The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - What Would Churchill Say?

Episode Date: March 26, 2020

The numbers keep rising and as they do, new innovative ideas to fight the problem give us all hope. And, as we look for leadership we remember what a great leader in a past time of crisis had to say.

and hello there peter mansbridge here with the latest edition of the bridge daily well quite a bit of reaction uh to last night's podcast where we focused on this whole issue of how do you enforce self-isolation. The border guards tell people coming across from the U.S., from their snowbird adventures of the last few months, that you've got to isolate yourselves in your homes for 14 days. You can't go anywhere. You can't stop anywhere to get anything. How does that work? How do you enforce that?

Well, when we did the bridge last night about this time, there was no enforcement strategy. There is now. And there are fines, in some cases very heavy fines, for those who do not follow the guidelines. How do you monitor things like that? Well, there's going to be different forms of spot checking to ensure that, and we'll see how that works out.

But if you saw the numbers today in different parts of the country, as expected, the numbers are going up. Now, numbers go up for a number of reasons. There's more testing going on. There's a better idea, a better sense of where COVID-19 is spreading and how serious that is. And we're going to see those numbers continue to go up

day after day for some time. And so, sadly, will the number of deaths go up, as they did also today. So we've got to watch that. We can't get mesmerized by these numbers. They are difficult to hear, difficult to see. But there are a lot of other things going on at the same time. On the part of those who are trying to stop the spread, and that includes those of us who are staying in our homes,

who aren't going out. But most importantly, it is the various healthcare workers at the front lines of all this, it is the researchers and scientists who are trying to find ways to combat this disease. And so every day you hear of new ideas and in some cases new progress on how all that is going to work. You may recall last week we talked about some of the things I'd seen where there was discussion about this desperate need for ventilators and how might it be possible to split the ventilator feed so you could deal with two people or even more than two people on one ventilator. Well, that is being looked at more seriously now. And in some hospitals in New York City, apparently they are even trying it, even

though they realize that it's difficult. And there are difficulties in doing that because not every patient needs the same airflow. And when you split the feed on a ventilator, both of those feeds or more if there are more are going to get the same airflow going to each patient. But right now in some parts of New York, desperate times mean desperate measures, and they're trying that, but people are going to benefit from those experiments. So with the testing of drugs that may possibly have some impact. So too may be this whole idea of trying to find the antibodies

inside the blood of those who've recovered and whether that can help those who are suffering. So all that's happening. And companies are responding. You know Dyson, they make vacuum cleaners and various other things. You see their advertisements, or we've seen their advertisements for the last few years on television and online.

Dyson announced today in Britain that they've come up with a new model of ventilator. They worked for the last 10 days on trying to do that, and they have it, and it's working, and they're going to start mass-producing it. They think they can have 15,000 of them ready within 10 days. And they will move it immediately into the British market, but they are talking about worldwide. That's Dyson.

Ford has announced that they're moving some of their production facilities from automobile parts to ventilators. Might take a little longer before those are out. Bauer, the hockey company. See that last night? You know, growing up in Canada the odds are you've worn a Bauer hockey mask at some point A number of companies do them, but Bauer is one of them

They're adapting their mask-making ability from the hockey front to masks for frontline health care workers. That can be ready soon, they say. Crocs, you know, Crocs, those, you know, kind of like slippers, but you wear them usually outdoors, gardening and things like that. But if you go in a hospital, you'll often see Crocs

on the part of nurses, doctors who work in hospitals. I think what they're made of is a comfortable piece of footwear and works well in hospital surroundings. Well, Crocs is donating thousands, thousands of pieces of footwear every day now to hospitals. I think that's mainly in the States right now, but I assume it's happening, going to happen in Canada as well. Labatt's is going to move some of its production of,

you know what Labatt's produces, going to move some of that in a hand sanitizer. All these people are adapting to confront the crisis we all face, to try and bring those numbers that I talked about at the beginning down. And the faster we can bring those numbers down, the faster we can get through at least round one of this fight against COVID-19. 19. You've probably heard the talk about the discussions going on between Canada and the United States about this sense that the U.S. may be placing troops at the border,

on their side of the border. The fear here bounces back once again to this, will the border close? I know some people think, well, that's going to be okay. Let's close the border. Well, yes and no. You can understand those concerns about health, although there's still a lot of Canadians coming back from the U.S., snowbirds.

But the other issue is trade and not, you know, I'm talking trade that's part of our daily food supply chain. You don't want to cut that off. You've got to find ways to keep that open. So that's why those discussions continue to go on. Now, part of all this is leadership, right? We're all looking and seeking leadership. In times of crisis, you want a leader, a woman or a man,

who can convince you that what they're doing is right and in your best interest, and you will follow them toward that goal. But you have to believe your leader. You have to trust your leader. And when people search through the history books, who's the greatest leader of all time in a crisis like this, a lot of people point to Winston Churchill, the leader of Great Britain during the Second World War. That part of his career.

I know there are those out there who find fault with Churchill's earlier part of career, and I understand that. But we're talking about his leadership during a time of crisis during the Second World War. Now, when I started this week and was hosting the podcast from my office in Stratford. I told you that each day I would kind of point out something that was in my office and talk about it for a little bit and how it may relate to this.

Well, one of the things I have in my office I picked up in London a few years ago, and it's a signed picture of Winston Churchill. He signed it in 1944. He'd given it to his personal secretary, and it went in her family and through her family, and after she passed away, it ended up being auctioned, and I was lucky enough to be a successful bidder on that particular picture. So I have that in my office, and I'm very proud of it because I am a huge fan of Churchill's from that period during the Second World War,

and I have just purchased the new book out on Churchill, and I'm looking forward to reading it in the days ahead. But yesterday is kind of a, well, just for something to do, I posted a picture of Churchill online, and I said, what would he say? What would this person who we admire so much for his leadership during World War II, what would he say at a time like this? Well, not surprisingly, I got a lot of comments, many of them drawing upon things he said during his career and how they might apply to today. So I thought I'd read you some of those.

You'll find some of them familiar. But it's good to be reminded of them, especially right now, when we're looking for that quality of leadership, that inspiration, that feeling that, you know what? We can get through this, and we can get through it

listening to the words of our leader or leaders. So let me go through some of these. And I think most of these are either direct quotes from things Churchill said or wrote, or they're close to it. Here's one. Success is not final. Failure is not fatal.

It is the courage to continue that counts. Success is not final. Failure is not fatal. It is the courage to continue that counts. Here's one. If you're going through hell, keep going. If you're going through hell, keep going. We shall draw from the heart of suffering itself

the means of inspiration and survival. Think about that one for a minute. Various versions of the never surrender. We will persevere, is one. We shall never surrender, is another. Here's a famous one. I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat.

I'm not sure whether he ever said this. KBO, keep buggering on. Yeah, one of the famous ones certainly has kind of made a revival in the last 20 years. Keep calm and carry on. Did I read this one? Success is the ability to go from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm. The difficult we can do at once, the impossible may take a little longer. The difficult we can do at once, the impossible may take a little longer.

Never give up, another version of never surrender. When you're going through hell, keep going. It's another one that we heard just a few minutes ago, but it's I love that one. You have that image, right? I'm going through hell, and I'm going to keep going.

You've got to keep going to get through it. And this is a version of one we heard earlier, too. We shall draw from the heart of suffering itself the means of inspiration and survival. He may well have said this right now. Stay in your bloody house. The problems of victory are more agreeable than defeat, but they are no less difficult.

That's certainly the case that we're witnessing right now. This is kind of a version of something he did say, he would repeat what he said in the past, the Americans will get it right once they exhaust all the bad options. Well, I'm not sure he said it exactly that way, but you might look at what's been going on in the last couple of months and say, well, they're certainly exhausting some of those options. I'm getting close here. As I said, there were a lot of them, an awful lot of them.

I don't know, maybe some people got quite creative in trying to come up with their own quotes to place in Churchill's mouth. I think this is real. This is only the first sip, the first foretaste of a bitter cup which will be proffered to us year by year unless we arise again and take our stand for freedom. Well, I was very much directed at the war effort, but it's once again that kind of persevering, never surrendering. And, you know, I don't know where we are in this story,

but one of those famous quotes, it would be nice to think we're at this point. I'm not sure we are yet, but this is not the beginning of the end, but it may be the end of the beginning. So there we go, looking back at some of the moments of Winston Churchill's career, some of the quotes that he had to give us and share with us, and so many of them apply even on this day. So I thank all of those who wrote in. I mean, because it came in on Instagram,

it's not, you know, quite often it's sort of handles, and I've never been good on reading handles. But names I like to read. And I'll probably read some tomorrow, because as I told you last week when we did on Friday night your letters and comments and questions they were remarkable

so many of them and again this week there have been many and I look forward to going through some of them tomorrow night on the bridge on the Friday night night on the bridge, on the Friday night version of the bridge. Last week when we did it, as it turned out,

it was the most listened to podcast of last week. Huge numbers. So I guess you wanted to hear if your letter got on or you wanted to hear what other people were thinking and you wanted to hear some of my thoughts on what they were thinking. So we'll get that. And we'll get to all of that. And you know, maybe one of these days we're going to be lucky enough to talk something about something other than just COVID-19. There are other things happening in our world,

but this seems to be such the focus for all of us. And that's totally understandable. So drop me a line. This is your last chance if you want to get into the mailbag for tomorrow. Drop me a line at themansbridgepodcast at gmail.com. themansbridgepodcast at gmail.com. Thanks for listening on this day, and we'll talk to you again in, well, 24 hours. Thank you.