The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Did You Learn The Poem "High Flight" At School?

Episode Date: February 23, 2021

Great speeches can change the course of history. So, on the heels of a pretty good  Joe Biden speech last night, The Bridge asks today, do you know a Canadian speech that's impacted the country? Plus, Amber Mac drops by to answer your question about the safety of your personal computer during the pandemic. And, what was the worst year in world history? And, would YOU  pay for a sightseeing flight over Chernobyl?  

Well, hi there, Peter Mansbridge here. You are just moments away from the latest episode of The Bridge. Today's question, great speeches can change the course of history. Can you think of a Canadian example? And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. Welcome to Tuesday. No matter where you're listening to The Bridge, whether it's on Sirius XM, Channel 167, Canada Talks, or on any of the different platforms that our podcast is available on. Hello. And as I said, welcome to Tuesday. I don't know about you, but last night I tuned in to watch Joe Biden.

And Biden and his wife and the Vice President and her husband were taking part in a ceremony to mark the more than 500,000 Americans who have died as a result of COVID-19. And it was a solemn, fairly short ceremony. It was at the White House. It involved the lighting of candles. And it involved a speech by Biden. Now, it wasn't a great speech, but it was a good speech. And it touched hearts. And I'm sure it touched the hearts of those who have lost family and friends in the past year.

And Biden has this remarkable ability to touch hearts by kind of reaching out and identifying with people. And he was able to identify, I think in a non-partisan way, with a lot of people in that speech yesterday because he talked about the pain of losing somebody close when you're not able to be there. And as he said those words, you knew exactly what he was talking about. He was talking about. He was talking about the loss of his wife and daughter

decades ago. They were in a car crash while he was at work in Washington. So he had not been there. And then he talked about the pain of losing somebody very close

when you are there. And clearly that was a reference to his son, Bo, who died, I think, of lung cancer or brain cancer just a couple of years ago. And it was in those two phrases where I think Biden is able to connect, if only for a moment, but able to connect. That 500,000 figure is, of course course huge. I can remember a year ago when all this started,

the various news conferences that Fauci and Dr. Birx held and people would press them on. Do you think there could be as many as 50,000 dead when this is over in the U.S.? And Fauci being very careful with his answers and saying, look, this all depends on us, on how we handle it. It could be 50,000. It could be 200,000. Well, here we are at 500,000 in the United States

and while the focus is often on the American figure because there have been more people who have lost their lives as a result of COVID in the US than any other country in the world by far but Canada has lost

a lot of people as well. When I looked last night at the latest epidemiological statistics, we're showing 21,723 deaths as of last night. 21,723. So we haven't had any examples like the candle burning last night on a national scale, but perhaps we have, on a national scale, but perhaps we have had on a local scale. And for some of us, just in our homes, perhaps.

But every time we hear about the American numbers, we should not forget the Canadian numbers. And after last day's, yesterday's program, where we talked about how close we are to appearing to turn the corner

on COVID. And I think we are the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel. But we still got a long way to go. But things are looking up. And if we can pass through this variant crisis, they could really be looking up.

But let me get back to that, the Biden speech, because it made me think about the power of a speech, especially the power of a significant leader's speech and the impact it can have on the course of history and on the mood of a country. I mean, we often think of Churchill, and I know Churchill's life is a complicated one and one that is not full of roses. But in that moment, especially in the summer of 1940 and into 1941, Churchill's leadership and his speeches especially were so important in terms of the mood and the resilience of not only his country, but of the allied

countries overall, including Canada. And you can point to half a dozen different Churchill speeches where the quotes live on to today. But it goes beyond Churchill, John F. Kennedy made speeches, many of which are still quoted today. You always hear them around Inauguration Day.

Will he reach to the level of JFK? Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for you, but what you can do for your country, and other quotes.

But Kennedy wasn't alone. There were other great speeches, FDR made speeches, and we've played some of them on this podcast. Ronald Reagan. Martin Luther King you know I think of Reagan and the speech that's often quoted of Reagan's was when he spoke to the nation the night after the Challenger

disaster in 1986 when he spoke to the nation the night after the Challenger disaster in 1986. And he talked about how those astronauts in the Challenger that had exploded less than two minutes after takeoff, I guess just over two minutes. He talked about how those astronauts had reached out and touched the face of God.

And he was given great credit for that speech. But it was Peggy Noonan, his speechwriter, who wrote it and who was quick to say, look, that line came out of a famous poem from the Second World War written by a young pilot. He was just 19 years old when he died. But he had written a poem called High Flight.

And certainly for a lot of Canadian kids my age, you learned high flight at school. You learned every word of it. Oh, I've slipped the surly bonds of earth and danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings. Sunward I've climbed and joined the tumbling berth of sun-split clouds and done a hundred things and on and on until the last line. Put out my hand and touched the face of God. High Flight John Gillespie McGee Jr. high flight.

John Gillespie McGee Jr. He actually wasn't a Canadian, but he had joined the Royal Canadian Air Force because he wanted to fight. During the Second World War, he'd been in the States. So he joined the RCAF. He did his training in Ontario. And then he was sent over to Britain. I think he was in Wales, was the base he was at.

Just 19, he'd only done a few flights. He'd been in action. But he was on a training mission. Not far from his base, he was doing a dive through clouds. And he came out of the clouds and he hit another plane. And both pilots were killed. But John Gillespie McGee Jr. will always be remembered for high flight and so will Ronald Reagan for having used that line because it just grabbed the emotions of everyone who was watching. Nobody could deliver a line like Reagan. Anyway, this got me thinking, when you kind of run through the list of different names

of leaders who have made amazing speeches, it made me wonder about, well, who are the Canadian leaders? What are the great Canadian speeches that we point to by Canadian leaders, whether they're federal leaders or provincial leaders? Who are they? What's that one line that we always remember? Is there one? Who said it? So that's my question for you this week. It's only Tuesday, but looking ahead to Friday and the weekend special, you tell me. You give me your vote.

What's the Canadian leader's line that stands in history? I'd love to hear what you think of that. Now, there was another thing that I was listening to this last couple of days. It was a history podcast. And it was about the Black Death. Okay? Black Death was kind of around 1350. And it was a terrible pandemic that swept around

what was most of the known world at that time. It's said to have killed half the people in Europe. But anyway, I was listening to this, and the thing I found interesting about that podcast, because I had assumed that this is one of the, you know, the Black Death was one of the worst plagues to ever hit the world. But I was startled to find out, when I was listening to the podcast, that it swept through most communities, smaller communities across Europe. In two months, that was kind of the life of it.

And then, hey, there were no vaccines. Start to finish, two months, it killed a lot of people. But those who survived were, you know, home free, if you you will within two months I guess that's the natural herd immunity must have been anyway the other question was was this the worst

and science magazine came to the rescue with a piece by Ann Gibbons. Now, it's a couple of years old, but this is what research will do for you. And the answer is why 536 was the worst year to be alive. 536 was the worst year to be alive. 536. And Anne Gibbons writes this piece where she's quoting Michael McCormick,

who's a medieval historian, quite a bit. I'm not going to read it all. But I thought it was interesting to hear that there was a year, this was pretty awful, and we never hear about it. We never kind of talk about it. It was the beginning of one of the worst periods to be alive, says McCormick, who's a historian and archaeologist who chairs the Harvard University Initiative for the Science of the Human Past. At least he did three years ago

when this was written. So let me tell you just a little bit about it. A mysterious fog plunged Europe, the Middle East, and parts of Asia into darkness day and night for 18 months. 18 months! The Byzantine historian Procopius wrote, For the sun gave forth its light without brightness like the moon during the whole year.

Temperatures in the summer of 536 fell, initiating the coldest decade in the past 2,300 years. Snow fell that summer in China. Crops failed. People starved. The Irish chronicles record a failure of bread from the years 536 to 539. Then, if that wasn't bad enough, in 541,

a bubonic plague struck the Roman port of Pelusium in Egypt. What came to be called the Plague of Justinian spread rapidly, wiping out one-third to one-half of the population of the Eastern Roman Empire and hastening its collapse. So, there you have the answer to that question. What was the worst year ever? It was 536, according to this article. Okay.

Still to come, one of you asked how safe your computer is. Well, Amber Mack is here to tell us the answer. now i last week on the weekend special on friday one of the questions it was a good one was about the safety of your personal computer, especially in an era when we are all using our personal computers for work because so many of us are staying at home. So how safe is it? And, you know, I thought of all the things I've done in the last year, I haven't asked myself that question. And, man, I've been using my computer a lot in the last year, I haven't asked myself that question. And man, I've been using my computer a lot

in the last year. So what's the answer to that question? I thought, well, certainly one person who should be able to give us that answer. That's the president of Amber Mac Media. Host, author, colleague at SiriusXM, Amber Mac. So it behooves me to reach out to Amber. All right, Amber, here's the question. It comes from a guy named michael cohen not

that michael cohen because he lives in toronto unless he's moved anyway he says in light of the ongoing lockdown here in toronto and businesses and organizations changing the way they do things i was wondering in the era of cyber crimes we live in, how safe is working from home on a personal computer? Michael has a really good and fair question in terms of what's happening right now with more people working at home. In fact, based on a number of different reports over the past year, what has taken place is that we've seen a doubling as far as the number of cyber attacks on computers. And this is really because it's become more difficult for IT managers within organizations to oversee all of these

different scenarios in terms of how people are connecting to the internet. Well, I don't know how typical I am because I, you know, I do a fair amount of work on my personal computer, and I've always done, you know, some element of banking. But I know for sure in the last year I've done a lot more online purchasing than I've ever done before. So am I vulnerable? Am I a threat? Well, I think everybody is potentially threatened by what's happening right now in terms of these cyber attacks. And one thing that people think about with these attacks is often that, okay, well, they're going to attack my computer and take over my computer. And that is a technical attack. But

what's happening more often, Peter, which people should be afraid of, is this idea of what's called social engineering. So many of these hackers recognize that you and I and Michael who asked the question, we are trusting of the information that's coming through things like email. And so they recognize, especially now during a pandemic that we're quite vulnerable to these messages. And so they do what's called a phishing scam.

So essentially they could email and say, hey, you have to change the password on your bank account or your Twitter password or Facebook password in the next hour, or the whole thing will be deactivated. And think about how much we depend on that technology, especially during the pandemic. And we may feel inclined to go and change that immediately. But in fact, they are fishing for our information. So that's really where the biggest threat is today. And do people fall for that? Because, you know, I hear that and I think, well, come on, how stupid can you be if you're going to suddenly hand out your password or change your password with them kind of somehow

involved on the line? I mean, are they getting more sophisticated than that at the way they go about trying to wheel you in? They absolutely are. So let me sort of paint a picture for you in terms of a type of attack. So they may find out that Michael works for a company that potentially uses a certain travel agency for all of their bookings. So these hackers are doing research into not just who you are as a person, but they'll scour the internet to see things that you like,

and then they'll prey on you in terms of where you're the most vulnerable. So if they find out that Michael's company actually has a travel partner, they will make up an email address that looks like it's that exact travel partner. And then instead of maybe having just one R, if that's in the name of the official travel partner, if you look really closely in that email address, you'll see that it's misspelled and it's a tiny little typo that most people don't notice. So even if you're savvy and you look at the email address something is coming from and it looks legit, there can be something in that email address that can signal that this is a potential phishing scam, a very popular type of hacking. So spelling can be a clue. It absolutely can. So, you know, I have been a

victim of hacking in terms of people trying to send emails that look like they're from me. And in that case, instead of being amber mac.com, if you look at the email address, it may be amber with two r's mac.com. But some people who are getting hundreds of emails a day, you can only imagine, Peter, that, you know, they're just skimming through the emails and it looks legit. So I've had friends who are pretty tech savvy even say, hey, this looks like it's from you. I'm not sure. And I'm like, two R's, two R's, look at the email. So what can you do aside from, you know, trying to be observant about the kind of emails you get that seem out of place that you weren't expecting? I mean, do you report these to somebody or do you just sort of ignore them and move on? Well, I think one of the issues right now with these threats is that we don't always know where they're coming from.

We may never know where they're coming from. And yet, you know, every single day, Google is blocking millions and millions of these phishing scams. So there are things you can do to protect yourself. Reporting them is not necessarily something that is easy to do because we don't know, again, the source. So one is pay attention to the grammar in terms of spelling mistakes or look at the email address if it seems a little bit off. Also be careful about things like the messages urgency. I mentioned an example of that where it says, hey, you have to do this within the next hour. No legitimate company is going to force those time constraints upon you. Also see the language

that they use, right? So if it looks like it's coming from your bank and you believe it, but all of a sudden you read the email, it may say, dear sir, madam, you know, those are not the type of things that typical organizations will write who are doing business with you. So there's a few things you can do. Most importantly, if it looks suspicious, the best thing to do is to not click on any attachment to not answer that email, but instead actually get in touch with potentially your company or the bank or whoever is trying to pretend to be that source of that message. All right. Last question. And I guess, you know, in some ways, listening to what you're saying makes you say, oh, my God, I'm

staying off my computer. I'm not going to do this anymore. But overall, it's pretty safe, isn't it? It absolutely is. And you know, as someone who's covered the tech industry for many years, I do want to caution and say that there are many more benefits to using technology, especially right now, than walking away from it. It just means that you have to be a little bit safer, you have to be a little bit more careful, and you have to do your due diligence in terms of what's coming in. But I'm a big advocate for technology use. And I think for most people, you potentially could be a target.

But at the end of the day, you just have to be careful about what you click on, what you open and make sure that you trust the source. Amber, good advice as always. Great to talk to you. Thanks so much.

Amber Mack, she's great, eh advice as always. Great to talk to you. Thanks so much. Amber Mack. She's great, eh? All right. You know what I haven't done so far this week? I haven't told you an aviation story. And if you listen to this podcast, you know I love aviation stories. Well, here's the latest one from from simple flying magazine.com whatever simple flying has a article recently that is

headlined ukraine international operates ch Chernobyl Sightseeing Flights to Nowhere. Now, I am sure that's probably somewhere you've always wanted to go to, right? Chernobyl, site of the 1986 nuclear disaster. Subject of a fabulous television series on which? Is it Netflix? I'm not sure which it is. It's one of the streaming services, but it is a fantastic series. You know, a lot of it's in translation, so you've got to go through that.

But, you know, you get used to that very quickly. It's one of the best series available on streaming services. Anyway, I digress. Ukraine International, the airline, like many airlines around the world, has desperately been trying to find ways to make money during the pandemic when no one's flying. And so they've come up with, hey, let's get on a plane and fly to Chernobyl.

Because that will make people get on the plane. And apparently, they've been selling out. This is what it says in Simple Flying. Ukrainian International Airlines, at the numerous requests of beloved passengers is launching a low altitude scenic flight to nowhere over Kiev. The Ukrainian capital which is I guess about 100 miles or 100 kilometers south of the Chernobyl site.

After announcing the offer on February 12th, so that's just a week or so, two weeks ago, the single March 7th E-195 flight sold out and prompted the airline to offer a second flight for March 13th. Here's what the airline had planned. First announced on UIA's website, and if you want to find that website, you have to set your location settings to Ukraine.

The airlines launched what it calls a unique Ukrainian project, what the airline calls a real spring gift the flight is set to take place as we said on march 7th flight to nowhere they call it along the route in the direction of the mysterious chernobyl and they're flying low 900 meters. Okay, that's pretty low for a jetliner. For anyone unaware of the history of Chernobyl, come on.

You're talking to the bridge listeners. We all know that. Not mentioned by the website, the tour will also overfly the Antonov factory airfield in Gostomel, home of the AN-225 Maria. Never heard of. It's one of the aircraft, right? That Antonov, which is a big airplane manufacturer. Here's a few of the things that you get on the flight with your ticket,

aside from a view of Chernobyl from 1,900 meters. A tour of a Boeing 777 on the apron of the Kiev airport. An opportunity to take photos in the cockpit. Whoa. The opportunity to take photos in the cockpit. Whoa. The opportunity to take selfies with the pilot. And there'll be a drawing on the plane of souvenirs and gifts. Kind of a little lottery on the plane. I hope the pilots on those selfies,

we're not talking about while they're flying, right? While they're flying at 900 feet above Chernobyl or 900 meters above Chernobyl, they're not going to be standing there taking selfies with the passengers in the cockpit. I'm sure they're doing that on the ground. But you never know, do you? All right, there's my little aviation story for today.

Next up, a couple of reminders. And the first one comes with a story next to it. The Telegraph, the British newspaper, reported over the weekend that the world's first carbon neutral ship a vessel capable of carrying 2 000 cargo containers that can the ship will run on fuels produced from renewable energy electricity and waste carbon dioxide it's slated to be launched by 2023 by the danish shipping giant maersk and you've i'm sure seen that name maersk on stamped on the side of shipping containers all over the world the shipping giant shared their intentions to have the new ship to operate across intra-regional

routes and is also moving up its plans to go completely carbon neutral by 2050. That's not far away. Now, I read that story because tomorrow we have a very special first of a two-part series. The next two Wednesdays on Smoke, Mirrors, and the Truth with Bruce Anderson. And the first was generated by an announcement by Shell. Shell Oil in Europe, last week, that they are beginning the decline on worldwide production of oil.

And so what does that actually mean? Does that mean we are looking eventually at the end of oil? Well, with projects like this one by Maersk, it's an indication of the direction things are going in. If they're going to start moving ships around the world, carbon neutral, that's pretty significant. So tomorrow, along with Bruce and a special guest tomorrow,

we're going to begin that. And then next week, we're going to look at electronic vehicles. Because, I don't know what you've been reading, but they are coming on strong.

The whole impact of EV is going to be significant in the next couple of years. It already is, but it's going to be even more significant as we move forward. So that's two specials in the next week. And then

Thursday of this week, the debut, not on the bridge, but later in the afternoon on SiriusXM, Channel 167, Canada Talks, the debut of Good Talk with Bruce and Chantelle Hebert, where the three of us, and occasionally we'll have a guest with us, are going to talk about the state of national affairs, national politics in Canada.

And this week is the first one, so we'll really kind of set the table for you in terms of what we're thinking, the direction of things is likely to be. So that's Thursday. And Friday, of course, the weekend special. With that added question now, and I've asked you to think about,

tell me a great Canadian leader's speech, one that you will always remember, one that we should remember. Give me a quote. All right? So there you go. That's the Tuesday edition of The Bridge. I'm Peter Mansbridge.

Thanks so much for listening. We'll be back in 24 hours.