RCI | English : Interviews

It was August 1943 that a crew aboard a Canadian squadron bomber were sent on a dangerous mission over Germany. The large Handley-Page Halifax never made it back.

The disabled plane crashed into the sea off the coast of Sweden after the crew safely bailed out.

Now a group from Canada dedicated to finding and restoring these bombers of particular relevance to Canada has been bringing the historic plane back to the surface.

I spoke to  Karl Kjarsgaard on Friday by mobile phone aboard the recovery vessel off the coast of Sweden. He is with Canada’s Bomber Command Museum in Nanton Alberta and the founder of the Halifax 57 rescue group.

Karl Kjargaard speaks on the project to recovery a Canadian Halifax bomber WWII off the seabed in SwedenEN_Interview_1-20190708-WIE10

In spite of massive flak defences and German fighter defences, it was nature that brought the bomber down.

The plane, leading a large bomber force ran into unexpectedly severe thunderstorms and a lighting strike fried some of plane’s electrical system. The bomber lost its two inboard engines and several flight instruments and could not make it back to England.

Project leader Karl Kjarsgaard aboard the Danish tug dive and recovery vessel, flying the RCAF ensign. (supplied

In such cases and where feasible, the crews would turn north and attempt to make it to neutral Sweden.  In fact the same storm brought down several of the following bombers in the massive nighttime mission.

An early version of the Halifax as HR871 would have appeared. Later marks had a different nose configuration, redesigned rudders, and Bristol radial engines. This particular Halifax L9350 was shot down Aug 15, 1941 (Imperial War Museum- wiki commons)

After the crew bailed out safely, the slowly descending plane flew on past the south coast of Sweden and crashed about 16 kilometres out into the brackish Baltic Sea and sank about 17 metres to the bottom.

A few years ago Swedish divers found the wreckage and contacted the Bomber Command Museum which helped to eventually identify the plane as 405 “Vancouver” Squadron LQ-B for “Baker”, tail number HR871 which was on a pathfinder mission when it was disabled and crashed..

Divers siphoning sand off the bomber which has been covered over in large part by drifting sand in the ensuing decades (supplied)

Important to Canadians.

While the iconic Lancaster bomber is widely known, (some were even being built in Canada for the war effort), and Canadians comprised about a third of the incredibly daring Lancaster Dam Busters raid, among many many others, a little realised fact now is that Canadian bomber aircrew flew the vast majority of their missions aboard Handley-Page Halifax bombers.

Some of the smaller parts brought up which appear to be flight controls and instrument panels (supplied)

In fact about 70 per cent of Canadian missions were in Halifax’s which is why the Alberta museum has been so dedicated in recovering and rebuilding the planes in memory of the sacrifice of over 10,000 Canadian bomber crew who were lost during the war.

A couple of the Rolls Royce 12 cyl Merlin engines have been recovered. They will be cleaned up, but are too far eroded to ever be rebuilt. (supplied)

Unfortunately LQ-B is too badly damaged itself to be rebuilt, but as Kjarsgaard notes, it is a valuable source of usable parts which will contribute to the recreation of a Halifax at the museum.

Recovered parts are placed in freshwater swimming pools to allow the salt to migrate out of the parts to prevetn further erosion. (supplied)

As parts are being recovered, they are being “desalinated” and stored at the port of Trelleborg in southern Sweden. Eventually they will be transported by the RCAF back to...

It's summer in Alberta and it's rattlesnake season.

Not that anyone has a whole lot to fear.

Rattlers, it turns out, are nowhere near as bad as they've been made out to be.

Heavy Head releases a snake back at its den site after rescuing it from a University of Lethbridge office. (Ryan Heavy Head/YouTube)

And I know what I am talking about here because I recenly had a conversation with Ryan Heavy Head, self-described "rattlesnake wrangler."

Heavy Head, who is 47, runs a rattlesnake mitigation program in Lethbridge, southeast of Calgary, as well as the program's rattlesnake hotline, which some years gets as many as 170 calls.

That means he spends a lot of time coming to the rescue of terrified humans who likely saw their fair share of Westerns as kids and just know--KNOW--that rattlers are REALLY, REALLY dangerous.

This pregnant Prairie Rattlesnake uses the ledge under the University of Lethbridge's University Hall as her rookery, where she will live until she gives birth and returns to the den at the end of the season. (Sarah Lawrynuik/CBC)

Only, according to Heavy Head, they really aren't.

I spoke by with Heavy Head by phone in Lethbridge.

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The warnings and fears about the future of Canada's biggest and--many would argue--most beautiful national park have continued for several years now.

They began to get noticed when members of the Mikisew Cree First Nation, who for generations have depended on the land and waters that are now part of what is called Wood Buffalo National Park, submitted a petition to the UNESCO World Heritage Committee in 2014.

Climate change and industrialization were taking a dreadful toll on the 45,000 square kilometres of grasslands, wetlands and waterways straddling the Alberta-Northwest Territories border and the Cree were very worried.

The world’s largest beaver dam is located in Wood Buffalo National Park. (Parks Canada)

The World Heritage Committee responded with a series of requests to halt the decline.

Since then, the Cree, environmentalists, the Canadian Government and UNESCO have been groping for solutions (TIMELINE), sparring over money and action plans under the shadow of the park losing its status as a World Heritage Site.

A report last summer concluded that 15 out of 17 measures of the park’s ecological health were declining.

The world's largest herd of free-ranging buffalo makes its home at the park. (CBC)

The federal government then said it would invest $27.5 million over five years in the park.

This past winter, facing a UNESCO deadline over maintaining the park's status, Ottawa submitted a 96-page plan that underwhelmed environmentalists.

Last month, UNESCO again expressed grave doubts about a federal efforts to rescue it.

The park is the only breeding grounds in the world for endangered whooping cranes. (Joe Duff/Operation Migration/The Associated Press)

The latest twist came this week at a World Heritage Committee meeting in Baku, Azerbaijan

UNESCO praised Canada for measures it has taken to stop the toll that industrial development and climate change have taken on the park, but said the park's status could be endangered because of impacts from hydro development in British Columbia and dozens of oilsands projects in Alberta, including one planned for 30 kilometres from the park.

The committee said "considerably more effort" and "more funding will likely be needed" to address the complexity of the challenges facing the park if it is to retain its status as a World Heritage Site,

Gillian Chow-Fraser is Boreal Program Manager at the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society's northern Alberta chapter. (Courtesy: Gillian Chow-Fraser)

The committee gave Ottawa 18 months to prove it is taking the necessary action to save the park.

One of the persons in the forefront of the fight to maintain the park is Gillian Chow-Fraser.

She is Boreal Program Manager at the Canadian Parks and Wildnerness Society's northern Alberta chapter.

I had the pleasure of speaking with her twice this past winter and I spoke with her again by phone on Friday.

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It was pretty much accidental that Canadian researchers found a way to add colour to coins without using inks, dyes or pigments. A special picosecond laser was being used in a technique to enhance the engraving on the coins. This kind of laser blasts high-energy, quick pulses of light. 

“We decided one day to take our laser and instead of applying it to the die surface (used to stamp coins), what would happen if we put an actual coin into the laser,” said Iain Brooks, a manager at the Royal Canadian Mint. “And lo and behold, something interesting did happen. Some unexpected, interesting vibrant colours were found on the surface of a silver coin.”

The laser had changed the surface of the coin so that it refracted light in such a way as to create certain colours.

(photo: Royal Canadian Mint)

Iain Brooks explains in greater detail the use of a laser to colour coins.

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For now the technique will be used on about 10 silver coins weighing five kilograms each. They will be sold as collectors items at a price not yet determined. 

The mint has not decided if the technique will be applied to other coins. Nor has it had time to consider the many other possible uses of the method.

Coins of different colours already exist but they are produced using different coloured metals. (iStock)

Last Saturday morning a freighter sailed into the Port of Vancouver carrying 69 containers of non-recyclable garbage that has been festering in the Philippines for six years

Thre shipment made much news: the final resolution of the so-called Canada-Philippines Garbage War, a dispute that led to some exorbitant verbal threats.

It was a dispute that disgusted a lot of environmentals, one of them being Vito Buonsante, who is plastics program manager of the Toronto-based advocacy group Environmental Defence.

In an interview with CTV News, Buonsante said it a "disgrace that we need to send our garbage to developing countries."

Prominent Canadian brands can be seen after a container full of plastic is opened in Malaysia, which says it's sending the unwanted plastic back to Canada. (Eric Szeto/CBC)

Buonsante said he was happy the 69 containers were back but added that Canada has to stop shipping its trash around the world to "make it someone else's problem."

Canada, it would appear, has more than its share of its waste to deal with and it going to get a whole lot more as other countries decide that they would prefer we dump our garbage elsewhere.

A recent study prepared for Environment Canada showed that in 2016, Canadians threw out 3.3 million tonnes of plastic a year, 12 times more that is recycled.

The federal government says Canadians will throw away an estimated $11 billion worth of plastic materials annually by 2030.

And where do those discarded plastics go?

About 150 million tonnes are dumped yearly in the world's oceans.

Recyclers rummage through a pile of garbage to look for reusable items at a landfill in Tangerang on the outskirts of Indonesia's largest city, Jakarta, in 2018. The government says it is returning waste from its second-largest city, Surabaya and countries should look elsewhere for places to dump their garbage. (Tatan Syuflana/Associated Press)

A lot of people are trying to fix the problems.

Whether that happens remains to be seen.

The shipment from the Philippines arrived two days after Canadian environment ministers, meeting in Halifax, said they had agreed to a plan to harmonize recycling standards in Canada, though the earliest goal for hitting targets is December 2020.

Earlier last month, CBC News reported the government would ban single-use plastics as early as 2021 and a ban on single-use plastic bags went into effect on Prince Edward Island on Monday.

Vito Buosante is the plastics program manager for Toronto-based Environmental Defence. (Courtesy: Environmental Defence)

There was one good-news story, of course. The one we reported yesterday about the two guys in Nova Scotia who built a beach house using 612,000 plastic water bottles.

Houses made of plastic water bottles and a government action plan aside, it's not a pretty picture right now.

I spoke Thursday with Buonsante at his Environmental Defence office in Toronto.

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A new study suggests that in the first year of university, males put on an average of 3.8 kg and females, 1.8 kg, and poor diet plays a role. “We saw profound negative changes in the dietary intake and the diet quality of these first year students,” says Kayleigh Beaudry, lead author of the study and doctoral candidate at the University of Waterloo. 

“We essentially saw decreases in foods that were deemed healthy. So, there was decreases in foods like yogurt, cheese, oatmeal, fruits, vegetables, milk, nuts, fish...and we also saw an increased consumption of foods that were more unhealthy…(such as) donuts, cakes, fried chicken, beer, liquor, that sort of thing.”

Many first year students got bigger around the waist. (iStock)

Programs could help form better habits, suggests researcher

Besides gains in weight, the students had increased BMIs, bigger waist circumferences and more body fat. 

Other research suggests that habits formed in university are likely to persist in later life. For this reason, Beaudry suggests programs be offered to post-secondary students to help them form better habits: “maybe some nutritional seminars so they can make more informed decisions...things like cooking classes...weight training classes, gym orientation classes, things like that for these students to...take away some of the barriers to making these healthy choices.”

The study used self-reporting questionnaires from 229 female and 72 male first-year Canadian university students. It was published in the journal PLOS ONE.

Hear Kayleigh Beaudry explain her study on weight gain in first year university students and its implications.

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It’s certainly not every summer cottage in a serene setting surrounded by trees and nature that has a large artillery piece commanding the view out over the tranquil lake.

For many decades a German Krupp 150mm heavy howitzer from WWI, itself now over 100 years old, has been silently guarding an historic cottage at Sturgeon lake about 160 kilometres north-east of Toronto in the heart of Ontario’s cottage country.

Now the once deadly, but long since tranquil piece of military history is going to a new home in a more appropriate setting,

Robert Bell and Celia Denov are the current owner of the cottage known as Chateau de la Haie. I spoke to Mr. Bell by mobile phone from Dunsford, Ontario

The story of the WWI German howitzer at a cottage in Ontario,EN_Interview_1-20190704-WIE10

When the First World War broke out, tens of thousands of young men rushed to be among the first of subsequent vast numbers of Canadian men and women to enlist. Among them were hundreds of Canada’s elite young men, students, graduates, and staff, from the University of Toronto. Eventually over 5,000 university affiliates would serve during the war. Although they joined several different units, the one directly associated with the university was the, 67th “Varsity” Battery, Canadian Field Artillery.

The deadly 15cm heavy howitzer as it would have appeared over 100 years ago. (via militaryfactory com)

After the war, the men formed a tight bond with regular gatherings for decades and even a newsletter. A few years after the war they rented and eventually purchased a log cabin as a fishing and meeting  place to get away from the city and enjoy the peace of nature.

Circa 1923, a 150mm howitzer (L) and a 77mm artillery piece, gifts from the War Records Commission, sit on the front lawn of the University of Toronto. The howitzer is undoubtedly the same one obtained by the 67th Bty veterans for their fishing lodge.( U of T-Soldier's Tower)

They named it after the Canadian Expeditionary Force headquarters building in France at the Chateau de la Haie.

It also became a repository for many of their wartime artefacts and souvenirs, almost like a small museum. In late 1939 they acquired the Krupp artillery piece and it was moved up to their lodge where it has maintained its silent vigil for all these many decades.

Photos in the cottage from the Toronto Telegram newspaper of Nov 17,1939 as the gun is loaded onto a truck for the trip from Toronto to the veteran's lodge at Sturgeon Lake. The sign says "This gun won from the Hun in World War I, now en route to Chateau de la Haie, Dunsford Ontario, 67th (Varsity) Battery Ass'n (supplied)

Eventually with time and age and as the former members passed on, it was sold.  Current owners, Robert Bell and Celia Denov recently decided that as time marches on and the cottage may eventually pass to other hands, the historic gun needs a proper, more public, and safe place for preservation and display.

As such it has been donated to the Royal Canadian Artillery museum at the military base in Shilo, Manitoba.

The Krupp 15cm heavy howitzer. The barrel had either been damaged in war or had otherwise slid back beyond full recoil position. This weekend it will head to the artillery museum in Manitoba for restoration and display (supplied)

This weekend there will be music and ceremony with family, friends, other cottagers and local residents and some military personnel. There will also be some heavy equipment to load the gun onto a truck for its long journey out west and some restorative attention before display to the public at the impressive RCA museum.

Additional information

RCA Museum-

Soldiers’ Tower University of Toronto

University of Toronto News Nov 2018- images fr...

A new online poll of some 4,500 Canadians lists financial issues as their main concern as we head towards an October general election.

The wide-ranging poll commissioned by Canada’s public broadcaster CBC shows a disconnect between what financial statistics show, and what Canadians themselves are feeling.

Ian Lee (PhD) is an associate professor at Carleton University at the Sprott School of Business in Ottawa

Professor Ian Lee discusses a new poll suggesting Canadians biggest concern is the increasing cost of living EN_Interview_1-20190703-WIE10

Lee says his examination of statistics shows the Canadian economy doing well, even when compared to other OECD countries. Yet Canadians say they’re highest concern is financial.

He says generally speaking the post war baby boom generation in Canada is doing quite well, but the “millenials” are struggling.

While life is quite affordable in smaller centres, the jobs for the millenials are in the big cities where house prices are out of reach for the vast majority, and even rents  can take up an overly large percentage of someone’s income, especially if that income is not very high to begin with as is usually the case with young people starting out on a career. With costs of everything from food to fuel to heating and clothing going up, it makes it even harder to save.

RCI: Feb 2014: The “Canadian Dream” fading for middle class

RCI: Jul 2018: Even middle class feeling squeezed

Lee adds that what is likely to be a real concern for the economy as a whole are the as yet unknown eventual costs related to climate change. He says these have already been climbing from the many natural disasters in recent years, disasters which also seem to be increasing.

In spite of the positive numbers for the Canadian economy as a whole, he says that because of the inevitable cycle of recovery and recession, Canada is due to face a recession in the coming months.  This will certainly only add to the already existing concerns of Canadians about their financial future.  As a top Canadian concern, the various national political parties will be trying to convince voters in the next few months that they have policies to address those concerns.

Additional information-

CBC: P Armstrong: Jul 2/19: Despite strong economy, cost of living is top concern

Baystreet: G Wilkins: Jul 2/19:  Cost of living is main concern

CBC: E Grenier: Jun 20/19: Poll-Canadians conflicted and worried ahead of election

It doesn't take a genius to know that plastic is a commodity that has--to understate--seen better days.

Everybody's trying to do something about its ill-effects, or at least say they are.

The builders say the idea of building it with recycled bottles was simply a case of thinking outside the box. (Brett Ruskin/CBC )

It appears a pair of Nova Scotia residents may have landed on something with big-time, positive repercussions.

They designed and built a house made out of 612,000 recycled plastic bottles.

An example of the custom slabs that make up the home's walls and roof. (Brett Ruskin/CBC)

That's 612,000 plastic bottles that aren't sitting in a landfill or at the bottom on the ocean or washed up on beach somewhere.

The house is constructed with recycled aluminium, wood and dry wall.

More important, it's made with slabs from recycled polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles--bottles that were reduced to pellets and injected with gas that turned them into foam that was shaped into panels used to build the walls, which provide both structural strength and insulation.

The house was officially built by a company called JD Composites, another way of saying Joel German and David Saulnier.

I spoke by phone with Saulnier on Wednesday.

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Students who took instrumental music classes performed better in high school science, math and English than those who didn’t, according to a study of over 100,000 students in western Canada. This was true even after researchers controlled for such things as gender, ethnicity and socio-economic status.

Those who took several years of instrumental music class had higher scores in math and science in grade 10 and higher English scores in Grade 12 exams and were one year ahead of their peers.

Test results showed that students who had taken instrumental music classes were one year ahead in math, science and English. (iStock)

Results correspond with other study outcomes

The study did not prove that the music instruction caused the better grades, but it did predict that those who studied music got better academic results.

“While we may not fully understand the mechanisms of how music learning transfers to the areas of development that we look at, our current work and numerous studies that we cite suggest that extended engagement with music learning, particularly instrumental music, enhances all of the areas that we looked at from...executive function to socio-personal or socio-emotional development to motivation-related development and brain development,” said Peter Gouzouasis, a professor at the University of British Columbia and one of the authors of the study.

So based on the results, he says, “I would recommend instrumental music (classes) and the earlier children can start learning how to play an instrument and engaging with things like learning how to read notation...how to practice...how to perform not only alone but with other people in an ensemble...All of these things contribute to this kind of development that we’re looking at.”

The study was published in the Journal of Educational Psychology.

Prof. Peter Gouzouasis says he was surprised at the study results.

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