The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Welcome To Week 35 -- Vaccines And Books (one in particular!)

Episode Date: November 9, 2020

Good news on the vaccine front, and exciting news on the book front -- enjoy!

and hello there peter mansbridge here with the latest episode of the bridge daily it's week 35 can you believe it 35 weeks since we started going daily, mainly with the COVID story 35 weeks ago. Just thinking 17 weeks will have been a year. A year. That sounds wild. Anyway, today, as promised, we're going to deal a little bit with the new book. The new book that comes out tomorrow, Extraordinary Canadians by my friend Mark Bulgich and myself. Mark's going to join us from beautiful downtown North York, suburb of Toronto. I think we're allowed to say that. I'm not sure. We'll find out.

I'm in Stratford, but we're going to be joined first of all by Bruce Anderson, who is in Stratford, the co-host of the Race Next Door, the podcast within a podcast. But today he's not talking about the Race Next Door. He's talking about vaccines and about vaccines and how Canadians are reacting to the thought we could be near a vaccine. And that's the big story of the day today is the announcement by Pfizer that they are close. They are close to the potential release of a vaccine. The testing that they've done on it so far,

and they're in phase three, is very promising. They're looking at a 90% efficacy rate, which is great news. But I want you to keep in mind, don't get your arms ready. This is not something you'll be about to get tomorrow, whether you're getting it in the arm or you have to bend over for it or whatever you have to do. It's not imminent.

There's still more testing to do, and there are more studies to do peer reviews to do but it could be close and of course you know given the timing of this who's not happy hey they held it back they could have said this last week it would have helped me i'll let you guess who that might have been. But it's being announced today, Monday of a new week on week 35. We'll see where it goes. But one issue is getting a successful vaccine. The second issue is mass producing at a level that it's going to be needed, not just for the U.S., not just for North America, but for the world. That's a challenge.

And then thirdly, and not the least significant, is will people take it? And that's what Bruce is going to talk about today, because there's been much debate about vaccines, as there have been for some time. The anti-vaxxers group is not insignificant in size, but it goes beyond the anti-vaxxers, the traditional who don't want to take vaccines. There's a trust factor here and a big trust factor.

So the issue becomes, will Canadians, in this case, take a vaccine when it is ready? And that's what Bruce has been studying with his firm Abacostata, and they've been crunching numbers, and he's got some results today. So, Bruce, what can you tell us? Well, Peter, obviously, one of the things that people are looking for with the vaccine is the opportunity to solve a health problem. But in a way, even more people, I think, are saying, solve this economic problem, solve my mental health pressures. And a vaccine, at least the announcement of the potential for a vaccine in the not-too-distant future, I think is already having an effect on the economy. We see stock markets obviously responding to it. That's not a surprise. But probably also,

it's creating a sense of optimism on the part of Canadians not that we're going to be through this imminently or immediately but that you can see the other side of it and you made a couple of important points I think about this vaccine needing more evidence still before it can be approved for use. And the idea that people should try to hold patience in their minds as they think about this. But I think also it's fair to say that those who are studying the other vaccines that are in trials right now are also looking at the Pfizer product and saying the nature of it and the successful results to date give you hope that some of the other vaccines that are in trials could work too. So let's assume that there is a vaccine that's approved for use that's deemed safe by Canadian authorities, because it will be

Canadian authorities that influence whether Canadians decide that they want to go to their doctor, to their pharmacy, or wherever they would go to get access to that vaccine, would they take it is the question that we asked first. And what we found is one in three people say, I want it as fast as I can get it. Another 42% say, I'd like to see some other people try it before I get it, but my plan is to get it as quickly as I can be convinced that these other people are not putting themselves at harm. And then there are two other groups. There's 14% who say, I don't like the idea. I don't think I really want this vaccine, but I could be convinced. I could be persuaded. And then there's 11% who say, under no circumstances,

am I going to let anybody put this stuff inside my body? Now, these are kind of theoretical. And we know that one of the things that happens is that when a vaccine becomes available, especially in a situation like this, which isn't the same as saying, should you get a measles vaccine, a problem that that an issue that has been known for decades and where people might believe that the level of risk is relatively modest everybody can see the risk of covet around them if not the health risk they can see the economic pain they can see the social disruption that it's causing. They can see the mental health stresses. They can see the businesses that are talking about going bankrupt. They can see the fact that governments are having to talk about a bailout of the airline sector again today.

All of those things will compress upon these numbers in a direction over the course of the weeks if this vaccine continues to prove itself out. And that will make people more inclined, I think, to take it. At the same time, we do know that every action has a reaction in political circles these days. And the tendency to doubt whether or not you can trust a vaccine is something that we wanted to look at as well. And so what we did was ask people, what would make them more likely to take a vaccine if they were resistant to the idea to begin with? And we gave them two choices. Basically, we said, is it evidence that nobody is being harmed who took the vaccine, or is it evidence that the infection rates are coming down? And what we found is that those people who are hesitant, their issue really is, I don't want to harm myself. I want to be really convinced that nobody is having side effects that might be a problem for me. So that's

an important cue for politicians and regulators and others who will want to encourage uptake of a safe vaccine. And the other thing that we found, the last thing I'll say about it, and people can find our release on our website, advocacydata.ca, and peruse the more detail if they want, is that there's a certain number of people who say, I want the vaccine to protect my own health. There's a certain number who say, I want it to protect the health of the people that I love. But the number one reason, faster to normal. We want to get back to normal. And we want to do it safely, but we north, like in Canada, as we contemplate a winter where our room to maneuver is constrained, our businesses feel different kinds of pressures, that appetite for faster to normal is going to be even greater. And generally, Canadians saying we're not against this idea. There will be some resistance that we can see in our data where it comes from. But on the whole, people saying, make me feel confident that it's safe. And I'm going to line up for that shot. Thanks for doing that, Bruce. That gives us a big overview of attitudes at this moment in terms of vaccines.

I found that last point that you made in terms of the desire to return to normal, I guess in some ways the least surprising, but in some ways also the one that can have quite an impact on people's feelings. And I mention that because, as you mentioned earlier, this announcement today had a big impact on the stock market before the market even opened. Sort of the before market numbers were way up.

Dow Jones was up like 1,600, 1,700 points before it opened. And it opened and it opened high and it sort of pulled back somewhat. So with most stocks going up. But which stock didn't go up? Which stock kind of went down quite a bit um and it all relates to that issue of getting back to normal the stock that has done really well during covid is netflix it went up it went up a lot and has gone up a lot over the last 35 weeks. I think it's more than doubled.

Like, it's huge. Today, on the news that there could be a vaccine, which means I'm back to normal. I'm not going to be sitting at home every night watching whatever's on Netflix or one of the other streaming channels. It went down 45 bucks, like like in the boom, right away. Now, it too has settled down somewhat. But in this whole issue about normalcy,

you can see in the market and you can see in other places where that line on normalcy is. You know, what was normal for the last 35 weeks, what may not be normal as we move forward into a world that has more protection through vaccines but anyway that's neither here nor there but yeah I think that's interesting Peter I'm gonna jump off and let you get to the main topic but I also did notice that you know people on social media were as they tend to they were jumping on and zoom crashed as well. And then a little closer, maybe somebody take a couple more seconds.

Yeah. It dropped down to last Wednesday's level. So that's exactly a complete indication that we're going to do everything back the way that we used to. And frankly, I think we're still going to do the kind of thing that we're doing the way that we're doing it, which has never occurred to us before. Yeah, exactly. All right.

Listen, Bruce, thanks very much. I know we'll be talking to you later in the week on other issues, but it was great for you to bring us up to speed on that one. So take care. You bet, Peter. Take care. All right. So now we're going to switch topics to what I've promised for the last few days. The book, I know this is kind of, you know,

like pumping your own product here a little bit, but hey, a lot of you have been asking me about it. And the book, Extraordinary Canadians, which I've talked to you often about over the last year, finally reaches bookshelves tomorrow. And it will be in, you know, bookshelves right across the country. And apparently it's already doing well even before it's on the bookshelves so that's good to know

but uh written with my longtime friend and colleague mark bulgich who joins us as i said from uh beautiful downtown north york which is north of york which is north of toronto which is north of York, which is north of Toronto, which is like sort of Toronto. Well, we're in Toronto now. I mean, we amalgamated a few years back, you may recall, and New York, New York is now part of the city of Toronto. But you still pride yourselves in saying you're in North York. Yes, indeed. Okay.

All right. So Mark and I were approached by Simon & Schuster to do this book a little more than a year, well about a year and a half ago and we loved the idea that Simon & Schuster had and so we've worked at it while we're doing all our other things. Mark and I both worked at the CBC for years

we're both retired from the CBC now Mark teaches at Ryerson University, teaches journalism he's also written a few other books but on this one we worked together at Ryerson University, teaches journalism. He's also written a few other books. But on this one, we worked together on it, and it was great. So let's talk a little bit about the book so people have some idea. So as soon as this podcast ends,

we know they're going to jump online and order the book. Okay. When people come up to you, Mark, and say Extraordinary Canadians, what's that book about? What do you say? I go back a bit and I tell them the genesis of the book

which started, you'll recall, as a book about Canadian heroes. That's the word we first had in our heads. And we bantered about what exactly is a hero? And the image, I think, that came into our heads was of somebody racing into a burning building and saving a baby. And that's clearly a hero. And we thought of war heroes. And then I think we moved off that a little bit to talk more about people in this country who we knew existed,

who don't have their horns blown very often. I mean, both of us have traveled this country and been rewarded by traveling this country. And we knew that out there, there were these people doing terrific things who nobody knew about. I mean, they may have been known about in their own neighborhood,

sometimes in their own province, but the country as a whole didn't know them. And we thought if we could just tell their stories, we would have a compelling book and maybe even an inspirational book. And, you know, in my view, and obviously a biased view, I think we've done that. I think we're about to introduce Canada to a bunch of people who live in their backyards who have done extraordinary things, and yet, as a whole, we've never heard of them. I think, you know, you've captured it exactly. And the way to underline that point as well

is the most surprised people, when we started talking to them, were the people themselves. Like, they're going like, why are you calling me? Like, just an i'm just a you know i'm just a guy or a gal who does this thing i'm not there's nothing extraordinary about me and we're going actually you know you are extraordinary and you you say something about us as a people and about us as a country by understanding your story. And so, you know, that's how we went at it when we determined the people we wanted to talk to.

We sort of called them out of the blue and, you know, away we went. And the process, we should talk a little bit about the process, because it's, the other idea was to do these stories in their voice, not in our voice, not in Peter Mansbridge's voice, not in Mark Bulgich's voice, but to allow them to tell their own story, but we wrote it, right, so we, to do that, we had to talk to them but he did tell me a little bit about the process at least the way you went through it yeah that's exactly right i mean i i had that same first reaction that you did from everybody i don't think anybody said well of course you're calling me i am an extraordinary that just never happened um it was you you know, you sure you want me?

Because really, my story isn't that terrific. You know, I've done these little things here and there. And I said, no, you know, I've never really managed to put a statue on Parliament Hill. That sounds pretty extraordinary to me. You know, I'm talking there about Francis Wright, who did that. No, I don't have an engineering school named after me, Gina Cody. No, I'm not a rock star who does concerts to high schools across the country and prevents kids from committing suicide.

No, that's not me either. So after we got through the original hurdle of persuading them they were extraordinary, it was a pleasure, really, to talk to them. I learned a lot, and I'm sure you learned a lot as well, because I knew a couple of these people only by reputation. Some I knew not a thing about. I did some research, and I thought, wow, that's not bad. But we agreed before we started, me and you, that it wasn't enough. We couldn't write a book by just listing accomplishments of people and say, they did this, they did that, they did this, they did that. Isn't that extraordinary? That wasn't going to be

very compelling reading. We realized that they had to have a story to tell. And again, these people were pretty modest and getting them to tell their story, the backstory of how they accomplished something. That was really, I think, the goal in the story. What I just said is a very know, Gina Cody, an engineer who came originally from Iran, a woman, imagine going through engineering school. I mean, I know what engineers were like when I went to school. These macho types, you know, staring in things and these crude chants at football games. That was engineers. And she went through an engineering school back then, 1970s and early 80s. And now, you know, they named the engineering school at Concordia after her. Okay, so that's the capsule story. But that's

not the story of Gina Cody. The story is the gold, as I say. It's telling about her life in Iran, just, you know, and she came to Canada just when the Ayatollah took over, right? Kind of forced out of Iran, as it were. And she was left very reluctantly because she wanted to stay and see what would happen in her country. And yet she comes to Canada and then has that uphill battle. And the amazing thing, again, she came to Canada, assuming she was going to engineering school at McGill University. She was accepted at McGill. Everything was all set. She came on Labor Day weekend. So obviously just before school was going to start.

And her brother was already in Canada. He had gone to Concordia with the other major university, English Montreal University. And he said, well, you know, I talked to you about you to one of my professors, a guy named Cedric Marsh, and he wants to meet you. And she walks down the hall and says, okay, and this is like Labor Day weekend. She's about to register at McGill. And this guy, Cedric Marsh says, you know, you ought to come to Concordia. You're a really interesting person. And he says, well, okay, I guess. And he marches her down to the registrar's office and says,

get her signed up for Concordia and send her off to Immigration Canada to get her papers so she can actually come here because she's supposed to go to McGill. And all this is done like in 24 hours. So her whole life changes in these 24 hours. So it's just such a great story. And then she goes to school. She's a TA. She teaches others. She meets her husband at Concordia. Are you going to leave anything for the reader here? You're going to tell the whole story. We're trying to sell books, Mark. We're not trying to give them away before they have a chance. I know, but it's nice talking about these people because they have great stories. I just want to illustrate there's more to their stories than just their accomplishments.

Exactly. And the beauty of this book is we profile 17 people, or we should say they profile themselves, 17 of them, and their stories through lives that go up and down and they meet certain challenges. Gina's challenges are very different than the challenges you'll see in other segments, other chapters of the book. And the beauty of it is the 17 people represent all kind of corners of this country,

different genders, different backgrounds, different professions, different challenges. They're all very different. And yet at the end of the day, I mean, like, you know, I'm not going to go through the kind of detail Mark just went through. But, you know, there's one, most of the people, as Mark says, you will have never heard of. There's a couple that you may have heard of or you've probably seen before,

even if you haven't recalled the name. The very first chapter is about Cindy Blackstock, who you may remember occasionally seeing in news coverage from Ottawa because she's a well-known activist for Indigenous issues, and she pops up in the middle of news stories every once in a while, you know, attacking the government for being too slow on what have you. When I decided I wanted to talk to her it was because i wanted to understand what like where does that come from like what's her life how did

she sort of begin her life in such a fashion that would attract her to these kind of issues and her story just you know in the first five years of her life, her mother was non-Indigenous, her father was Indigenous, and she found herself being treated so differently depending on which parent she would go into public with. I mean, she was together with her parents, it was one thing, but when she went out with her mother, she was treated very differently than when she went out with her father.

And it was that kind of issue and treatment and challenge that she had to meet as a very young kid and realized as she took progress through her life how important this was going to be in the work she was going to end up doing. Now, there are other moments in her life, just like there are other moments in Gina Cody's life. But in this book, those 17 people take you through the challenges they faced and usually succeeded in dealing with. And what I find, Mark, that is quite you know, quite true about this book, it does leave you inspired. It does leave you feeling, you know, really good about these people and good about

their situations and the differences they've made to us as a country. But at the same time, it leaves you realizing that as great as we are as a country and we are great and we're the envy of most of the world um but they do point out issues we still have that we are still facing um the indigenous non-indigenous issue is just one of them. But this parade of profiles through this book, this parade of characters, this parade of extraordinary Canadians, as I said at the beginning of this conversation,

tells you something about yourself as a Canadian and tells you something about the you know, the country in which you live. And I think a lot of that, and I'd like your thoughts on this, Mark. A lot of that was not what we intended when we kind of started this project. Because when we started this project, we had no idea that there was a pandemic coming. We had no idea that, you know, there was probably going to be a desire on the part of many Canadians to feel good at a time where that we're feeling so,

or finding things so difficult that there are, there are always reasons to feel good. And in this book, there's 17 of them. One of whom we had to add it kind of at the last minute we had, as I said, when this book, there's 17 of them. Uh, one of whom we had to add it kind of at the last minute we had, as I said, when we started, there was no pandemic, there was no hint of a pandemic. We didn't really even know what a pandemic was and the kind of scale that we're facing right now. Um, but as we progressed through the book and we got near to the end of the book in terms of the writing of it, we suddenly realized it was March and things were happening on the pandemic front, and we needed something on that.

And that's when we found, you found, Mark, Moses Lee, who is a nurse in Vancouver with a great story to tell, not just about the pandemic, but about his life and his career and his marriage. You know, but I think that's, in some ways, this book helps in the attempt of trying to get over the difficulties of this year and recognize that there are some extraordinary people out there who do extraordinary things for all of our benefits.

Yeah, I mean, I've heard you, Peter, I know you've done thousands of interviews in a long and storied career. And I've heard you go off and say that when people ask you, you know, who is the most interesting person you've ever talked to, or what interviews you like to do, and your consistent answer is, well, it's not the prime ministers or the presidents, it's the ordinary people you've managed to talk to. And I think this book brings truth to that. I think what people will find is that we haven't talked to prime ministers and famous people that that extraordinary

canadians are actually ordinary in so many ways they they completely were ordinary canadians like just like they are and i am it's these people were not born to riches. Most of them are not rich now. They are born absolutely ordinarily, and they did something extraordinary. And that's, you know, so I think if someone was going to find inspiration in their story, that it is inspiring to say that you live in the same country as these people. But it's also inspiring because it says you don't have to be born to extraordinariness. I mean, I think of someone like Janice Eisenhower, who founded a charity called Canadian Women for Women in Afghanistan. She had no experience starting charities.

Just started out of a university course she was taking that had an assignment to kind of do a theoretical thing that might help people somewhere. And from that, she ends up with a multimillion-dollar charity. She has no background in this, zero. And look what she's done. It is extraordinary. You think of Bill Campbell. You know, he's a guy in Prince Edward Island. You know, Prince Edward Island.

They have like seven people in the whole province, right? And he— Oh, great. That's going to really fly well. He's a small problem. He calls it—it's a small town, Prince Edward Island. Right. Everybody knows everybody. And here's a guy who went off to be a priest originally and kind of realizes after a year that two things are going to work against this. One, the vow of silence. He's a talker. He cannot be quiet. And the celibacy business, he wasn't going to be very good with that either. And he comes back to Prince Everett Island with nothing. He's going to be a priest, poverty, all that. And he starts building up a housing development, so for a low cost housing development and now micro loans to people who need these things. So I think what is inspiring more than just, well, don't we live

in a great country? And I obviously agree we do. But part of what makes this a great country is that absolutely average people somehow rise to help other people. They just come out of nowhere. Circumstances, you know, circumstances do part of that. I mean, Pat Danforth, who, you know, became... You really are going to tell every story. No, I'm not going to tell every story. But there's a woman who is an advocate for the disabled, and she is disabled, but the way she became disabled,

I won't give it away, that changed her life, obviously, and she didn't just kind of moan about it. Look what she's done. That's the thing. It's what you have always said, that average and ordinary Canadians have the best stories to tell. And I think we've proved it here. the most famous people in the world some of them who i've been lucky enough to sit down across from or whether they're in politics or leadership or religion or sports or entertainment i've had all those opportunities and you know and i wouldn't uh have walked away from any of them maybe margaret thatcher but we won't get into that but um But they're kind of predictable in a way

because they've been interviewed so many times before. The ordinary people, like most of these people in this book, have never been interviewed before. No idea, no concept of what it was like to be interviewed. And so there's no spin, there's no nothing. They tell their story. And we can benefit from it all some of them are a little better known you know like i talked to matt devlin who's the you know if you follow

basketball in canada um he was the commentator for the raptors uh through their championship year last year and still is now but his story and what it led to i found extraordinary especially as a former uh well as still a broadcaster so when i looked at something specific that he did that we talk about in this book i asked myself what could i have done that could i have handled it the way he did? Because what he did, I believe, saved lives, and many lives as a result of what he did. You know, we tell the story of, and I think it's being excerpted this week in the Globe and Mail,

you know, in conjunction with the release of the book. A good major chunk of it is the story of a JTF-2 commando, an elite member of Canada's super-secret commando force on a mission in Afghanistan. And you won't find this anywhere else because these kind of stories haven't been told before. And it's very revealing about some of the things we as a country were doing that most Canadians had no idea of.

But, you know, this guy, he's just a guy, but he is an elite commando. You read this story about what happened on this particular mission and why this mission happened, it's quite gripping. But that's what I mean when I say, and Mark says, that these characters are all very different, but they have a common thread, and that common thread is that they're courageous, they're resilient, they're determined,

whether it's in fighting a disease or fighting a handicap or fighting the enemy, whatever the case may be. They are extraordinary in the way they've conducted themselves. And I guess that's what we're trying to get across in this book. And we've really thoroughly enjoyed doing it. And now... Yeah, I should say, Peter, before you go off without mentioning, the JTF2 character,

and it is a compelling and gripping story. And when you say you see it anywhere else, I mean, I know both of us, when we were at the CBC, tried for years to get the JTF2, the secret commandos that the Canadian military has that never look for publicity, to try to get them out in the public a little bit, to show a little bit of what they could do. We tried banging our heads against the wall trying to get them to cooperate for years and years and years. Because other countries had these things.

Everyone knows about the Navy SEALs in the United States or SAS in Great Britain. And nobody's ever, you know the navy seals in the united states or sas in great britain and nobody's ever you know go up in the street there and ask what's jtf2 i'm not sure anybody will know the answer and so we try uh and i know we post a couple of times uh but this really will be one of the most revealing looks at jtf2 And it's not in a military book, obviously. And it's just one part of a book. But yet it's a slice of Canadiana that will be quite a revelation. Like a lot of other things in the book, this will be a complete revelation to people that won't even know we have these people. And I think the Canadian military takes a backseat in our war because we are inundated with the American experience of heroics in wartime

and their televisions, their movies. You know, we can compete on that level too. And this will be the first inkling that a lot of Canadians get about that. The argument that I used, and you're right, I mean, we've tried for 20 years to to tell stories about this group you know i'd been to afghanistan i'd see you know i'd seen some of these guys but you couldn't get anywhere near them you couldn't talk to them uh even the regular forces couldn't talk to them they didn't really know what they were up to i mean they had a kind of general idea but they didn't know the detail it was. I've talked to former prime ministers who could not find out what they were doing. So this is a big deal. But the argument I used

to finally convince them is that, okay, you've been out of Afghanistan now for, you know, not quite 10 years, but close to a decade. It's part of our history as a country. We left 159 people there. I mean, they were all brought home, but they died there. Most of them killed by roadside bombs, IEDs. And this story is about payback time. And that's all I'll say beyond that and you can you can read it uh for yourselves but um but it's an important part of our history and this particular guy that we use to tell the story um one of those elite commandos is uh well he's an extraordinary guy, and you want to read his story. Anyway, I thank you for doing this, Mark. I know that we're both going to be out doing interviews over the next couple of weeks,

and sometimes together, other times on our own, you know, selling the book and publicizing the book. And we are very proud of it, and we hope that you will be too, because not about us, but I think you can read this book and learn something about yourself as well as a Canadian. So I enjoy it on that level. Mark, thanks very much for joining us. It's been great. Well, it's a, it's been a pleasure to be on the bridge. I've been a regular listener, as they say. I mean, I must say, you're the first podcast I've ever listened to.

I'm of a certain age, like you are. And podcasts I always thought were for other people, a little younger than I. And so you are my first podcast and a very good experience. And now I listen to others as well. So you've opened up a whole new avenue for me. Well, there are some amazing podcasts out there and there are thousands, tens of hundreds of thousands of podcasts. There's just a lot of podcasts. Somebody has to learn how to make a 28-hour day or something. There's not enough time. That's right.

But like you, you take your early morning walks and you listen to things on your walk. And I, you know, I take mine and whether it's, you know, out around the streets of Stratford or whether it's around and around and around and around, I go in the, in my backyard. But you listen to stuff and there is some great stuff, like stuff out there that's really informative and educational and you feel better for having spent the time that way. And hopefully so will some people on this one. Alright, good luck on the book. See you out there on the tour somewhere, socially distant. We'll be very careful.

Indeed we will. Take care. You take care too, Mark. And that wraps it up for this edition of the Bridge Daily on Monday of the start of week 35. It's been great fun talking to you. Tomorrow we'll be back again

24 hours from now with the Bridge Daily.