The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Smoke Mirrors and the Truth -- The Art of The Pivot?

Episode Date: February 11, 2025

 Also, a feature interview with Jack Wang on his new WW2 novel, The Riveter. 

Smoke, mirrors, and the truth, coming right up. And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here, Smoke, Mirrors, and the Truth, Tuesday, right here on the bridge. That means Bruce Anderson, Fred Delorey, they're both in the house and ready to get going. Gentlemen, my opening question is, this is in many ways campaigns, because we're talking about a number of different campaigns here, provincial, federal, leadership races. I don't think I've ever seen so many campaigns that are impacted on a daily basis by somebody who's not even running in any of these campaigns,

not even in the country. It's kind of like Donald Trump becomes issue number one, no matter what comes out of his mouth about Canada. How is that impacting the way the races are being run? Bruce, why don't you start this week? Well, it's enormous, I think, the impact. I don't know if some of the structural things in the race is probably not that much. I mean, there's a certain amount of effort that always goes into things like fundraising and tour and advertising. the biggest megaphone in the world is using it on an hourly basis to disrupt the political conversation, the cultural conversation, to draw the attention of the world's news media, to roil the markets. We've never seen anything like this. I don't think maybe

Brad has experienced something that kind of feels like this, but I've not seen anything like this in the 40 odd years that I've been watching politics. And it doesn't feel to me as though Donald Trump wakes up in the morning and goes, wow, that was too busy a day yesterday. I need to calm things down. I need to kind of get some clear air and stabilize things. It feels like he has exactly the opposite uh instinct and he's surrounded by people who want to give him a free reign uh to pursue that for whatever combination of reasons either they believe

in it or they don't want to get in his way but it is like almost like the you know that pamplona bull run that we all watch every once in a while and it's terrifying and you wonder why people do it? It's like there's all these bulls all charging down this narrow street and the rest of the world is like, holy cow, we didn't sign up for this. So, yeah, political campaigning in this context requires enormous agility. And I'll finish on this point. I think sometimes the adage in campaigns is you've got to stick to your strategy. You've got to stick to your message. You don't want to deviate from it.

You don't want to get distracted by events or what other people are saying. But that isn't this. I don't think it works to pretend that this isn't happening and that you can attract the attention of Canadians or whichever group of voters you're trying to reach and hold their attention despite all of this going on. Fred, in some ways, it's actually playing into your hands, helping run the Doug Ford campaign, is because his campaign is really in many ways against Trump or trying to look like he's against Trump. That was directed at Fred, right? Because I am not involved in the Ford campaign. Yeah, I know.

He clearly did it to me. Well, first of all, I would love to have you, Bruce, if you want to come over. I would love to. I'm not sure if my colleagues would, but we can have that discussion later. Look, it's certainly, Trump is a huge part, and it's why we're actually having a campaign right now.

It's why Doug Ford called an election is because he wants to make sure we have a stable, predictable government in Ontario that can protect Ontario workers. You know, that's why the election was called, you know, when it was. What this will allow Ford to do, he will actually be premier for the entire time of Trump's presidency if he's reelected. So it gives us that stability. So obviously, it made sense to call it now to do this. But there's no question what Trump wants to do is an existential threat to our country. I mean, he's serious. He is dead serious that he wants to make Canada the 51st state.

He's declared economic war on us. And this is a time for strong leadership. And this is a time to pivot to that. You know, Pierre Poliev was running for the last number of years on carbon tax. And people are saying, can he pivot now? Can he do this? I mean, he has to do this. And I think he absolutely can.

Again, I'm a basketball guy. And pivot is a thing you do underneath the net. You get the ball, you hold your foot, you plant it firmly and you move around and you have to change direction. And that's what Polyev has to do right now. As long as his foot is firmly planted with his principles and core values, he'll be able to succeed. And I think that's what we're going to see from him. The liberals on the other side, the federal liberals, they appear to be traveling the way they're going, the way they're completely abandoning their principles and values that they've held for the last decade and now pretending as if they weren't in power for the last 10 years. And they're going to do all the things that they were against for the last decade to try to strengthen Canada.

So I think it's going to be a major, major challenge for the liberals to message through this. And I think it does play into the conservatives' hands where they can be the parties at both federal and provincial level to defend Canada. All right. Let me get to a couple of these things as you slide into the partisan ways fairly quickly. First of all, on Doug Ford, you're right. If he wins and if he plays out the full length of his term,

yes, he would outdo Trump. Now, if he decides to do what he's doing now, which is call an election early, that wouldn't be the case. So we've got to keep in mind, watch what he's actually done to deal with that. But I want to talk about the pivot issue because I think it is really an interesting thing to deal with. And it must be difficult behind the scenes to decide when to pivot, how to pivot, who else is pivoting, and what impact that is having.

Bruce, give me your sense on this pivot issue. How hard is it to do do and how needed is it? Yeah, well, look, not all pivots are the same. And I think the specific case of Pierre Poiliev is a little bit more challenging, perhaps, than if, for example, Aaron O'Toole had been the leader of the Conservative Party coming into this time. And here's why I say that. You know, Mr. Polyev has the challenge of not just pivoting to meet the moment with respect to the threat coming from

Donald Trump. He also has spent a lot of time establishing the idea that it is pure for PM, that it is a very personally oriented campaign, that it is about him, his personal style, his way of connecting and conversing with people. And, you know, so what happens if you're running against somebody who's deeply unpopular, like Justin Trudeau, is that people look like they like your personal style and that they embrace the idea of you as prime minister. And that can feel like political dopamine to a candidate, that they think they're really popular. All of a sudden, when Justin Trudeau leaves the stage,

and there's somebody who's yet to be completely absorbed, understood, observed, like Mark Carney, but who generally comes off as a decent person, a nice person, somebody who's thoughtful, somebody who doesn't spend all of their time kind of, you know, putting acid into the conversation. The evaluations of Pierre Poglia feel different. People are looking at him from the standpoint of what was it I liked about him, because I'm not sure I'm seeing it right now. So that pivot for him personally is, I think, quite a challenge. And he doesn't have that much time potentially on the clock to make that pivot happen. The second thing is, I think he built a very effective party over the last couple of years when it comes to slamming

the liberals, really being a harshly critical political operation. Very successful at it. Those ads were powerful, the slogans, you know, short and punchy. But in terms of the second aspect of the pivot, from my standpoint, people want to hear about the country now. They don't want to hear about the country now. They don't want to hear about politics. And he built a party, the machinery of which, the themes of which, the technology of which is really organized around the idea of having the most effective,

highly political conversation with Canadian voters that you can have. And I think there's a risk that every time he right now, and I'm seeing him do is he's trying to pivot on the issues to talk about the Trump related issues. But he almost can't get two sentences out of his mouth without then reverting back to that. And I need to tell you why the liberals are the scum of the earth. And I think that Canadians kind of hear that differently and sort of go, yeah, you seem to always want to come back to your own interests, your partisan interests, rather than stay on the national interests. And I think the last part of the pivot that's

a challenging one for Pierre-Paul Lievre is that half of his current voters like Donald Trump. I saw a statistic today that said it's 2% of liberal voters. It's a very small part of the non-conservative voter pool in Canada, which is bigger than the number of people who say that they're going to vote conservative right now. So he has to pivot in a way that says, I'm very unhappy with Donald Trump, but I'm not so unhappy that if you love Donald Trump, that you get mad at me. I think that's a very tricky needle to thread. And so not all pivots are the same. And this one is challenging. He's a very skilled politician. We'll see how he does. All right. Fred's been very patient listening to that, the soliloquy from Bruce.

He was enjoying it. let's be honest that's interesting he was nodding off during um but let me just have it coming let me put it this way one let me put it this way i assume the challenge fred for for polyev on the conservative side is you've got to keep your base happy too. And that base has certain feelings about the liberals and how they feel about liberals and certain feelings about Trump. While at the same time, he has to get new voters on side. So he's trying to play both sides on the pivot, which makes that basketball move even harder.

For sure. It's also an immense challenge when you have Trump as the foe who continues to be erratic in his behavior. He keeps changing the tariff timelines and dates and what they'll be and how they'll apply. So that makes it an extra additional challenge that anyone will have to face. But when it comes to Polyev and, you know, the so-called conservative base, the base is huge, but it's fragmented. There's not just one core base of the conservative movement anymore. There's lots of different types of voters that make that up. And there's no question that as a conservative leader,

other conservative leaders have faced this as well. It's an immense challenge to keep the coalition together. When that coalition is united, we generally win elections. And when it's fragmented, we lose. So he is going to have to find the right way to keep it going, to keep it strong. I think he's built up a lot of credibility and a lot of respect amongst Conservatives across the country with how he has campaigned the last number of years, the lead he has had in the polls, the way he basically broke Trudeau where he had to leave on his own because he just ran such an aggressive campaign

against Trudeau for the last number of years. The fundraising numbers are off the charts. They are not just breaking records, they're crushing them. So I think he has a lot of credibility within the movement to do this. I think people will give him a lot of leeway to do what he needs to do to find that right messaging. It's Canada first plan that he's pushing out now.

He does seem to be talking about that and not so much about him. And it's about, you know, putting the country first and making right what has gone wrong over the last 10 years in terms of our economy. You know, let me let me throw something else into the mix here, because it's an interesting campaign tactic, and the way we witnessed it last night. First of all, your old boss, Fred Aaron O'Toole, we actually shared seats together. We were in the same section together at the opening

of the Invictus Games over the weekend. He was there with his wife and his son. And then same thing at the hockey game that night. I've never seen him looking so at ease, calm. I don't think he was missing the political game, at least that night, very much at all. Here's my story. 1968 campaign.

Remember George Heese? Well, you you guys probably too young but george he's was a dieffenbaker cabinet minister freddy often talks with us about george he's we get here's a very popular you remember when i was five and uh very popular guy former toronto argonaut was a world World War II hero the whole bit, a cabinet minister for Diefenbaker, later for Mulroney. 1968, in the midst of Trudeau mania, Trudeau flies into what was then George Heese's riding. He comes in on a helicopter, lands in a kind of park. Who's at the front of the line to meet him?

George Heese. George Heese stands there, puts out his hand and says mr trudeau welcome to uh whatever prince edward the riding whatever it was the riding he was in uh it's great to have you here and who's in all so therefore who's in all the pictures because trudeau was a rock star then and you know in in june of 1968 as trudeau was a rock star then in June of 1968 as Trudeau mania swept parts of the country. And George Heese gets the big picture. But it doesn't always turn out that way. Last night in Winnipeg, I'll be interested to see your thinking on this, both of you. Michelle Rempel-Garner turns up at a Mark Carney rally.

Stands outsized, does a live social media feed, basically dumping on the liberals. Does that work? Is that smart politics? Is that smart campaigning? What do we make of that? Fred, you start this time. Well, it's interesting.

The world has changed so much. I remember in the past, you could have politicians would crash events to try to generate media. But Michelle is her own media force now. She has one of the largest followings in Canada or the largest following in Canada of any politician. So she's her own news network in so many regards. So if she's pushing her message out to that crowd, then it could be very effective. Obviously, I don't know what legacy media covered it or if any, but the game has just changed so much in how we communicate with each other. And this is just in the last five or six years that it's just going at a rapid pace in a different direction than what we're used to.

So in the past, that could maybe not work well because you may not get good coverage of it. But the world is just changing so much in social media and how we communicate. It's kind of a footnote in the story that I read on the legacy media front. But as you say, the world has changed. Bruce? Yeah, I think that what I saw in that is a few things. I mean, first of all, Fred's right that Michelle Rempel-Garner has built a huge sub-stack following. She's got a voice that reaches a lot of people. And I find sometimes she uses it in extremely constructive ways on issues that matter to everybody. And sometimes

she uses it in ways that fit her partisan lens. And that's fine. That's what people do in politics. So while I sometimes quite disagree with what she has to say, I certainly respect the fact that she's built a platform that she can use quite effectively and it reflects the role that technology is playing to fill the gap left by legacy media. And that's not a criticism of legacy media, it's just a statement of there aren't that many people with cable subscriptions or newspaper subscriptions. People who crave information about this will get it where they can. But I don't know about the effectiveness of the technique. I think it depends very much on who's saying the thing that they're saying and what is it that they're saying. And so last night, her version, and I think Melissa Lansman did something like this the other day at another

Carnie event in Toronto. I think she was saying, well, you know, there are people around who don't have enough to eat and people inside here are having a cocktail party. Is that really the, I guess it was a fundraising event. I'm not sure exactly, but is that really the kind of thing that's going to make people go, I can't believe that they did that, or that's such a compelling counter argument? I don't see it that way. And so I think it was a bit of a throwing spaghetti at the wall kind of situation, these events. And the last point for me is, it does feel to me that because of the importance of the Trump and the future of the economy question, that this is probably going to be an election that is going to make his events go badly, or it's just going to draw attention to the fact that he's got successful events. I think it's more the latter

right now. I think people are interested in what Mark Carney has to say. And I think that when conservatives show up and try to borrow the interest that surrounds those events, they're going to need a stronger argument, a more compelling argument than people are having a cocktail party um inside here i think there are two other issues i want to cover before we wrap smt up for this week the first one is the whole issue of foreign aid we've watched in the states in the last week um and leading up to the last week too, the whole issues surrounding USAID and the cutbacks that Elon Musk has introduced, allegedly to try and bring down the deficit numbers. Yesterday we saw an interesting thing from Polyev.

He was in the Arctic. Good for him for doing that. He was in Iqaluit talking about a new Arctic defense policy and where they'd be pouring money into building headquarters and doing things to improve our sovereignty in the Arctic, something that has long been asked for by a lot of different people. But on the other hand, to pay for it it he was saying foreign aid is a target and he would cut back on foreign aid now i i i want your thoughts both of you on this and you know try to do it without the partisan lens because this is not something canada is kind of known for you know cutting back on foreign aid neither the americans for that matter i mean cutting back on foreign aid. Neither do the Americans, for that matter.

I mean, they do tremendous foreign aid work, the Americans. I've witnessed it overseas, and I'm sure you two have at different times as well. But the Canadian angle, certainly happening at the same time as the debate in America, in the United States, about their foreign aid program. What should we make of that? Bruce, you start this one. Yeah.

Look, you know, my own personal kind of values are that I believe that we need to do foreign aid. I believe the United States needs to do foreign aid. I think that it's always possible to find waste and corruption in those kinds of spending programs, and that it's better to try to root that out than not. And I think that the question of foreign aid is first a question of what kind of world do we want to live in, and should we do something to kind of support the aspirations and the needs of people around the world or just look out for ourselves. And the second part of that is, even if you're not so motivated by that compassion and empathy part, there is a security in the world question. If there's too much disparity in the world,

it leads to conflict, it leads to conflict. It leads to wars. It leads to hazards for everybody. So I generally am in favor of that kind of spending. So that's not a partisan thing. It's just more a philosophical or a values-based thing or a public policy idea. You know, I think that Mr. Polyev did what he felt like his voters wanted to hear, which is if you're going to spend money on something, where are you going to find that money? I don't know if the part where he said, I'm going to find the money by dramatically cutting back foreign aid was an attempt to signal to his base, because the use of the word dramatic there is, you know, in my experience as an advisor to politicians, use that word. It's very strategic. You could have said, I'm going to find savings everywhere, including in the waste and corruption

on foreign aid. But to say we're going to dramatically cut it back, I think the risk is that people listen to that and go, is the net effect of that kind of security policy going to be a more secure country? Is that dramatic cut an echo of what Trump is doing? Because that's a big story coming out of the United States. And if it feels like it's an echo of what Trump is doing, or rather an agenda that's aligned with what Trump wants, is that going to serve him well? So I don't know. I watched that very carefully. I found it one of the most interesting days that Pierre Polievitz had in a while.

And I look forward to seeing how it turns out. Fred? So when it comes to foreign aid, Conservatives have been for a number of campaigns talking about cutting at some level. I don't know the exact language. It's a good point Bruce makes about using the word dramatically. I'm not sure if that was in the past, but in the last number of campaigns, it's been there. And I think a lot of it does go back and forth between where conservatives versus liberals think foreign aid money should be spent. You know, famously, the conservatives under Harper created the Office of Religious Freedom, which was a form of foreign aid that they established. It was around the world and the liberals, true liberals, closed it. So they cut foreign aid in that regard. So the big issue is,

I think, is the, you know, the Conservatives are seeing the cupboards are mostly bare. There's 20 to 30 billion dollars more we need to invest in our own military, and we're spending 7 billion on foreign aid. So, and to Bruce's point, it does, I think, play well amongst Polyev's people that, you know, the money should be going in Canada to build up our military presence. So politically,

I could see why he's doing it. And policy-wise, obviously, I agree with Bruce on some points. We do need foreign aid at some level. We do need to be contributing to the world and making sure it's a safe place

for all of humanity. So there will be a balance, I assume, there at some sort. But again, I don't know what dramatically may mean there. That is an interesting point. All right. Last point. We kind of touched on this last week, but it is the question of the week for our Your Turn program on Thursday this week, where Canadians from coast to coast to coast are writing in already, and I've got lots of letters already, about what do they think when they see a poll? What is it that, in effect, triggers them when they see a poll? Do they get upset? Do they get mad? Do they ignore it?

Do they take it into account about how they're going to vote? All the different possibilities that are there, and people are writing about that. mad do they ignore it uh do they take it into account about how they're going to vote all the different possibilities that are there and people are writing about that so let me just close out on on this brief one to you on polls is there anything you're seeing in the polls right now i mean there's clearly you know some tightening up going on in terms of the federal scene um there looks like a little tightening up going on in the Ontario scene, but not much. What's there when you're looking at it?

You guys look at things differently than the general public and the media looks at. What are you seeing that's of interest at this point? Fred, you start, and we've only got a moment or so here. Yeah, I think it makes sense to see the Liberals creeping up in the polls. Justin Trudeau was the most unpopular prime minister in history. They couldn't go below that. So it makes perfect sense to see an uptick there. And I think Conservatives will always expect that it would tighten up, particularly when that election actually happens. People will be really tuning into it at that point where they're not so much now.

And that will lead to a tightening as well. So I think it's kind of what's been expected. Of course, we'll see what the, you know, if any of it's real when it comes to voting day. But I've mentioned this before, you know, Mark Carney's numbers, you know, everyone seems to be thinking he's going to be leader. It'll be interesting to see if he can get his numbers as high as John Turner and Kim Campbell got their numbers up to. OK, Bruce, I should mention, I mentioned that Fred is working with Doug Ford. And just a reminder that Bruce has been working with Mark Carney on the liberal leadership race. Bruce. I love that Fred thinks that's a subtle shot. Look, am I going to take the bait and say, I think Brian Mulroney was better liked than

Pierre Polyev. And I think Mark Carney and Kim Campbell are two different people. No, I'm not going to address that issue. But here's what I think when I see polls. And I also I noted with interest that Fred used the word creeping to describe the movement that we've seen in the polls. And that's a very cautious and conservative way to describe what seems to be happening. Look, what I'm looking at is the impact of the Trump and Canada-U.S. issues on the mood of the country. What people are looking for as a result, it has almost nothing to do with a classic political race in Canada. Almost everything that was animating swing voters, at least in Canada, up until Mr. Trump was inaugurated, doesn't really matter right now.

People are worried and they want to know who's got the right ideas, who's got the leadership skills to help us. And if it was just an artifact of Mr. Trudeau leaving, I don't think that we would see as much movement as we have been seeing in the last little while. And I say that in part because we also see that as more people get to know Mark Carney, his favorables are going up and they're going up across the country. They're going up in Quebec, they're going up in Ontario and B.C., and they're going up in other parts of the country as well. So something is going on there where people are hearing a new person in politics saying things that they think are important for the moment. Okay, we're going to leave it at that. A reminder that there are other parties in the Ontario provincial election campaign and there are other candidates in the Liberal leadership campaign as well.

But getting the thoughts from you two guys on the various issues today has been great. So we'll look forward to talking to you again in the weeks following as we lead up to results in both these areas. Thanks again. Thanks, guys. And welcome back. Peter Mansbridge here again. This is segment two of The Bridge for this Tuesday. And you're listening on Sirius XM, channel 167, Canada Talks, or on your favorite podcast platform. Okay, very much a different topic for segment two today

from what we were just talking about with the Smoke, Mirrors and the Truth Gang. Those of you who have listened to me over the years, whether it's here on the podcast or in my past on television, know that I've always been fascinated by Canadian military history. And that could be any number of different things. You've watched me cover various anniversaries of major battles, major situations, especially in the First and Second World Wars. You've heard me talk to authors who've written books

about Canada's military history. And I'm going to do that again today, although it's a little different than usual. Instead of dealing with Canada's history from a non-fiction point of view, this is actually fiction. But it is a great learning lesson at the same time. The author is Jack Wang, an established Canadian author, originally from Vancouver. He's now teaching in the United States, actually. But Jack Wang has a book here called The Riveter, and it comes out today in bookstores across the country. And not just across this country.

I'm going to talk to him here in the next moment and go through it, but I want you to I really enjoyed this book. I want you to understand that it will tell you things about Canada that you may not have realized or may not have known through a fictional work, but inspired by a real story of a Canadian who fought in the Second World War. So enough from me. Let's get to Jack Wang and our conversation.

Here it is. Jack, I don't like to give away the story, so we're not going to sort of go piece by piece through the novel, which I'm sure will be a great relief to you. It's hard to sell a book when it's already known. But I want you to know that I thoroughly enjoyed it. I advise potential readers that there are lots of surprises in here, so you don't get bored. It keeps going right through to the end.

Thank you. But let's start at the beginning in some ways. Tell me about Richard Marr. Who was Richard Marr, and how did he inspire you to do this novel? Yeah, that's a great place to start. I want to begin by acknowledging a book called The Dragon and the Maple Leaf by Marjorie Wong. It's quite an actually exhaustive kind of compendium of Chinese Canadians who served in the First and Second World War. Because she tries to give credit to everyone who served, there's only brief passages about everyone. And so at

some point, and I can't remember exactly when, because this novel has lived with me for so long, I came across a couple of passages, short passages about Richard Marr. He's from British Columbia. And it said he served in the 1st Canadian Parachute Battalion and in fact was the only Chinese Canadian to serve in the 1st Canadian Parachute Battalion. It mentioned that he served in Fort Benning, Georgia, because Canada did not at the time have a jump school or parachute training school yet. It said that he served in the Ardennes Offensive and was part of the Rheindrop into Germany

in the final campaign of the war, all of which fascinated me, the idea that there was one Chinese Canadian among many, mind you, who served Canada, hundreds who served during the Second World War, but one person in this famed airborne military unit, and that just seemed like a story worth telling. When you say this story has lived with you for a long time,

what do you mean by that? Tell us about that. Sure. You know, I don't remember now exactly when I first learned about the exploits of Chinese Canadians during the Second World War. Sometime in my adulthood, it's not the kind of thing I learned about in high school of Chinese Canadians during the Second World War. Sometime in my adulthood, it's not the kind of thing I learned about in high school. I grew up in Vancouver. I went to the University of Toronto as an undergraduate, also not something I learned about. But at some point, I came across documentaries and books that talked about the service of Chinese Canadians. And I knew that I wanted to write about this subject. But I was also working on another book of short stories, which turned out to be my first book. But I started working on this novel 10 years ago when I was on fellowship was called The Riveters because there were so many interesting storylines and exploits of Chinese Canadians.

I wanted to go to every theater of war, you know, and try to encompass all of it. But at some point, I realized, no, this was the story that was going to be at the heart of the novel. I think many Canadians, if not most Canadians, if not all Canadians, who aren't of a Chinese-Canadian background, probably are unaware of the conditions that were placed on a Chinese-Canadian who wanted to fight for Canada, wanted to go to war. Right. And that's clearly an important part of this book. But tell me about that condition or those conditions. Sure.

You know, the situation of Chinese Canadians and their ability to join the military is, of course, part of the broader conditions of Chinese Canadians 100 years ago or nearly 100 years ago. And I think we sometimes forget how abject those conditions were. You know, by 1942, the Chinese Immigration Act, otherwise known as the Chinese Exclusion Act, had barred Chinese from entering the country for nearly 20 years. If you were Chinese Canadian, you couldn't join any profession. You couldn't be a teacher or a pharmacist, doctor. You didn't have full citizenship rights. You didn't have the franchise. And the very beginning of the Second World War, some Chinese Canadians were admitted. But when Victoria and Ottawa realized, hey, this might give them leverage, you know, to argue for full citizenship rights, to get the franchise. And especially in British Columbia, where most

Chinese Canadians lived, the government was worried about the impact of suddenly granting the franchise to thousands of people. You know, when there was that realization, Chinese Canadians were barred from the military. Despite this, many of them wanted to serve, wanted to serve their country, prove their loyalty. And it was only later on in the war, slowly, first the Air Force, then the Navy, and finally the Army in 1944. Only then were Chinese Canadians admitted to the military. But, you know, throughout that

time, some slipped through, some managed to work their way into the military. Josiah Chang, my main character, is one of those people. This story is not just a war story, it's a love story. I'm not going to say any more than that because I don't want to give any more than that away on that angle. But on the war story, the main character goes to war uh he's at you know many of the central points of of canada's involvement in the second world war um as a paratrooper i mean landed on dda went through you know i did france belgium netherlands um right he did the whole bit he saw a lot uh he lost a lot of friends.

How did you do the research for that? I mean, you obviously did a lot of research. I mean, I know that story fairly well from the general way. And you've got it and more. There's so much to learn just reading this. Well, thank you. Thank you for saying that. You know, I feel like, you know, it's true that a lot of Canadians may not know the exploits of Chinese Canadians, but I think many Canadians also don't know the exploits of the 1st Canadian Parachute Battalion. I think that's a story that is also worth telling. I like to say that a lot of folks know about Easy Company through Band of Brothers.

Canada had its own Easy Company. And I think that that ought to be recognized. And so I did do, of course, a lot of research. Naturally had to read a lot of books. But there were many forms of research. Sometimes it was archival. Sometimes it was going to war museums. Other times it was, for example, looking at old newsletters from the shipyards in Vancouver to understand what shipyard life was like.

The reason the novel is called A Riveter is because before Josiah Chang is admitted to the army, he doesn't have any way to serve his country except through a wartime industry like shipbuilding. So he goes to work as a riveter in a shipyard. I also did firsthand research. I went to Fort Benning, Georgia, for example. My in-laws happened to live, you know, in the Panhandle, Florida. So I went down to Fort, I went up to Fort Benning, I should say. And from there, and I saw the jump towers, I saw American paratroopers coming down mock towers. And I've also lived in a lot of the places where the novel is set, places like Vancouver, Toronto, England, for example.

So all of that went into, well, of course, all of that research was blended with imagination and went into the telling of this story. I love that quote that you often talk about, you know, about writing fiction. The task of historical fiction is to take the past out of the archives and relocate it in a body. As a great quote, and it's what you've done here. Well, thank you. Yeah, that's Hilary Mantel, of course, who wrote

pretty well-known historical fiction of her own. And, you know, one of the challenges of research is that there's so much interesting material that sometimes you want to use it all, but sometimes research can just be information unless you dramatize it. A lot of history that you read is at bird's eye view. You know, it's taking sort of the panoramic or retrospective view of history, but you're trying to bring that bird's eye view down to eye level to the experience of the individual, who often, of course, doesn't have the luxury of knowing what will happen, right, as we do. And so you have to recreate that limited point of view and experience of the world. And I tried very hard to, you know, to recreate the experience of war in a visceral way through a single, you know, through a single body, the point of view of

Josiah Chang. I want to ask you about the challenges of writing this book. You talked about it sort of being with you for 10 years. You've been working on it for 10 years. You know, I've been lucky enough to write a number of nonfiction books. And I've wanted to do fiction in a Second World War story. And I thought, this is going to be easy. I've spent a life in journalism. You know, I was forced to get the facts right all the time in everything I wrote, and that was the case with these other four books that I've written.

So when I sat down to start writing fiction, I thought, okay, this is not going to be hard. It's really hard. It's harder. It's much harder. Tell me about your 10-year struggle to finish The Riveter. Yeah, so, you know, part of it is, as I think I mentioned, it was originally called The Riveters, and there was just too much interestingness in the material that I was reading,

you know, and I wanted to try to capture it all. And then you realize that when you write a novel, you have to operate by synecdoche. The part has to represent the whole. You cannot just try to capture the entire whole of the Second World War or Chinese Canadians who served. It's just too much for any one book. And you have to, you know, again, take the part that's going to represent everything else. So for example, Richard Maher, he didn't, in fact, according to the record, jump on D-Day. But his experience becomes an amalgam of, you know, many people's service because other people did in fact serve, of Chinese descent, did in fact serve in the Normandy campaign. And so he becomes a kind of amalgam. And there's a Canadian literary critic named Delinda Hutchin, who talks about this kind of fiction that she describes as historiographic metafiction. And she says it gives you the double pleasure of the fictive and the real. So on the one hand, you get a pretty good count of the first Canadian Parachute Battalion if you read the Riveter.

But of course, it's also a work of fiction, right? A work of imagination. You can take some liberties. You can, you know, keep the plot going when maybe in real life it wasn't always so action packed. But the important thing is that you have to focus on the drama and not just all the facts because the facts are endless. But you've got to focus on the drama and you've got to focus on the drama and not just all the facts, because the facts are endless, but you've got to focus on the drama and you've got to focus on character. I think I've succeeded in not giving away the story here.

Right. But at least we've painted the picture for those who are in any way fascinated by our history, our Canadian history, and especially our Canadian military history. Because this captures an element of the Second World War, and it captures this incredible love story. But let me ask you this as a last question. What are you hoping you leave the reader with here? Yeah, I hope people come to appreciate the courage and the sacrifice of Chinese Canadians during the Second World War.

You know, there was a tension within the Chinese community, Chinese Canadian community at the time. Do we serve and prove our loyalty and, you know, use this as leverage for full citizenship rights? Or, you know, should we not serve because this country has treated us as second class citizens? There was this tension within the community, but so many hundreds, the estimate is, you know, around 500 to 600, possibly more Chinese Canadians served. And I think on the one hand, I want people to appreciate the courage and the sacrifice of people who paved the ways for the rights that not only I enjoy, but we all enjoy because they fought for liberty for all of us. On the other hand, I want people to also appreciate that people who don't have full status, that's not a situation

that has gone away. Either in Canada or the United States where I live or elsewhere, there are lots of people who don't have full status that continue to struggle with courage and sacrifice for their full humanity, you know, and for their full standing in a society. So on the one hand, it's a look at the past, but that look at the past should hopefully also help us understand the present and the future. Jack Wang, we're going to leave it with that. Um, but we're also going to leave it with, with wishing you great luck on, uh,

on the book. Hopefully, uh, it will do really well. Cause it's certainly worth it. Thank you. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. That's Jack Wang. And the name of the book is the Riveter. And as I said, it comes out today. So if you're interested, you'll find it in a bookstore near you. You know, I wouldn't send you wrong. If you've picked up any of the books that I've talked about on this program in the past,

especially Canadian military books, then this is one you'll enjoy. Although it comes from, as you just heard, a different kind of perspective in the sense it's not non-fiction. It's fiction, but a lot of it based on fact. Okay? I think you'll well, I leave it to you to decide. The Riveter by Jack Wang. That's going to wrap it up for this day. I'm Peter Mansbridge. Thanks so much for listening.

Tomorrow, Wednesday, it will be our encore edition of the week. Then on Thursday, it's your turn. You heard the question outlined to you yesterday. It's about polls. What do you think about when you hear a new poll? What goes through your mind? All right. I want your sense of that one. you think about when you hear a new poll? What goes through your mind? Alright. I want your sense of that one.

Have your answers in by 6pm Eastern time tomorrow. Keep them short. Paragraph is the optimum length. And include your name and the location you're writing from. And you can send it all to the

mansbridgepodcast at gmail.com themansbridgepodcast at gmail.com. themansbridgepodcast at gmail.com. Hope to hear from you in the next, well, the next 24 hours. We'll talk again on Thursday for your turn. And then, of course, Friday is Good Talk with Chantelle, a bear and Rob Russo. Thanks for listening today. Talk to you again tomorrow.