The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - New Examples of How Sports Can Bring The World Together

Episode Date: January 3, 2023

A terrifying moment on Monday Night Football last night left players in tears and embracing their opponents.  And in a little village in Brazil a nation and a world mourns.  Two examples of how sports bring us together.  And Brian Stewart is by with his regular Tuesday commentary on the war in Ukraine -- this week's thoughts focus on the road ahead.

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. You are just moments away from the latest episode of The Bridge. More examples of how sports brings the world together. And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here in Toronto on this day, and yes, it is a Tuesday, and yes, we will be talking with Brian Stewart about Ukraine. In fact, he's got quite a few really important things to talk about as we launch yet another year of The Bridge, and our first Tuesday with discussions about Ukraine. But that's not how I'm going to start today. I'm going to start with that old cliche about how sports brings the world together.

And, you know, like so many old cliches, it's true. There are moments where sports really does bring the world together. And there have been two in the last, well, the last couple of days, starting with last night. You know, Monday Night Football has been an institution in North America for almost 50 years now, back in the old days of Howard Cosell. And it was on Monday Night Football in December of 1980, where in some ways the world was brought together in mourning of John Lennon, because it was Howard Cosell who broke the news, basically to the North American audience, but as a result to the world,

that John Lennon had been gunned down in the streets of New York. Last night, there was another moment for the Monday Night Football history books. It, too, was a devastating moment. I don't always watch Monday Night Football, but I do as the season moves towards its conclusion and there can be some pretty important games.

And there was a big game last night between the Buffalo Bills and the Cincinnati Bengals. Well, the game had hardly got started. It was still in the first quarter. When what looked like a pretty normal tackle by one of the Buffalo defenders, DeMar Hamlin, suddenly resulted in a heart attack, basically.

His heart stopped right there on the field. And within seconds, within seconds, you knew that this was not just a normal injury that was suffered as a result of his tackling the Cincinnati player. Medical people, and there are usually at an NFL game anywhere up to two dozen medical medical people between the two sidelines. They rushed to Hamlin. And within moments, they realized his heart had stopped. They applied CPR, and apparently they had a defibrillator there as well.

And he was taken off the field in an ambulance. He's still in critical condition at the last word I heard in hospital. But they clearly got his heart started again. So in effect, he had basically died on the field. And within moments, they got his heart going again. Now, how does how the world came together fit into this story? The stadium was packed, tens of thousands of people. It instantly went silent.

It instantly, they realized this was not just another injury on the field. This was life or death. So they, in their own way, that audience, the crowd, embraced DeMar Hamlin. Meanwhile, on the field, this remarkable scene unfolded with players on their knees, players weeping. They clearly had been told the worst. And players from opposing teams embracing each other. You had the scene of two of the best quarterbacks in the NFL in today's world.

Josh Allen of the Buffalo team, Joe Burrows from Cincinnati. Embracing each other. Weeping. Now, whether or not there was an attempt to start the game again, I don't know. But I can tell you those players were not going to play football last night. Not after that. And they didn't. The game was postponed. Called off.

It was the least important thing to be concerned about. Tamara Hamlin's mother was in the crowd last night. She came down, was able to, I believe, there have been some conflicting stories about this, but I believe she was able to get on the ambulance with her son towards the hospital. So you had people praying for Damar around North America.

The GoFundMe thing that he'd started, it only had, you know, like $1,800 or $2,000 in it for a special project in his community. Within an hour, it was up to $750,000. The world came together for Damar Hamlin. And we obviously join those prayers as he continues his struggle, his fight. So that's one. The other example

is from the last couple of days. It's a very different kind of example. It involves one of the greatest athletes that's ever walked this planet. Now, I'm not a soccer, football fan on a regular basis. I get excited around the World Cup and special games. But I know the name Pele. I grew up at a time of Pele and his greatest performances

for Brazil and Santos, the home team that he played for, and his remarkable feats. Well, Pele died at the age of... Well, he wasn't very old, 82, I believe, just last week. And today, today, probably as you're listening to this program, he is being placed in his final resting place in Santos in Brazil you know we don't talk a lot about South America we share this hemisphere with but there are half a billion people

almost half a billion 450 million I think people who live in South America about half of them live in Brazil. It's the most populated country in South America. And Pele played for Brazil. He played mainly for his hometown of Santos, but he played for Brazil.

That's where he won his World Cups. That's where the world stage was open to him, and the world embraced him. And I mean the world embraced him. The greatest soccer player to ever play the game. One of the greatest athletes ever. Talk about him along with Muhammad Ali. I heard somebody just the other day, an American broadcaster, compare him to Wayne Gretzky. In that famous thing that Wayne often talks about how his dad said, don't go after the puck, Go to where the puck is going to be. Pele played soccer that way. But here's the tributes. And this is how the world comes together around this figure and will today, are today.

Whether they're there in Santos or not, they know that Pele is being buried today. I'm going to give you three quick quotes, and they're out of a story that, to me, one of the greatest sports writers of today, Cathal Kelly at the Globe and Mail, he wrote an obit, as we call it, on Pele, and it was the classic Kelly style.

It was beautiful. But he talks about not his teammates. These are his opponents in big games and the way they talked about Pele. He's talking about his first World Cup game in the 1950s against Sweden. Brazil beat Sweden 5-2 in the final. Pele scored two goals. One of them was an all-time Pele goal. He flicked the ball over the heads of one of the defenders,

ran around him to receive his own pass, then picked it out of the air before it could touch ground. Even I wanted to cheer for him, Sweden's Ziggy Parling said after, capturing the worldwide consensus. After the final whistle went, Pele burst into heaving sobs. He was consoled on live television by his older teammates. How could you not fall in love with this guy? Second one. The greatest player in history was Spain's Alfredo Di Stefano,

the remarkable Hungarian Ferenc Puskas once said. I refuse to classify Pele as a player, he was above that. And this one is a clincher to me. Brazil won a second World Cup in 1962 and a third in 1970. In that last major outing, Pele scored a headed goal in the final over Italy's Tarcisio Bergic. Afterwards, Mr. Bergic said, I told myself before the game, he's made of skin and bones.

But like everyone else, I was wrong. These are his opponents. So yes, sports does. Sports has its issues. We all know that. I still have a hard time watching the World Juniors hockey because of what happened in 2018 and the stories that have come out as a result of

various investigations into hockey in this country. But I'll watch. You know, I'll be at a Leafs game tonight. Hockey's my favorite sport. But while sports has its issues, there are times when sports brings the world together. And those are two examples where just that has happened. All right, time to move on.

Tuesdays on the bridge has always been, for the past year, about Ukraine and the conflict and the war there. And our guide throughout this, taking us down this path, trying to understand this story, has always been Brian Stewart, the award-winning former war correspondent, former former correspondent, and in many ways he's still both because he's covering them and he's covered them incredibly well for us. So let's bring him in and get things underway as we look forward, we look ahead, at least that's the plan for 2023.

Here we go. So at least that's the plan for 2023. Here we go. Okay, Brian, the focus is going to be looking forward to the year ahead, 2023, and the Ukraine war. But as usual, I'm going to disobey the rules and start with what's happening right in this particular moment. moment because the last couple of days have seen a lot of discussion surrounding the Ukrainian strike inside Russian-held territory in the Donetsk region. And it was a devastating strike. The Ukrainians, by the way, say they are not saying one way or the other whether they did it, but everybody assumes they did using the HIMARS multiple rocket strike equipment that the Americans gave them. But the death toll is enormous. The last count was well into the 60s, if not higher.

Tell me the relevance of what we've witnessed in these last couple of days. Well, Peter, we saw in this Makivka town, which is occupied by the Russians, a classic strike by the Ukrainians, probably 60 kilometers, maybe more, 70 kilometers inside the Russian held territory, occupied territory. And they took out a building that was being used as a makeshift barrack for hundreds of Russian soldiers. And they used the long-range Mars, as you said, rocket artillery with great precision. Several, apparently, firings landed simultaneously on this building. And in the basement of the building was a large amount of ammunition stored, or explosives. And that went off and completely

demolished the building, absolutely demolished. The casualty figures could be anywhere from, I think, a low of 63, which is what Moscow has admitted to, to the high of possibly 400 and more, because the Russians were still digging through the rubble for bodies. And it looks like a very hard explosion to survive, just complete rubble. And this is a classic example of the dangers of the new kind of warfare, where precision weaponry can move in, having got all the intel it needs from spy satellites and other devices and drones, to take out major enemy sightings of headquarters, barracks, artillery, you name it. And the fury in Russia now is aimed by Russian bloggers at the Russian military, largely by saying things like, how after 10

months of war can you still be putting hundreds of soldiers in one building when you know the Ukrainians can see you and you know the Ukrainians can now fire precisely on your target? This was negligence of a staggering, staggering amount. I would not think it likely the Ukrainians, for instance, have any large buildings housing hundreds of soldiers. It would be well dispersed. But it is a major shock, I think, to Russia to realize just how badly, A, led they are, that the officers are still letting congregations like this take place. B, how well equipped the Ukrainians are to fire precision weapons, yes, inside occupied territory, but more and more, it's going well into Russian territory itself with long range rockets of a different kind. So this is really

a shockwave right through the system. It's given encouragement to Ukraine and a mixture of furious anger and also possibly depression amongst the Russians. And it appears that a good number of these Russians were new recruits, were basically still in a training process. What that does to the attempts to bring new people into the conflict on the part of Russia signing up new people, I'm sure doesn't work very well for them. Well, you would have to ask yourself about new recruits coming in saying, if our officers are so dumb as to put us all in a building that Ukrainians can take out on

New Year's Eve with one firing. I better get out of here. I better surrender if I possibly can, or I better desert, or I better just make sure I form my own gang of buddies and we do things independently to try and save ourselves because this is a monstrous calamity. And I would say the 63 dead is a lowball number. I would think it'd be higher than that. And also, if anyone did survive, they're likely to be very well injured. You know what came to mind?

Just a second came to my mind was the U.S. Marine Base in Beirut. Remember that? In 1983, I believe it was. Exactly, 83. I used to go into that base all the time. I was covering Beirut remember that in 1983 exactly 83. i was i used to go into that base all the time i was covering beirut and the uh the the terrorists at the time um drove a suicide and bus into the building itself and blew it up and killed 240 i think think, Marines. And that really shocked the Americans so much they within a fairly early time pulled out of Beirut altogether. So this can have the kind of shock to the command center, to the troops that the Marines suffered at that time. And again,

it was great negligence of the Marines at that time and how the Russians could be doing the same all these years later against a far more precision firing enemy is just baffling. You know, your memory can play tricks on you, but I was starting to remember some of the details around that Beirut bombing as well, because it was devastating news. And to try to report that back to Americans, that they'd lost hundreds of Marines in one instance of a terrorism attack, and how to move the story to something different. And I think it was within days of that that the United States launched its invasion of Grenada, the tiny Caribbean island, which suddenly got all the attention off the disaster in Beirut. But there were more disasters to come in Beirut, as you well know. And I will just say, too, you're absolutely right.

It was the grand invasion just days later. Reagan desperately trying to save face with his meaningless kind of invasion. But, you know, within months, Reagan desperately trying to save face with his meaningless kind of invasion. But, you know, within months, they were starting to pull the Marines out. And the city went through another paroxysm of fire and civil war. What really strikes me, too, is the human cost, because I got to know a lot of those Marines. We used to film our reports from the top of the building that we would go in and we're with the Marines a lot of those Marines. We used to film our reports from the top of the building that we would go in and we're with the Marines a lot. And you got to know these average soldiers, you know, they're not villains. They're just average people trying to get on with their lives.

The next thing you know, they're in the Russian case, they're drafted into the military. The Marines weren't drafted. They're all volunteers. But, you know, they were there trying to do their duty, trying to just live their life. And the next thing, they're snuffed out. It is a tragedy when those kind of losses take place, even though in war, the relevance of the Ukrainian war, it's a very important victory for Ukraine. And it has to up the Russian casualties as much as it can to try and shock the Russians into realizing they can't win this war and they might lose it if it goes on that long. All right. Well, let's let's move ahead to looking ahead, because one thing that we've learned from this conflict is every day or every couple of days, there's a totally new angle to look at. I mean, the stories keep coming. One day, one side looks like it's had an advantage with an attack. The next day, the other side seems to have done something that has given them some reason to think there's progress

for them. Overall, the picture as a result of that, especially in the last couple of months, has appeared to look like deadlock. And I use that word because that's the word you used to me. It was one of the areas you wanted to talk about as we look forward. And that is, at the moment anyway, we're kind of looking at deadlock. That seems to be the case. And actually, the head of the Ukrainian intelligence has admitted as such that the war has just come to a

grinding halt. The reasons for that largely are the weather is very bad, so much as it's not as cold as the Ukrainians were counting on. The ground hasn't frozen so they can move armor across it. So it's wet, it's soggy, it's kind of First World War Flanders kind of muck and mud everywhere. At the same time, ammunition on both sides is really run down. They're shocked by the fact that they can't keep the supply of ammo up at anything like the amount they were firing at each other. So they're both having to conserve. And the Russians have dug in progressively with what they've got to go on the defensive. Now, when you go on the defensive, it adds a great challenge to the side that's on the offensive because it has to mobilize and mass together enough ammunition and units to try and break through and the rest of it.

So we have a kind of deadlock where I think both sides are realizing they need a break. They need to start building ammunition supplies. They need to give the troops a bit of a, at least the Ukrainians realize this, have to give the troops a bit of a breather and rotate the units more. And they have to, both of them are preparing for the great offensive that will come in the spring. Everybody in this war knows that if it continues to the spring, there will be a massive offensive, probably launched by both sides. The Russians will have their reinforcements and more ammunition. The Ukrainians will have much more ammunition,

and they will have their units added to and what have you. And that's going to be the big bout that people are going to be looking for, to really test whether, you know, some kind of shock can be hit on one side where talks and negotiations become imperative. However, having said that, you know, the Ukrainians do have a considerable mass, dispersed mass, but up around the Krymina-Svartkva front. So that's in the northeast area and the Kharkiv sort of area. They're very close to breaking through to a major center, Krymina. If they were to break through there, they could possibly move 40

kilometers or more into Russian territory and really throw them back on the defensive. I'm not predicting that. It's going to be very hard to pull off, but certainly they've been launching pretty major warmup probes and feints in that area. So it's worth keeping an eye on. And of course, the Russians keep again and again and again trying to advance on the Bakhmut front of the east, sort of the center front, to no real gains of yet. So they're fighting and still going on, but nothing like, as you pointed out, nothing like the intensity that it was just a month ago or even a few weeks ago. You know, one of the things, and you touched on this briefly a moment ago, but one of the things that sometimes occurs in a period of deadlock is real negotiations. Now, do you have

any reason to believe that we could be heading in that direction? I don't see it. And I must say, I'm basing my own feelings on an awful lot of analysts' sense of this as well, and diplomats. The thing is, you know, really, there's a problem here that neither side can afford to lose at this stage. The Ukrainians still believe they can shove the Russians out. So why negotiate now? The Russians know they can't possibly give up territory now. Putin wouldn't allow it. So, I mean, I don't see negotiations starting. I think there's some probing going on somewhere. I mean, who knows who, the Indians or the Norwegians or somebody, the Turks, for instance, are probably talking to both Russians and Ukrainians

simultaneously and conducting a kind of third or fourth or fifth party talks. But there doesn't seem to be anything here that would allow either side at this moment to say, okay, let's sit down at the table and work out, the Russians would work out how much they'd retreat back while still holding on to some, and the Ukrainians would have to negotiate how much they could take while giving up any hopes of getting back, you know, the Crimea or occupied territories that are still held by Russians. It's just not an atmosphere yet. It's not a condition that really allows for any fruitful negotiations at this stage. Everybody in a way, now that's not true to say that everybody would like to see negotiations, because I think a lot of people who hear calls for let's negotiate, let's get negotiations,

realize it would head nowhere. Or it could leave Russia in a win position, being able to hold on to what they've already taken. But very important for people to understand that when talks may begin and when negotiations may start, that's not the immediate end of things. Negotiations can drag on for many months. You and I have both covered countless numbers of these negotiations, say, in the Middle East, Lebanon, and what have you. Vietnam. And two years later, they're still going on. Yeah, remember Vietnam?

Went on forever, all those talks. The first year or two was taken up on just the size of the table. The size of the table. The Korean War ended the Korean War with a ceasefire, not even with a real truce, not with an end, just a ceasefire. It went on for two years. Well, the fighting continued on, you know, up and down, up and down. Xi's side tried to probe for an advantage.

So I think we're in for a long war. And I think that's the, I think the consensus of those really studying this war, and everybody can be wrong, of course, but the consensus seems to be, we won't be in a position to really think about negotiations till at least the great battles of the spring take place and possibly of the summer take place and possibly of next fall take place. So I would think 2023 is going to be a long war year. All right. I'm going to take a quick break, but when I come back, I want you to talk about the lessons that have been learned so far in this conflict.

And it's not just lessons for Russia and Ukraine. It's basically lessons for the world and for armies around the world who have looked at this conflict and are suddenly realizing that things have changed a lot since we've seen a conflict like this between two armies like this in the past with the kind of support they've been getting. But in terms of tactics, so I want to get to that. But first of all, this quick break.

And welcome back. Peter Mansbridge here in Toronto on this day. Brian Stewart is with us also in Toronto. And it's our regular Tuesday discussion with Brian about the situation in the Ukraine-Russia war, Ukraine-Russia conflict. You call it what you will. It's messy, it's bloody, and there have been huge losses on both sides. You're listening on Sirius XM, Channel 167, Canada Talks,

or on your favorite podcast platform. And we're glad you're with us. All right Brian let's talk about the big lessons as you put it in terms of what we've witnessed over the last 10 months. I mean we're approaching the first year anniversary of this of this war. You gave me a list, and the first one on the list is there are no sanctuaries. Tell me about that. Yes, and this is something that I think as you pointed out, all armies, certainly the Western armies are frantically studying because it means a revolution in the kind of modern warfare that the armies have trained for and prepared for for decades now. Reality is that intelligence is such that enemy, your enemy, you have to assume your enemy can see

well inside your own lines. They can pick it up by satellites, by drones, by any number of open source intelligence. And if they can see inside your lines, if they have any form of precision weaponry, they can strike well inside your lines. So all armies now realize they can't have the form of field headquarters, ammunition dumps, troop concentrations, artillery sites that are stationary, that stand there ready to go into action. It's just, it's a transparency war. You can't hide at night anymore. Systems can see through the darkness where you are. You can't, unless you're extremely well dug in, you've got to be very mobile indeed. So the big lesson that all Western armies, including their own in Canada, are frantically figuring out is how do we wage a dispersed war where we have to get our units much more dispersed? They can't

hang out together. They've got to have battalions here, battalions there spread out, but able because of superior communications to come together at key moments for a major attack or to go on the defense at one or the other. But you have to keep moving around. And, you know, this means an entirely different logistical system, communication system, transport systems. It means soldiers have to be retrained on the need for dispersal and camouflage and how to operate. So that's number one. No sanctuaries. You've got to expect that the enemy is peering down on your sights all the time, and you've got to keep moving, and you've got to be able to come together when you have to. But in the meantime, you disperse your forces. A second one is you have to really up your abilities in anti-aircraft, anti-unmanned aircraft attacks.

Because of drones and unmanned aerial systems and the rest of it, you have to have a whole new range of weaponry that can knock them down out of the sky. And that means, of course, huge amounts of ammunition to do so. So you've got to be thinking much more of an aerial attack than any Western government has had to really worry about, really, since the Second World War. If you go back over all the wars, including the Gulf War and Iraq and Iran, they didn't face enemies really that had very serious modern weaponry abilities and this kind of precision and aerial attack. So this is new. They've got to get on to that very fast. Another big one, and I think this is maybe almost up there with no sanctuaries in terms of shock, is armies have to have a slack capacity. That means they must be able to produce

far more weaponry and ammunitions than they're capable of doing right now. The big shock, one of the big shocks, not the big shock, but one of the biggest shocks of this war is that the amount of ammunition that modern armies fire off when they come into a classic major war scenario, which this is, is just mind-boggling. I mean, 100,000 rounds per month, Ukraine alone may be firing off 90,000 rounds. Well, it doesn't produce anything like 90,000 rounds. And to its kind of shock and horror, the Western allies don't produce enough to keep that amount of firing up. The Russians are also finding out that despite their much-vaunted armaments manufacturing sites and factories and the rest of it, they're not able to produce nearly enough ammunition to keep up that rate of firing. So there's a kind of

ammunition crisis on both sides. This means an entirely revolutionary, really new revolutionary look at the so-called military industrial capacity across the West. And I think if this war continues and if really a new era of major insecurity in military and diplomatic insecurity takes place, that major improvements are going to have to take place in the industrial area of production and the rest of it. That's something none of us wanted to see again after the Cold War. We all thought, oh, thank heavens. We don't have to be wasting so much money every year on great armaments, manufacturing, and the rest of it. But I'm afraid it's going to come back. And with it, of course, you just can't produce weaponry in factories and send it overseas. You have to send the weapons that fire the ammunition, and then

you have to maintain those weapons. You know, in war, systems are always breaking down because, to say the least, it's hard use. You know, barrels wear out. You can only fire so many rockets from one platform, and the platform wears down and has to be maintained. So there's a continual supply and rebuilding thing that has to be taking place. And I think, sorry, go ahead. I was going to say, going back to your point about the aerial war, which we have found, and we almost have to redefine that phrase

because it's so different than what we used to be thinking of, given now that so much of it is all about drones. But when this conflict started, in those first couple of months, we tended to only describe it as a ground war. And we even wondered aloud at times, what's happened to aerial warfare? It's just not around. But now we're witnessing this whole different kind of war from the air

that is so dominated by drones that the Russians have sometimes anywhere from 50 to 60 drones up in a day, many of them, if not most of them, being shot down by the equipment that's been given to the Ukrainians by various Western countries. But still some are getting through and causing real havoc and real problems. But it's interesting how in a relatively short 10-month period, the nature of war has changed within this war. Yes, absolutely.

It's an incredible proving ground. All major wars in a way are, going right back to the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s, when the Germans and Italians were testing out their weaponry for a Second World War they knew was coming. And they did a lot of testing. And the Russians were also testing out their weaponry in the Spanish Civil War. All major wars are. And this has been a major test. And some of the things that have really shocked commanders is that, well, we're moving on to a very new high-tech type of war where even robots are coming into play. And there'll be all new forms of aerial attack and intelligence

gathering capabilities. Some old aspects of war are coming back in a way that people didn't quite anticipate, and that's high casualties. I mean, we've gotten used to wars where basically the modern armies have not lost a lot of casualties compared to the enemy. Now we're finding that the casualties, as you pointed out, are so high that people are going to have to rethink, especially in the West, where enough soldiers troops military personnel that they can withstand first a lot of casualties keep morale high and keep replacements moving in and this is I know causing a lot of headaches you know they're already recruitment problems in a number of Western armies, including Canadian and American and European. What happens when, again, war starts to seem like modern war against any kind of enemy that's as well-armed almost as you are? Something like the First World War all over again, where

you're losing thousands per week, hundreds per, sorry, thousands per month, certainly, but hundreds per week, week after week after week. And that's just killed. The casualty rates of those wounded are in the tens of thousands as well. So that's something that armies are going to have to rethink. We're going to take possibly more casualties than we ever thought we would again. So we have to prepare for armies in the ground that can take casualties, can disperse, can find ways to have no sanctuaries, can redevelop their entire anti-aircraft systems, can basically reinvent warfare as they go. And that leads to another lesson. And I will add, this is my final one, in that is armies have to be kind of in an invention laboratory every minute. I mean, it's adaptability now that the Ukrainians are showing to an extraordinary degree,

and the Russians are showing to zero degree. I mean, the Russians have been battered and lost so badly because they're not adapting to the situations as we saw at the beginning of the program. You know, hundreds of Russian soldiers stuck into a building that sooner or later, almost certainly the Ukrainians were going to take out with long range precision weaponry. But the Ukrainians are almost every week coming up with a new form of trying this out, trying that out, dispersing and the rest of it. And all Western militaries and frankly, all world militaries right around the globe are going to have to start war gaming. OK, how do we reinvent modern warfare? I don't know whether you remember, you probably do. But back in the 70s and 80s, the Western, the United States began

developing something called air-land battle. That was when they sat down and rethought, how do we take on Russia in a major World War III if it comes to a land war in Europe? And that was the same system that was used in the Iraq War. The first, sorry, the first Gulf War, really, we called it, in 1990 and 91. But now it's not really applicable anymore. They're going to have to come up with something different because the air-land battle of modern armies counted on big masses moving to break through enemy lines. Now you have to go back to what I said earlier. You have to disperse more and be much more flexible and adaptable than the

airline battles system was. Fascinating. It's always fascinating to listen to you. You got to write a book. Now the, as many of our readers say I've got time for just one quick last one. You wrote in your note to me this week, the potential hero, the winter hero of this conflict, at least acclaimed that way by Ukraine and by NATO. I've seen some of the Ukrainian ads. Who's the winter hero? Well, certainly one of the heroes is Canada and its weaponry and its systems, its kit, they call it, the British military called its kit. And that is the fact that I keep running into in military articles and think tanks a praise for the Ukrainians' ability to withstand the winter conditions,

largely because Canada has given them such superior winter weather uniforms and boots and gloves and all that. I don't go out in the very cold very much, so I'm a bit behind in all the new science. But apparently, Canada has done a remarkably appreciated job of supplying the Ukrainians with exactly the kind of very cold weather gear that gives them a major advantage in the front lines against the Russians and is much appreciated. And we're getting a lot of praise. I don't know whether our media in Canada has picked it up, but you really run across this praise a lot in the military journals. You know, it's not all new science either.

You know what the winner seems to be? Because I've seen a Ukrainian ad that was put together by one of the Ukrainian firms, or at least one of the consulting firms that was working for the Ukrainians in thanking, in this case, Canada. And it's long underwear. That this is, they love it. Give us more long underwear.

And socks, wonderful socks and boots. So we can be proud of our long underwear. It's very important in a winter war, extremely important. No kidding. Well, we can also be proud of you, Mr. Stewart, as many of our listeners have written in in the last week since the announcement was made at government house by the governor general um that you were on the list and that list every uh year at this time

of year is a big deal because it recognizes uh canadians with the highest civilian honor they can get and that is the order of canada and brian stewart thanks no doubt to his stellar performance on the bridge in the last year just kidding it's his stellar performance over 50 odd years of journalism um and covering this world and this country in a way that very few have ever done. Last week, Brian was awarded the Order of Canada, the officer class of the Order of Canada. And, you know, I join along with our friends and the listening audience in giving you great congratulations for that. Well, that's very kind, Peter.

And, of course, all your listeners know that you won that several times. You were awarded that several years ago. So I'm joining in your company now, which makes me very proud. Yeah, but I got it when they weren't really studying it that hard, but now they do. And yours is a terrific honor.

And we congratulate you. Listen, Brian, thanks so much for this. We'll, we'll talk to you again in seven days. Okay, great. And there he is, Order of Canada recipient, Brian Stewart. And congratulations again to Brian. I know many of you because you've written to me in the last few days saying, please send along our congratulations to Brian. And so that has been done. Message has been received. He's bashful and shy about things like that, as he always has been,

but so well deserved. Brian's work, not just in journalism, but in life. Few people know about the charitable work that Brian has done over time and his concern for those he's covered through difficult situations in different parts of the world. So once again, here's to Brian. Cheers. Okay, that's going to wrap it up for this day. You know, a busy day on the bridge, and the days continue to be that way. Tomorrow, the first edition of 2023 of Smoked Mirrors and the Truth

with Bruce Anderson. He'll join us from Ottawa. Thursday is your turn, and, you know, please send along any thoughts you may have, whether it's about Ukraine, whether it's about the Bob Woodward interview. Some nice letters coming in about that from yesterday. Any thoughts you may have on whatever issues are on your mind on this day, keep the letters short.

Make your point. Focus. And don't forget to include your name and the community you're writing from. Every once in a while I get letters from people who say, please don't use my last name. That's difficult, okay? You know, I'm happy to read your letters, but it's unlikely that I'll be reading them on the air unless you give me the name and, please, the place you're writing from, because it gives us a scope, an idea of the country's mood and feelings on certain issues. All right, that's it for now.

I'm Peter Mansbridge. Thanks so much for joining us. Friday, of course, good talk with Chantelle Ibera and Bruce Anderson. And the Wednesday and Friday broadcasts are available on our YouTube channel. Just go to my link on Twitter or Instagram. You'll see the link. Take you right there. It's free, no subscription fee.

You can watch the bridge in production on those two days only. So that's it for this day. I'm Peter Mansbridge. Thanks so much for listening. Hey, we'll talk to you again in 24 hours. Thank you.