The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - What Vimy Ridge Can Teach Us During This Crisis. And .... It's OK to Think Positive.

Episode Date: March 24, 2020

The 103rd anniversary of Vimy Ridge is just two weeks away -- it's a part of our Canadian heritage. It's also a reminder of the courage Canadians can put together when the crisis hits. Also, COVID-19 is a terrible story, but let's try to keep some positive thoughts.

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here with the latest episode of The Bridge. Well, it'll be about two weeks from now when we will mark the 103rd anniversary of a major date in Canadian history. That, of course, was the Battle of Vimy Ridge. In 1917, April of 1917, Canadian troops took a ridge that neither the British nor the French had been able to take from the Germans throughout up to that point the First World War. It was a major victory for Canada. Some historians saw it as kind of the birthplace of the real Canada because at that time Canadian troops fought under Canadian command and that was one of the first times we'd ever done that. Other historians debate, say there were other things much more important than that particular battle, and that battle didn't win the war,

but nevertheless, it was a significant moment, and it's marked for good reason in Canadian history books, and we remember that battle. It was a bloody battle. There were almost 4,000 Canadians killed in a matter of a couple of days, but they won. They took that ridge. There were almost 4,000 Canadians killed in a matter of a couple of days. But they won. They took that ridge.

And today, the memorial that is at Vimy Ridge is one that, if you get an opportunity to see, it's not far from Paris, near a town called Arras. If you get a chance to see it, you will never forget it. It is quite remarkable. And so is the little cemetery, a couple of them actually, at Vimy Ridge, where many of the Canadians, about 2,000 of those who died during the battle, have found their last resting place.

Now, I mention Vimy for a couple of reasons. One, I told you yesterday that I was doing the podcast now from this little studio that I built around my desk outside of Toronto, in our home in Stratford. And very proud of this little office that I have. And the desk I have is kind of littered with different things through my career. I told you yesterday about the Olympic torch.

Today I tell you about Vimy because the last time I was there, and I've been there quite a few times, the last time I was there, three years ago, for the 100th anniversary of the Battle of Vimy Ridge, I picked up a Vimy hat that had been made in commemoration of that day. And I have that hat, my Vimy hat, on my desk. It's actually sitting atop one of the globes. I love globes. I have quite a few of them in my office. Anyway, I mentioned Vimy for the other reason,

being that that showed an incredible strength on the part of Canadians, in that case, the Canadian troops who fought on that day. Remarkable young men. And you know how young they were when you visit the cemeteries, and you see that the vast majority were in their late teens or early twenties, who didn't make it past the battlefront. But one of the areas that if you go there as a tourist, you see, you see the trenches that have kind of been built up

to give people a sense of what that trench warfare must have been like. And there are some tunnels, and tunneling was a big deal in the First World War, and Canadians were very good at it, were acknowledged as perhaps the best tunnelers. And you used tunnels so you wouldn't have to run through the kind of the no-man's land between the trenches, but you'd go through the tunnel and you'd come up and you'd be right away and often in hand-to-hand combat with the other side. The Germans were pretty good trenchers, or sorry, pretty good tunnelers as well, but Canadians were known to be the best.

Now, you can get a sense of what those tunnels were like because they've got a couple open, but they're very well supported and not at all like they were at the time. But a few years ago, I was shown a tunnel that had just been found a couple of years before. It was, oh, maybe a mile from the actual battlefront. And it had been where a lot of Canadians had been, in the tunnels, waiting to go into action. And no camera crews had been allowed anywhere near that site. They had only been found a few years before,

and the people who were working on trying to preserve it who were actually british a british a group of british miners i think who had been brought in to try and make it somewhat safe had agreed to take me down with my cameraman pascal leblanc, and my producer, Stephanie Jenser. We went into the tunnel with these fellows. They gave us a quick kind of safety course and then took us down. The tunnel was, you know, we went down a ladder. It was about, I don't know, 30 feet to the bottom, 10 meters,

to where the tunnels were. We got down there, and we kind of inched our way along. And in many places, this hadn't changed since the day it had been abandoned in 1918 or 19. There were still rifles on the ground. There was in one place a grenade on the ground. Lots of other kind of junk, war junk, lying around. But they stretched for quite a ways.

Hundreds of kilometers, or not hundreds of kilometers, hundreds of meters. And one of the unique things about those tunnels is the walls are made out of a kind of, well, have you ever seen the White Cliffs of Dover? It's rock like that. It's probably an extension of that same rock formation. So it's very white. And that allowed many of the soldiers to write their names on the walls.

And it's quite something to look at those names. They'd write their name and their regiment number and, in many cases, where they were from. Lots of them, hundreds of them, along these long stretches of tunnel. And it was eerie in a way because you had no sense of, you know, what happened to that guy? What happened to that guy from Manitoba? What happened to that guy from Manitoba? What happened to that guy from New

Brunswick? Well, in some cases, they went beyond just writing their name and their regiment. They drew some art. They did some art that kind of signified where they were from. Like there was a guy from Nova Scotia who drew a fish, a guy from Ontario who drew a moose. There was a fellow from the prairies who we argued about what it was. To me, it looked like a wheat field, which wouldn't be surprising. And then there was a fellow from B.C. who did more than draw. He actually carved into the soft rock a face. And it was hard to determine, was it a self-portrait?

Was it a carving of the guy next to him waiting in line? Was it some image that haunted him at night in his dreams? Could have been any of those things. Anyway, I was there for a long time looking at the images, looking at the names. I guess I was down in that tunnel for a couple of hours. And when I came up, it was a beautiful early summer evening. It was June, mid-June. I came up.

It was above ground. The sun was starting to go down. I stood there and I thought, I don't think I've ever felt more Canadian than I do in this moment. I often think back to that day. I think back about the courage and the determination of those young boys in many cases and of what they did. And it's the same way I feel about so many of the people

who are now at the front lines of fighting COVID-19, whether they're health care workers or hospital workers, whether they're people in the pharmacies across the country that are staying open, whether they're truck drivers, grocery store clerks, first responders like police and fire and ambulance drivers. And there are more. These are special people. Special people with courage.

I mean, we're at home. We're doing our part. We are at home, just like we've asked to be. They're at work for us, doing things and preparing things in case we need them. They have families. They have homes. They have kids. They have husbands and wives.

They have grandparents. They're at work. They're courageous. They are heroes. And we should never forget them. All right. That's my Vimy story. I wanted to leave some positive thoughts.

I mean, this is a difficult time. Nobody can ignore that. We all know the risks. We all know the dangers. We all know that there are going to be people who get very sick from this. But at the same time, there are people working desperately to try and ease our possible pain. There are researchers and scientists working in universities and clinics, test areas, hospitals across the country.

They're working all day and all night. They're trying to find the pathway towards either a cure or a vaccine. And they're doing that just as their colleagues in other countries around the world are doing it. I mean, think of that. Every day, every night, there are people working to try and save us. And you know what? Some of them, or even just one of them, is going to find that vaccine or that cure or both. It's going to happen.

When's it going to happen? We don't know. It could happen tonight. Or it could happen next year. But it will happen. And you can feel good about that fact. There are people coming up with ideas. I saw the Ford Motor Company today

announcing that it's going to go whole hog into transforming into building ventilators. I talked to a surgeon the other night who has friends in England in the medical profession who said they're toying with an idea that's been around for the last 10 or 15 years. There have been people thinking about it, trying it. And that is, you've got a ventilator, and we have this mass shortage of ventilators all over the world, especially in North America. So you have a ventilator, you've got two people who need it, you only have one. You've got to choose between one or the other? Or is there some reason why you can't do two people at the same time with one ventilator? You know, like how you can take your smartphone and do an audio feed going to two places.

So that's kind of what the thinking has been. Now, as I said, this is not a new idea. It's been around. There are issues. And one of those issues is not everybody who needs a ventilator needs the same airflow. And that would be a problem with this idea of either doubling or quadrupling the number of people being served by one ventilator. But think if they can solve that, what that could mean at a time when we're desperate for ventilators. People are working on that idea.

Someday, maybe somebody will figure it out. There are those who are trying to check on the age-old idea. It was used 100 years ago during the Spanish flu, where you took from victims who'd recovered, you took samples of their blood, because it would have, once they've recovered, one assumes the antibodies in it, and use that blood for transfusion into those who were fighting it.

That had all kinds of problems associated with it. And it's been around for a long time, this whole idea of using a recovered victim's blood to help someone who is in the midst of dealing with that disease. But there are issues. But we're modern technology. We have great scientists and researchers, and maybe there's a better way. So there are people working at that. And I guess the point I'm trying to make on a positive sense is

we have people who are working day and night trying to find the results to this. And that's a positive story. I saw a doctor on one of the morning programs early today talking about a new testing kit that they were hopeful would be available within the next week or two that would reduce testing times. And those are big problems, the testing times,

the delays in testing times. And there's, you know, especially so in parts of Ontario right now, and I assume in different parts of the country. But reducing it from four, five, six, eight days to 45 minutes, they're pretty confident they're close to that. And that's all been a result of research and experimentation that's taking place now. If that can happen, that'd be great. So let's think positive and sort of,

you know, send our positive thoughts, our positive energy to those men and women, young and old, who are in their labs, trying to come up with ideas that are going to make it easier for us in the long run. All right, final thought for today is on the Olympics. And I think, you know, as somebody who covered a lot of Olympics going back to the 88 Games in Seoul, South Korea, hearing today that I don't think anybody was overwhelmingly surprised that Japan has decided to delay for at least a year the Olympics.

That's never happened before. They had an Olympics canceled in 1940 during the Second World War, but delayed a year. You know, a lot of the athletes wanted these games delayed. But at the same time, athletes who condition themselves to be at their peak performance every four years for these games are now out a year. And that's going to cause, for them, all kinds of issues and problems.

But I think you better keep in mind what's happened here, because when you delay something like the Olympics, which would have taken place in, what, July? I think mid-to-late July. You're making quite a statement, because there are a lot of other things that are planned for this summer. And it may be your local festival. It may be some bigger event in your city or province. If they're going to cancel or delay the Olympics,

you might want to give serious thought to what might happen on your various things we're in we're in here for the it's it's not a two-week event here we're in for what could be a long haul and part of the reason they delayed them in japan was not only that some countries were getting antsy but japan itself was saying, my gosh, you know, we're going to have millions of visitors to our country coming from all over the world for the Olympics, and this is still out there. Do we really want that?

Well, the same goes on a smaller scale for a lot of other events, whether they be in Canada or the U.S. or anywhere around the world. So I would keep that in mind. All right, another edition of The Bridge. If you want to react to it and ask questions, make comments. I love hearing them, and there have been a ton of them since we did our show on letters last week, and we'll do another one later this week. So if you want to write, it's themansbridgepodcast at gmail.com.

themansbridgepodcast at gmail.com. I'm Peter Mansbridge. This has been The Bridge. Thanks for listening. And we'll talk to you again in seven days. Thank you.