The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Your Turn -- What I Know Now I Wish I'd Known In My Youth

Episode Date: June 6, 2024

This week's question makes you think and listeners certainly did with a variety of answers, all of which are worth considering. As always the answers come from across the country with a cross section of suggestions.

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. You are just moments away from the latest episode of The Bridge. What do you know now that you wish you'd known when you were younger? That's our question of the week. Your answer's coming right up. And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here with Your Turn, the Thursday episode of The Bridge, where we hear from you, your thoughts on, in this case, the question of the week. And the question this week is pretty simple. It's what do you know now that you wish you'd known when you were younger? Some really interesting answers this week, and we're going to get to them in a minute.

By this time that you're listening to the podcast today, or whether you're listening to our initial episode on Sirius XM at 12 noon Eastern time, by this time, if you were remembering D-Day today and witnessing some of the events that were taking place in Normandy and France on your television or listening on radio, well, then you've already passed that moment. I hope you did pause for a moment, at least,

to remember what happened on this day and Canada's involvement in it and the young fellows, mainly young fellows, who hit the beach that day. There were casualties, there were deaths, but there was also the beginning of victory and the beginning of the liberation of Europe from Nazi rule. So I hope you remember those moments. People ask me, what do you remember about having covered so many of these D-Day remembrances? And I have covered a few. You know, I was in Normandy for the 50th anniversary

back in 1994. That was a really big deal, not surprisingly. But then I was at the 55th and the 60th and the 65th and the 70th. So I've seen a few. So what strikes me about those days? Well, over that time, over that span of anniversaries that I covered, obviously the number of veterans who were there, who had been there on day one, that number dwindled over time, and it continues to do so. I mean, there were thousands there on the 50th.

Then it became hundreds, and now it's kind of tens. And, you know, eventually we're going to lose them all. But I remember on a couple of the occasions, sitting in the kind of anchor booth that the CBC had established along the shoreline, I can remember seeing veterans, usually in very small numbers, one or two, going out to the water's edge and standing there, looking out at the water by themselves, sometimes supported by a child or a grandchild,

and just remembering. For some, it was an incredibly emotional moment. For others, they stood straight and tall, almost at attention, remembering not only what had happened, but their comrades, some of whom they had lost on those same beaches. So I remember that, and those images are kind of locked in my mind. They'll be there forever.

But there was something that James Holland talked to us about the other day, Monday this week, about how sometimes it's hard when you go back to imagine what had happened there on June 6, 1944. Because it's a resort area, Normandy. Those beaches are beautiful, and in the summer months, they are packed. And there are kids playing with sandcastles, and there are teenagers and people in their 20s and 30s out on kind of surfboard things,

wind boards. And you look at that and you go, wow, you know, in some ways that's what it was all about. It was keeping this free. But it seems so different to imagine that all this is going on at the same time. We're remembering what happened all those years before when it was a killing zone. You know, it's not uncommon, it's France after all, to see in these public beaches.

Some women topless. They walk along these sand beaches. Usually on the afternoon of June 6th, everybody kind of leaves the morning of June 6th to the commemorations. But by the afternoon, people are out there, especially if it's a gorgeous day, and they're enjoying the sun and the weather and the beaches and, in some cases, the topless dress code that you're allowed. I can remember a different battle, different time. But I can remember a neighbor of mine in Toronto in the early 1980s,

so it would be 82, I guess, the 40th anniversary of Dieppe, the disastrous Canadian raid on Dieppe, two years before D-Day, August of 42. My neighbor's name was Tommy Taylor, and he'd been an officer, I think, in the Queen's Own Rifles, a Toronto regiment at Dieppe. And he, you know, he was taken prisoner and spent the rest of the war years in a German prison camp. In some ways, he was lucky because many Canadians died that day on the beach

over casualties of some kind, wounded terribly. But I can remember him telling me that he, where he landed, he was a young officer and he was leading his group. The landing craft landed, you know, that door at the front, the gate door kind of thing, dropped down and they all piled out and ran. And the message on that day was the same as it was on D-Day. Keep moving. Don't stop.

No matter what happens, don't stop. Keep running towards the beachhead. So that's exactly what he did and assumed that everybody behind him was right there behind him. Well, he got to where the grass met the sand. And he turned around, there was nobody there. He was alone. He fought for as long as he could, and then he was captured. So 40 years later, he goes back to that same spot on one of the beaches near Dieppe. We've been to Dieppe's very rocky beach.

I think he was at Puy, which is just at the edge of Dieppe. He walked to the same spot where he'd been taken prisoner, and what did he see there? He saw a young French woman sunbathing tapas. This is 40 years later. And he looked at her and he said, I got to tell you, it sure wasn't like this the last time I was here. I bet it wasn't.

So those are some of my memories about, along with all the ones that we've told you about in the last couple of days. So I hope you had a moment today to pause and to think about what happened that day and Canada's involvement in it and the brave young Canadians who were a part of it all. All right. Moving on. We're going to get to our letters now.

There will be no random ranter today, I'm afraid. The ranter had some bad family news, and if you've listened to the ranter over the last few months, then you probably know what that news was. We send our condolences to the ranter and look forward to his return in the weeks ahead. Okay, the question of the week this week was, if you knew today,

no, how is it phrased? What do you know today that you didn't know when you were younger and you wish you had known? That was the question. And we had a lot of answers from you, and I look forward to going through them. One thing that, you know, about letters that I've, you know, sometimes I've mentioned, well, I often mention, we're always looking for people to write, including those who've never written before.

I always get a kick out of reading a letter from somebody who has not written into the program before over the last three years. But there are also what we call regulars to the Bridge Your Turn edition. And I have really grown to appreciate them so much. You'll recognize some of the names. They pop up. I'd say probably somewhere around 20%, 25% of the letters each week are from people who have written before,

some who have written quite a few times before, and always enjoy hearing from them. Because what it's become over time is, it's almost like they're, you know, kind of correspondents for the bridge, the bridge correspondents in different parts of the country who write in on these questions of the week. So I have no problem with that at all.

Quite enjoyed. They don't always get on. As you know, not all the letters get on each week. But a lot of them do. So enough babbling and rambling from Mansbridge. Let's get to your comments. On that question. What do you know today that you wish you'd known when you were younger? Paula Gratton from Miramichi, New Brunswick. What I know now that I wish I'd known when I was younger is that your value isn't on the exterior.

I wasted so much of my life hating the vessel that carried me through life, when I should have been enjoying the voyage. I should have been living life, doing the things that scared me because I was afraid of the judgment of others. When I reached 40, I stopped caring what others thought and now live more life for me. How freeing over 40 has been. Noah Lee in Ottawa. As a young person, I tried to navigate challenges such as experiencing my final year of high school

and freshman year of university with COVID-19 lockdown measures, and I experienced the loss of a family member. I often had questions about the future. Sometimes asking questions about the future manifested as anxiety. But as I'm about to graduate from undergraduate studies, and will soon be moving on to start my master's degree, the one thing I know now that I wish I'd known when I was younger is that everything works out in the end. It'll all be okay. Carolyn Black from Waterloo, Ontario. I wish I hadn't thought that my parents would live forever, and I hadn't waited to ask them questions. There are so many things that I'll never know about my parents.

Friday marks the 100th anniversary of my grandfather landing in Canada from Ukraine, a day that I will mark quietly with gratitude. That's so true, Carolyn. I think all of us who've lost our parents often think, you know, if I'd only just ask that one question. Why didn't I think of that? Dean Mercer in Vancouver.

The University of Wisconsin-Madison statistician George Box is credited with the aphorism, all models are wrong, but some are useful. I think when I was young, I was hunting for the right answer. Now I believe that all we can do is try things, and based on our observations, either abandon them, or try to improve them, while avoiding radical change whenever possible.

Michael Ardendale in Sudbury, Ontario. I've been suffering with PTSD for all of my adult life, but have been misdiagnosed for all of it. It's only within the last decade that I've been able to receive the help that I have needed and have been getting better. Had I been properly diagnosed and treated back when it first happened, I feel my life would be much better. Ben Hendrickson in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories.

As a kid, you always assumed that adults are clueless and making it up as they go along. I wish I had known that adults actually were clueless and were just making it up as they go along. I wish I had known that adults actually were clueless and were just making it up as they went along. As an adult, anyone who isn't a narcissist realizes how true that is for them and for everyone else around them. Ooh. Don Mitchell in Ottawa I wish I knew that girls were as terrified to talk to me

as I was to talk to them it would have saved me a lot of angst and fumbled attempts to say hi oh yeah I think we can no matter which gender we are I think we can, no matter which gender we are, I think we can identify with that. Patsy Minnis in West Vancouver. Family is everything, followed by the ability to listen and communicate.

How Robert and I knew how to do this after five dates and then marriage, I'll never know. It was a long time ago. But we did, and now in the golden years, and whoever coined that phrase was smoking something. Now in the golden years, the love, support, and continual care means everything. Not something I would have realized in my youth. Christine McDonald in LaSalle, Ontario.

That's near Windsor. Well, it's actually, I think, a suburb of Windsor. Life was not as black and white as I believed it to be. I should have been open-minded, listening, and really thinking about why someone else's opinion was different from mine. Yeah, I think so. Ian Hebblethwaite in Moncton, New Brunswick. I've tried to live my life by the idea of carpe diem. I tell people I love them, and I hug instead of just shaking hands,

but despite that, I still feel like I didn't do it as much as I should have done. We lost our 27-year-old son unexpectedly last summer, and all I can say to others is never walk away mad or upset. You never know what will be the last thing said. So what do I really understand more than I did before is that life is truly precious. And so make every moment count. Oh.

Now we can feel the pain in that. Marilyn Wallace, Fanny Bay, British Columbia. I know now that my non-technological rural upbringing in the foothills of western Alberta was indeed a very privileged one. Even as a 12-year-old, I could take my dog and my pony and disappear on a summer day with freedom to explore not only our own farm, but the neighbor's farm as well. Occasionallyally my pony would return without me, having dumped me inelegantly along the route, but no one worried. They just waited for me to show up. Without a computer, smartphone, or dependable TV, there was luxurious amounts of time available for reading. Weekly visits to the tiny local library kept me well supplied with books. My sisters and I invented all kinds of games to amuse ourselves long before

there was Minecraft or Mario. At that time, none of us could have predicted the societal and technological changes that were on the horizon. I wish that as a young woman, I would have known how truly special my childhood was, so that I could have shared that appreciation with my parents while it was still possible. Travis Moore in Greenwood, Nova Scotia. That's in the Annapolis Valley. You know what I wish I'd known in 2015?

I wish I'd known that our members of Parliament were wittingly conspiring with foreign actors and intelligence operatives. And I wish I'd known that the leadership within each federal political party lacked the ethics, morality, integrity, and courage to address this disgusting and potentially treasonous behavior. I wish I'd known that under the guise of Canadian interests,

these politicians would be willing to sell out the tenets of our democracy, peace, order, and good government, for personal gain and electoral advantage. And I wish I'd known that the Minister of Public Safety, the minister to whom CSIS reports and has reported on these matters of foreign interference, would do nothing to address these issues and subsequently assume responsibility for the defense portfolio as global security crumbles under the thumbs of those aforementioned foreign states. In short, I wish I'd known that we were destined to be governed by self-serving incompetence. Well, that is one of the stories of the week.

And I'm sure we're going to be talking about it tomorrow on Good Talk with Chantel and Bruce. Ken Pellishock in Newstead, Ontario. There's plenty in this world to worry about, but only so much you can do anything about. If you're anything like me, write down everything you're worried about right now and check on it a week from now. You'll see you're going through life like a high-strung, anxiety-ridden chihuahua. Yeah, things do change.

And sometimes as quickly as in a week. Now, Tracy in Vancouver, who's written to us before and asks us, she shares her full name with me, but asks us for reasons that become apparent when you read a letter, is that we don't read her surname on air. So let me agree to that in this case. Tracy writes, I wish the younger me had known that ideas and thoughts cannot be indoctrinated or learned by rote.

They require tolerance, enlightenment, and risk-taking. I grew up in a country where children were taught that parents, teachers, and leaders were always right, that the government and the sole party in power were forever great, honorable, and correct, and that the official historical narrative and values were forever great, honorable, and correct, and that the official historical narrative and values were the only standards. There was no room for questioning, let alone dissent. I wish I had been raised to understand that authority figures, like everyone else, make mistakes. Governments make mistakes too, and their most unforgivable catastrophic errors have cost thousands, even millions of lives. Therefore, even seemingly benevolent governments need constant

scrutiny and oversight. I wish I had realized when I was young that ideas and thoughts are like wings in the sky, strengthened by the winds of curiosity and freedom. Independent thinking is the source of inexhaustible creativity in human society. Great letter. We're about halfway through our letters, so why don't we take our break right now, and we'll be back right after this. And welcome back.

You're listening to The Bridge right here on Sirius XM, Channel 167, Canada Talks, or on your favorite podcast platform. Whichever the venue you're listening to us on, we're happy to have you with us. It's the Thursday episode of The Bridge. That means it's your turn. And usually it's also the random ranter has his rant for the week.

For a variety of personal reasons, the ranter is taking this week off. We send him our condolences and we send him our thoughts on this week, which has been a difficult one for him. He'll be back in the weeks ahead. Okay. We move back to your letters. On the question of the week, which was, what do you know now that you didn't know when you were younger?

And by implication, wish you had known. Joyce Taylor writes from Meaford, Ontario. Now, Meaford is on Georgian Bay. It's kind of west of Collingwood. So it's north of Toronto. And Joyce's letter is a one-sentence letter. I wish I had known that everything is happening for a reason and that I should look for the lesson and be grateful. Marlene Schweitzer.

She's in Pickering, Ontario. That's just the east of Toronto, right? On Lake Ontario. What I most wish I knew when I was younger was how important knowledge of my family's history and ancestry would become to me. My parents were both World War II refugees from Europe. I've heard their separate stories of hardship and trauma,

then coming together to a better life in Canada. I have so many questions about family history, and trauma than coming together to a better life in Canada. I have so many questions about family history, and sadly, memories fail, and the people that could give you the answers are no longer here. Ask the people in your life those questions now while they can still answer them. You know, I think we all say that to each other, and then we don't follow it up.

And sometimes it takes, you know, our kids or our grandkids to take hold of this issue. But it's not just tracing family history, it's understanding family history. Some of the anecdotes, some of the stories. You know, the indigenous people do this extremely well. They hand down stories about their community and their relatives through the generations. The oral history.

It's one of the ways, one of the helping ways that we found the Erebus and the Terror, the two ships from the Franklin expedition, oral history, the stories that were passed down through generations of Inuit, that had basically been ignored until the last 10 or 15 years, when those who were searching for these two ships listened attentively and added the knowledge that came out of the oral history

to what they were finding with their own expeditions. And bingo, what happened? They found both ships. Ships that have been lost for over 150 years. So one of the things our kids or grandkids do that is impressive and valuable to families is they record the elders within their family about what they remember about the past, what they were told, what was passed down to them about their family history. And those tapes become invaluable

for families trying to understand their own past. Remember during COVID, we used to talk about write a diary. You know, your future generations are not going to believe what we went through during that period. And they won't be able to believe it unless they can read something about what happened, what you did. How you coped. So anyway. Thank you Marlene.

This next letter comes from Seoul, South Korea. It's from Rebecca Elliott. She's lived in Seoul for 24 years. She was born in Halifax, but she listens to The Bridge. It's the beauty of podcasts, right? You can download them anywhere. Rebecca writes,

the question of the week made me think. Then I remembered my grandfather's voice. Health is wealth. I always responded with yes, yes, whenever he said that, but I didn't fully understand what he meant until I hit my mid-40s. Good health helps me enjoy time with family, time with friends, trips to new places, and life in general. So I wish I'd listened better and fully realized what my grandfather meant when he told me those words, health is wealth. Without good health, it's difficult to appreciate everything that we have.

Rob Odie in Toronto. One thing I know now that I wish I knew when I was younger is that change is a process and not a singular event. In my younger days, I often believed that I could transform myself or my circumstances instantaneously by making a firm decision, resolution, or naive proclamation. However, wisdom has taught me that meaningful and lasting change is a journey, not a fleeting moment.

Ultimately, change happens when we step into the arena of life. We can either let change happen to us or embrace the process and steer the ship in the direction we choose. Norma Jack in Stouffville, Ontario. It's just north of Toronto. In April of 1976, my husband and I and our three children emigrated from the UK to Canada. We came to Winnipeg and later to Ontario.

While Canada has been extremely good to us, what I failed to realize was the value of extended family. My children grew up seeing grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins maybe once every two years. Now, watching my own grandchildren grow up, I realize what my children missed. Never underestimate the value of family. Matthew Sklarczyk in Vernon, B.C. I wish I better understood the brevity of our time here. In the last three and a half years, my wife and I have lost four family members. Most recently, my uncle passed away.

The significance of his passing is he's the only member of my extended family I ever met. My parents are immigrants from Poland who refuse to raise their children behind the iron curtain under the rule of a Soviet puppet government. I've had a very privileged life here in Canada and thanks to their sacrifice. But part of that sacrifice was never having met my grandparents or other extended family. Now I have only one cousin left. We will be going on a cruise with my wife's parents and I will finally be going back to Poland with my mom after 39 years. I will get to see where she came from and how she grew up. I will pay my respects to my family who passed before I could meet them. We will also be paying respects to other families who died tragically in our first time

visit to Auschwitz, an experience I'm looking forward to and am terrified of. As a young man, I wish I placed a higher value of the ever-depreciating asset of time, how little of it we have, and how important it is to spend as much of it with those you love most. Terry Sims in Victoria. I grew up in Newfoundland, hunting and fishing, and there was meat and dairy on the table every meal. My wife and I have been eating a plant-based diet now for seven years. My cholesterol problem went away, blood pressure dropped, energy increased, and I just feel great all the time. I wish I knew the importance of nutrition at a younger age and the positive effect on the environment living this way.

Spencer Stinson in Blenheim, Ontario. If available through your employment, always max out your employer's matching retirement contribution. It's free money. I unfortunately didn't realize this for the first few years of my career, and with compound interest, I've missed out on tens of thousands of dollars for retirement. A little bit of financial advice from Spencer there. Joshua Winters in Surrey, Guildford, British Columbia. My father was a handyman, a jack of all trades, and he really could fix just about anything. On the rare occasion when he did encounter something he couldn't repair, he would become fixated on learning how it worked, and wouldn't stop until he could repair it. Admittedly, in my younger years, part of me was ashamed by my father because he didn't have a higher education.

I used to dream of him having some prestigious position with a corner office. Now, in an era where artificial intelligence and automation threaten so many white-collar office jobs, I wish I could tell my younger self to pay attention when he was showing me how to fix this or disassemble that. Even if it didn't become my profession, it would have saved me a lot of money. I wish he was still alive so I could tell him this and thank him for trying to teach me.

That's a beautiful letter. Thank you, Joshua. Pete Quinn in Ottawa. I don't know if I read or heard these words or if I came up with them on my own, but in my nearly six decades, I very slowly developed the following realization. The glass doesn't know whether it's half empty or half full. It can decide for itself. While it may seem trite,

the idea is that there is no universal objective scale for good or bad. Most situations in life have outcomes that are not a coin flip, black or white, empty or full. Almost every real situation has outcomes ranging from very bad to very good. And our efforts almost always land somewhere in the middle, between the extremes. The realization that slowly dawned on me is that

we each get to decide for ourselves how to evaluate all these half-full, half-empty outcomes. And this has been my secret to happiness. One is free to decide for oneself that things are either usually pretty good or not, and in effect to decide whether to be mostly happy. I'd be grateful to know whether others have read or heard this idea elsewhere, and if so, where, as I can't say whether the idea is original or borrowed. Hey, Pete, it's original to you in this moment.

No. Go with it. Okay, the last letter of the day for this week brings us full circle on this broadcast. Because it actually goes back to D-Day. It comes from Harry Goosen in Kitchener, Ontario. So, not Harry, Harvey, Harvey Goosen. I've been teaching history since it was current events. It has been my privilege to take high school students to Normandy, Arras, Ypres, and the Netherlands each March break since 2007, minus the COVID years,

to learn of our country's sacrifice during the World Wars. My parents were on the receiving end of both Stalin's and Hitler's full fury during the war and experienced it as children. The folks who started the school where I work were largely Dutch, who were liberated by Canadians. It was important to me that our students see this firsthand and learn these stories, and they have. More than 700 students.

I don't say that to be prideful. I say that to say the kids are okay, as long as the adults don't screw up the world too much for them. They are genuinely interested and they save and save their money and they come. One kid asked me this last March. Mr. G,

doesn't this get boring coming here every year? I replied, of course not, because I haven't taken you yet. You know, in my travels, especially in France and the Netherlands, I bumped into all kinds of school tours that have been taking place. And I congratulate the schools and the teachers who give their time to such ventures, broadening the history of our kids by not just doing textbooks in the classroom,

but on-site travels. There's nothing better. And those kids will remember those moments for the rest of their life. So more power to the schools that organize such trips and our thanks to the teachers who take part in them. Really important. Okay, that's going to wrap it up for this day. And for your turn for this week.

Tomorrow, of course, it's Good Talk with Chantal Hebert and Bruce Anderson, and we'll talk about whatever we talk about. Always fascinating. And I'll start to work on the buzz for this week. If you haven't subscribed already, please do. It's very simple. There's no charge. You go to nationalnewswatch.com,

scan the pay homepage, and you'll find somewhere in the homepage a box for subscribing to the buzz. It's my weekly newsletter. It comes out Saturday mornings. It'll be in your inbox, 7 a.m. Saturday morning. And basically all it is, you know, there are stories I see every week that I find really interesting that don't necessarily get a lot of play. I think they're interesting enough

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All you've got to do is add your email. That's it. Okay, I'm Peter Mansbridge. Thanks so much for listening on this day. It's been a treat, as it always is, to hear from you and your thoughts on various issues. Talk to you again in almost 24 hours. Thank you.