The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - How Safe Do You Feel Inside An NHL Hockey Arena?

Episode Date: November 9, 2021

The lessons from dealing with international flights and going to an NHL game in an era of Covid.  Plus just how much of the misinformation being peddled about Covid is being believed - you might be surprised.  And, the old hometown, Churchill Manitoba gets special treatment from the NY Times. 

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. You are just moments away from the latest episode of The Bridge. Today, back in Canada. Last night, back at a hockey game. Our podcast is brought to you by Questrade, Canada's fastest-growing and award-winning online broker. Tired of getting dinged with fees every time you buy or sell U.S. stocks? Well, good news. With Questrade, you don't have to. You can hold U.S. dollars in your trading account and avoid expensive, forced conversion fees every time you trade U.S. stocks. Switch today and get up to $50 worth of free trades. Visit Questrade.com to open an account and use promo code QUEST. Conditions apply. And hello there, yes, after broadcasting for a couple of weeks from Scotland, I'm back in Canada now.

Got back late Sunday night. I'll tell you about that flight experience in a moment, but I first want to tell you about last night, because I got a lot of letters from you over the last 24 hours about yesterday's podcast, that special podcast that I would highly recommend you listen to if you don't have had the experience, if you haven't had the experience yet. I'm, you know, of the many podcasts I've done over the last couple of years, I think I may well be the most proud of that one. It was a story about something I found in Scotland that talks about our military history. I won't say any more than that.

For those of you who haven't listened to it, give it a listen. It may well be worth it. And for those of you who did and wrote, thank you so much. It's very encouraging whenever I hear from you, and especially when you feel that, you know, I've touched a chord perhaps that was something you respond to. And that's what I was trying to do yesterday. Well, that was on my mind when I was at the hockey game last night,

went to a Leafs game, my first one in, you know, almost two years now. I'm a season ticket holder. I've been away, so friends have been using my tickets. So last night, Willie and I, my son Will, who works on this podcast on occasion, we went to the game. A number of things struck me about it under the COVID rules, but first I want to tell you about the experience that the Leafs

organized, as many of the NHL teams do at this time of year, for their fans out of respect for the veterans who served in conflicts on Canada's behalf in the past. So last night, before the anthem was played, before Amazing Grace was played by a piper, they introduced to the crowd four veterans. Two from the Second World War, one from Korea, and an indigenous veteran who had served in Egypt, among other places, in the late 1950s.

But it was one vet in particular that I had my eyes on. One vet in particular that the crowd responded to all the veterans. But they really whooped it up louder, as it turned out, than they were able to whoop up anything on behalf of the Leafs in the game that followed. But one vet in particular, his name was Ed Stafford. He was the fourth and last veteran to be introduced. Now, Ed had served in North Africa during the Second World War. And that's kind of an often forgotten part of that conflict

is those initial battles that took place in North Africa where the Allies landed to try and push the Germans out. In some ways, it was a way of getting ready, getting battle-hardened for later landings in Italy and, of course, in France and Normandy. Get some idea of what it would be like head-to-head against some of the best of the German forces. And it was tough slogging, that North Africa campaign. Very difficult.

So Ed had served in North Africa. He'd also served in Italy. And he was part of the liberation of Rome. Ed Stafford is 101 years old. And I'm telling you, he looked great. He looked incredibly fit. And he loved the way the crowd responded and he gave them the fist pump. It was a nice moment. Sometimes sometimes those moments with vets can seem awfully staged. This one didn't. It felt great.

And as I said, the crowd responded. The crowd that clearly had many things on their mind. I'm sure there were many people in that arena last night who were like me. It was their first time at a hockey game since COVID. So you're a little anxious about how it's all going to work out, as I was going in there. Now you need two things to get in the game. You need proof of double vaccination.

All right, so you need a vaccine passport in a sense. That's what it's about. So you get in. The first line you go through is to show those. And here's what encouraged me about that line. Unlike a Blue Jays game that I went to, I don't know, a month, six weeks ago, where the guy looked like it had just been added to his duties

and he wasn't really sure what he was looking at and it was okay, fine, move on, move on. This fellow at the Leafs game actually looked very carefully at the documentation he was given and read it and said, okay, fine. Go to the next line. The next line, of course, is the ticket line. Now, if this sounds cumbersome and it's going to take a long time, it takes a little longer than normal, but not a lot longer. It wasn't a holdup of any kind. That was getting into the building.

Then after that, my concern or worry or wonder was how many people are actually going to keep their masks on because you have to have a mask on to get through the lines to get into the building. Now they ask you to keep your masks on, but it's not mandatory in such that if you're not wearing your mask, they're going to throw you out. That doesn't happen. So you've got all these double-vax people in the arena, and as they go in, they're all wearing masks, and then they take their seats. And obviously, if you're going to have a drink or something to eat,

you've got to take your mask off. But others, when they got to their seat, simply took their masks off. I would say, certainly in my area of the rink where I was, I'd say it was about 50-50. People who wore their masks throughout the game, with the exception of those moments they're taking a sip from their beer or their water or whatever it is they're drinking. So half with their masks on, half not.

I don't know what it was like overall in the arena. Wouldn't be surprised if it was about the same. There are constantly people walking around with signs saying, please wear your mask. But they're not sort of saying, you better wear your mask or we're throwing you out. They're just saying, please, would you wear a mask? And they do that at every break between periods. It was not an unruly crowd. It was an unhappy crowd.

Least fell down to nothing almost right away in the first period. They struggled back, got a goal, 2-1, looked good. Leafs are very good at comebacks. But then it was 3-1. You go on to the third period and your hopes that they're going to have some kind of miracle come back. I've always been one who's, you know, I'm a believer, a believer that that can happen. So I don't leave early. Until last night. I turned to Will about 10 minutes to go on the game. It was 3-1. I said, if they haven't scored by five minutes, then I'm out of here

because I don't want to go out with the crush. I just don't find that healthy. So sure enough, at five minutes to go, they take that TV timeout with about five minutes left. It's 3-1. I get up. Willie gets up. Out we go.

Within a couple of minutes, it's 5-1. So we made the right call. Those people by then were streaming for the exits. Overall, as I said, the experience, it is, you know, it's different than the Blue Jay game that I went to because the dome was open. You got a lot of fresh air moving about. Here you are in an enclosed place, but with double vaccinated people. That doesn't give you a pass on the vaccine.

As we well know, that can still move around. But overall, I got to say, I felt safe. I felt a little anxious at times, but I felt safe. So that was my experience at the game last night. The experience on the flight home, I told you about the flight overseas to London a few weeks ago. It's very straightforward, not a big deal. And it was an overnight flight, so the plane was asleep for the flight.

There were no issues. There was nobody getting up and demanding that they not have to wear a mask because you have to wear a mask the whole time you're on the plane. And on a long overseas flight, and you have to wear it at Heathrow, it can be many hours that you're wearing a mask. I just had a sip of coffee. I'm time-zoned out. And I know some people get upset when they hear me sipping something.

So I tried to back off from the microphone for that. Anyway, the flight back to Canada is all daytime. I still managed to nod off for a couple of hours. The movies were really bad. Boy, you know it's been a long pandemic because the movies suck that are out there, that have been new

in the last two years. So I tried two different movies. I fell asleep in both of them. Here's the only thing that bothered me about the flight home. And it wasn't on the plane. I had no problems. It was air Canada.

I'm, you know, I'm a big air Canada fan. I know that's hard for some, some to believe, but man, I've been traveling for 50 years and I've worked in the airline business. I know what it can be like.

I like Air Canada. And when you've compared it with other airlines in the world, it's right up there. But that's not my point. Here's my point. Air Canada is under instructions that they have to have on the flights back to Canada. They have to have each passenger produce a PCR test. So in other words, show that you're negative. That's being done within 72 hours of the flight taking off.

Okay, that sounds pretty straightforward. Except it's a total ripoff. It is unbelievable how much it costs coming out of the United Kingdom. To get that PCR test in the part of the Highlands in Scotland that I was in, you had to drive for an hour to a place where you can have it done. And then the cost per person, 170 pounds. That's about 300 bucks. Test takes all of like two minutes.

And you get a result in 24 hours. It's almost exactly the same as the home-administered rapid test that you can get. A little different, but almost the same. 170 pounds, that's 300 bucks, times two in our case, two people, $600, just to get

the test, just to get on the plane. That's before you pay for the ticket. And all the assorted taxes that go with it. Now, this is for, you know, even though you can prove you're double vaccinated, you still have to take this test and they've got you. They've got you by the you-know-what in terms of getting that test done.

You have to have it done. So you have to pay what it costs to get it done. So it's the added burden of, in our case, $600 for the two of us to get those tests done in the UK. I don't know. That's got to stop. You know, I get it when I hear the border towns here in Canada, now that the U.S. border is allegedly fully open for Canadians coming back.

Same thing here. If you're in the States, for an hour shopping, you've got to come back. You've got to show a PCR test. Right? You've got to be double vaccinated to get in. You've got to have a PCR test for Canadian authorities. So any savings you might have had in shopping and a good time,

they're gone for the cost of the PCR test. And there are all kinds of places setting up to do the test because they see a little instant gold mine. Anyway, I saw the mirrors of some, you know, Ontario communities, and I assume it's the same in other parts of the country, who are saying, come on, let's get real. There's got to be a better way and a less expensive way of doing this.

Sorry, that was my alarm. I don't know what time zone that's on. Anyway, enough about all that that so those were my experiences two of the things that have been most affected by this past 20 months and that's air travel and crossing borders and big sporting events and if i sound like a whiner i am a little bit of a whiner today on those issues but I'm not a whiner on Jim Stafford and that wonderful moment at the Leafs game and I thank the Leafs for it I thank Jim Stafford for his service and I think thank Canada for recognizing people like Jim Stafford at 101.

You know, these fellows aren't going to be around a long time. You heard Tim Cook yesterday talk about, what was it, a million Canadians served in some fashion in the Second World War? A million. There's only about 20,000 left. And they're, you know, they're not going to be here much longer. So any opportunity to remember them while they're alive is wonderful. And when they're gone, we won't forget them. As we will show again on this Thursday on Remembrance Day.

Okay, when we come back. Two things I want to touch on. One's the old hometown, Churchill, Manitoba, getting worldwide recognition. From the New York Times, no less. And also this, which we'll deal with next. How many people believe the disinformation they're being fed? The numbers may shock you. Our Black Product Sponsor is The Economist. The numbers may shock you. biased, or politically motivated opinion. And don't be fooled by the name. It covers pretty much everything from culture to science and technology,

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This is The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge. And welcome back. I'm Peter Mansbridge. This is The Bridge. You're listening either on SiriusXM Canada, Channel 167 Canada Talks, or wherever you get your favorite podcasts. And whichever method you use to listen to The Bridge, we welcome you and we thank you for your support.

All right. There's a new research survey out in the U.S. It's done by the Kaiser Family Foundation. You may not have heard of them before, but I'll tell you people who deal in research have, and they're a very trusted research foundation. Well, they came out yesterday with a new study and it's specifically trying to get at this whole issue of misinformation and who believes what i think the assumption is we're dealing with a very small group of people who believe this garbage.

But you know what? It's not small. It's still garbage. And it's still misinformation. But a surprising number of people believe it. What Kaiser did was it isolated eight false statements about COVID. Here's the top line, this kind of headline results from this. One third of respondents, this is according to the Kaiser Family Foundation,

one third of respondents, quote, believe or are unsure whether deaths due to the COVID-19 vaccine are being intentionally hidden by the government. 35% of people believe that. And about 3 in 10, just a little less, each believe or are unsure whether COVID-19 vaccines have been shown to cause infertility. 31% believe that. Or whether ivermectin, you know, the animal dewormer,

is a safe and effective treatment for COVID-19. 28% fall into that category. Those are stunning numbers. And here's something that goes with it. Kaiser concludes, people's trusted news sources are correlated with their belief in COVID-19 misinformation. At least a third of those who trust information from CNN, MSNBC, Network News, NPR, and local television news do not believe any of the eight false

statements, while small shares, between 11 and 15 percent, believe or are unsure about at least four of the eight false statements. Larger shares of those who trust COVID-19 information from leading conservative news sources believe misinformation, with nearly four in ten of those who trust Fox News and One America News and nearly half of those who trust Newsmax, saying they believe or are unsure about at least half of the eight false statements. So there you go. Now, you know, this study is all American, obviously, from what I just read. But it's scary that the numbers are that high.

Now, I don't know how high they are in Canada, because I haven't seen a study of this type done in Canada. But I would imagine that if it's not the same, it's probably pretty close. Those are not encouraging numbers. I'll leave it at that. I'll let you ponder that. Think about that one for a while.

Okay, here's the old hometown. As some of you know, and certainly you know it if you've read my new book, off the record, on the bestseller charts available at all bookstores, it's a fun read, and it's a perfect Christmas present. Anyway, if you've read that book, you will know that I started my career in Churchill, Manitoba, up there on the north, northern Manitoba, coastline of Hudson Bay. And I'm proud of that fact, and I'm proud of the people of Churchill. I go back every once in a while, but it's been a few years,

probably 10 years since I was last in Churchill. But I have fond memories, obviously, of my start in Churchill, which you can read all about in the book, I won't bore you with now, but my feelings about Churchill itself. They're strong feelings, both pro and con. But the dream of Churchill has always been to be bigger than it is. You know, it's this little community that started off as a Hudson Bay trading post. In its headiest days, it believed that there would be a day that shipping could be done

from Europe through Churchill, that it could pull all that grain out of Western Canada and export it to European markets at a faster, more inexpensive route than out of Thunder Bay or Vancouver. And there have been moments where that seemed like it might be possible, but it never worked out. I mean, first there was the issue of getting the grain to Churchill

to build a railroad because there's no road, right? Railway is the way to do it. But the big issue was always the ice-bound nature of Hudson Bay and a very short shipping season. A couple of months long. How much grain can you push through there in just a couple of months? And what about the community itself? I mean, I can remember when I lived there in the late 60s,

there was all kinds of fabulous talk. You know, Churchill was a kind of bustling, small northern community. I mean, there was an Air Force, or there had been a U.S. Air Force base there. There was a rocket range by the National Research Council, which used to fire rockets up into the Aurora Borealis, the northern lights, to try and determine their makeup, their origins. And it's a great place to see the Northern Lights, but so are many places in the world.

I saw some great images of the Northern Lights in Scotland. We live in the Highlands when we're in Scotland. And there were some great ones here just in the last month. But nevertheless, Churchill is known for the Aurora Borealis and for scientific experimentation that was done there. But I can remember, as I was about to say, in the late 60s, one of the dreams, you know, would have been unbelievably expensive, but people used to talk about it. 1960s, one of the dreams, yeah, it would have been unbelievably expensive,

but people used to talk about it. We're going to dome the whole city and the port, not a city, a community, and the port. We're going to have some kind of dome over the top of it to keep it at a year-round climate. That would have been pretty spiffy. And there used to be talk about it. It was multi-billions of dollars, and it never got serious. But, you know, the word around town was, you never know.

They might do it. Well, they never did it. Anyway, as news organizations around the world were trying to find spinoffs from the Glasgow COP26 climate conference, the New York Times sent along one of its journalists, Benjamin Applebaum, who's a member of the editorial board of the New York Times, and Damon Winter, who's a staff photographer, for their opinion pages, they went up to Churchill

with the headline, 3,000 miles from Glasgow, a town and its polar bears face the future. And I've seen hundreds, if not thousands, of great photographs from Churchill over the years. But I tell you, Damon Winter's pictures are pretty spiffy, pretty good. So you can access this column. I'm not going to read it all. It's a long column. But there's some interesting parts in it which carry on the debate and the discussion that we always have about Churchill and could it be put to better use? And how is it changing as a result of climate change? Well, it is changing, just as everything in Canada's north is.

While the south still debates in some corners, it's not really real climate change. Hey, go to Churchill. Have a look. When I lived there, we were kind of on the tree line, and the trees that were there were kind of stunted. Not so much anymore. Churchill now known for taller trees, longer summers, bigger snowstorms, and moose, where caribou used to go.

So it sounds, does that sound bad? Well, not to go. So it sounds, does that sound bad? Well, not to everybody. Michael Spence, he's been the mayor of Churchill for a long time. He tries to look at it from a different angle. Sure, there are issues about climate

change and the way things are changing. And the impact it's having on everything from wildlife to the land to rising waters to coastal changes but there are positives as far as michael's concerned he says the town's future is as an outlet for the grain grown on Canada's western plains and the minerals that will be mined from its thawing northern expanses. What Mayor Spence is talking about is how that port can be used to move stuff out, whether it's grain or something from the earth, from the various mines of northern Canada and the northern area of many provinces on the prairies.

As the mayor says, at one point, we would have been afraid of climate change. It doesn't matter where you're situated in the world. The threats are real. But you've got to look for the winds in all of this. You've got to be able to sleep at night. So a lot of what's in this column talks about what's possible while being realistic about what's happening. Stuff like warmer weather is endangering arctic species says the new york times

in part by opening the gates for other animals like red foxes wolves and brown bears as well as a host of smaller species to move north we haven't found anything that isn't changing in the hudson bay ecosystem said david barber it's a great prof at the University of Manitoba who studies climate change, a scientific director of the Churchill Marine Observatory. From the viruses and the bacteria right up to the whales, every single thing is being affected by climate change. And of course, you can't talk about Churchill

without talking about its major celebrity, as the New York Times calls it, and that's the polar bear. But what's happening to the polar bear? Over these last few years, we keep hearing, oh, you know, they're disappearing, they're running out of food, and then conversely, you hear studies saying,

oh, there are more polar bears now than there ever have been. Well, one of those has got to be wrong. They both can't be right. Now, we tend to think, and certainly when I lived there, the polar bears weren't part of the tourism business. They were just a nuisance. But over time, they became a very important factor in the local economy because it brought in all kinds of tourists.

But now the challenge is not only to survive in terms of the tourism business, but to survive in terms of the bears, because it's clear there has been a cost to the bear population because of climate change. Here's what the Times says. I'll read two paragraphs here. Because they'll give you your snapshot of the bear story. One immediate impact of global warming is that the bears are spending more time around Churchill as the sea ice forms later in the year and melts earlier.

On land, bears lose about one kilogram, that's 2.2 pounds, of their weight each day. As ice season shrinks, the bears face the double pain of fewer days of hunting and more days of fasting. Between 1980 and 2019, the weight of the average pregnant polar bear in the Churchill region declined by 15%, according to Nick Lunn, a Canadian government scientist. New births are in decline. The number of polar bears in western Hudson Bay fell by 30% from 1987 to 2016, and some experts think the population already is in terminal decline. Some bears may survive, at least for a time, by moving farther north, but over the coming decades,

if greenhouse gas emissions continue to build at the current pace, the disappearance of polar bears from the Hudson Bay region is inevitable, according to a 2020 study concluded by scientists at Polar Bears International Research and Advocacy Group. Now, there's not a lot of sentimentality about polar bears in Churchill, say the Times, and that's true. It's hard to mourn the loss of the bears where they're ubiquitous. Indeed, many locals say the bears have become bolder and more visible in recent years, which may be because the bears are hungrier.

All right. As I said, I'm not going to read the whole article, and I don't think it's just me that's interested in the Churchill story. It's a fascinating Canadian story. So go to the New York Times if you want to read the whole opinion piece. It's fairly lengthy, but it's really good. It's really well done. It's one of the best done pieces that I've seen about Churchill in many years. I'll leave you with this because, you know, the concern, not the concern, but the wish is something could happen

for Churchill because of climate change. Something, you know, Mayor Spence says, look on the positive side. What can we do with this fact? And this is the fact. The number of days that Hudson Bay is ice-free increased by about 1.14 days per year between 1980 and 2014. So that's like, what, more than a month, according to a study by the University of Manitoba.

Moreover, change is accelerating. The melting of sea ice is like the clear-cutting of a forest. It removes a barrier that allows the sun to shine directly on the surface, warming it more quickly. Some climate models project that ships may be able to navigate Hudson Bay throughout the year, as soon as 2030. Okay, so that's less than a decade. What's left of the sea ice would no longer pose a danger when i was up in the arctic this year i saw some indications of that in some places in the high arctic we're not talking about the high arctic in churchill we're talking about the the lower arctic if there's such a phrase. All right. That's my little catch-up with the old hometown.

And that wraps her up for this day. Kind of weird, all over the map edition of The Bridge. Tomorrow, it's Smoke, Mirrors, and the Truth. Bruce Anderson will join us. Thursday, there's that special on Remembrance Day in the afternoon. A special on libraries. I want you to

try and catch that if you can. And on Friday, of course, Good Talk with Chantelle Bear and Bruce Anderson. I'm Peter Mansbridge. This has been The Bridge. Thanks so much for listening. Talk to you again in just 24 hours.