus things that he would order. And then when it was done, nobody would pull the ship, the 10 kilometers to the North Saskatchewan River, because by this point, he was kind of a social pariah. They called him the Matt Finn and the Noah of the planes. So he had to do it himself. And he pulled this ship 4.8 kilometers over months and months until pretty much he could just do no more. And his brother showed up with the police.

And they eventually did take him to the North Battleford mental institution. where he eventually passed away. But they eventually took his ship and moved it to just south of Moose Jaw, where the Sukhinen Ship and Pioneer Museum was created. And then he was taken from his burial in North Battleford and buried next to his ship so that he could always be looking out onto his ship. And it's a very cool museum south of Moose Jaw, where you can actually see this ship and see what he built by himself by hand

with no power tools or anything like that. How big was this ship? it wasn't a huge ship it was about I think about 10 to 15 meters in length like it was a decent size ship Yeah do we know how much it weighed He would have to live in

I don't know how much it weighed But it definitely weighed quite a bit He'd actually have to take a pole And he put it in the ground And then he would kind of wrap a chain And a rope around it And then he would just keep winching To drag the ship over logs and iron wheels

All right well now let's listen to the clip Tom was steadfast And has resolved to leave Canada so Tom wasn't going to need his farm for much longer. His barn and granaries, even his house, were dismantled to become the ship's hull, and while he had plenty of wood, he needed steel. Using the last of his savings, he ordered sheets of metal,

and when they arrived at the train station, nobody helped him load the metal. Those who were once impressed by his skills as one of the best mechanics around now mocked him and viewed him with suspicion. They called him a mad, man. Now Tom had sledgehammers, a forge he built himself, a hand drill, hacksaw, and an anvil to build the ship's hull, which became his home. A coal stove provided heat and

place to cook, and his life became a solitary one. He was a lone figure on the Saskatchewan prairie where he used sledgehammers to flatten metal sheets and molded them to create boilers to power his ship. The ringing of metal could be heard for kilometers around And soon he became known as the crazy Finn and the Noah of the Plains. Those that once shared meals with him now refused to speak to him. But soon his dreams began to take shape as the farm took a back seat to his obsession. And every day from dawn until dusk, Tom built his way home. Well, it does not have a happy ending, but people can listen.

Where can people listen, my friend? You can listen to Canadian History X in that. EHX on all podcast platforms and you can listen to it every weekend on the Chorus Radio Network. Just check your local listings. Craig Baird, as always a highlight for me. Thank you so much. We'll see you next week. Thanks for having me.

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