Supriya Dwivedi deserved better.
Words in support of a friend, and a recap of the week that was.
An early Corus promo image, shortly after AM 640 was rebranded to become part of Global News. Supriya, by the way, is on a box here, because I’m way, way taller. We giggled a lot during that photo shoot — it’s a good memory.
Happy weekend, Code 47 readers. It was a fun one here. We got the tree up — the dog is very confused why there is a tree in his house, but he's adapting — and did some seasonal cleaning, making room for what I suspect Santa will soon be bringing for the kids. My wife and I are also engaging in a fun project: we are introducing each other to movies we can't believe the other hasn't seen. On Saturday, we watched Top Gun. She was not impressed, and, in fact, told me that it was “boring.”
But the night before, on Friday, she introduced me to Dirty Dancing, which I did enjoy. It was fun, but I have to admit being surprised, having gone in totally blind, to discover that the movie is a heart-warming tale of two young lovers from different sides of the tracks who bond over a shared love of dance and their effort to help arrange another woman's ultimately botched abortion.
Didn't see that one coming.
I wanted to briefly comment on a news story that broke this week. I have to be cautious in my comments, for reasons that I'm sure most of you will be able to figure out. For three years, I worked for Corus Entertainment, which is the parent company of Global News. I was a radio host at a Corus-owned radio station in Toronto; that station was AM 640 when I started there, but was rebranded Global News Radio 640 Toronto during my employ. During that time, even before 640 was brought under the Global News brand, I contributed to Global News in other capacities, including at live events, on TV and on their website.
When I began my time there, I was co-hosting a show with Supriya Dwivedi. I was moved into another timeslot eventually, but that time Surpiya and I spent together was a lot of fun. A lot. Most people assumed we'd never met before the show started, but that wasn't true. We were friends before, we remained friends after. I hated not getting to work with her every day during my remaining time at Corus.
Supriya has now also left the company, and she's left under circumstances that are being reported on. It's ... not a good situation. You can read this report from Vice News and get a sense of why, or this one (which also puts on the record in the Toronto Star that I am, indeed, a white man, in case you had any doubts).
I'm not going to say much here, for those referred-to-above reasons, but I think you should read these articles, and you should know that it's worse than what was reported. I explained a bit about why on Twitter this week:
I think you should also know how proud I am of Supriya and how happy I am that we met one day, randomly in a hallway. The substance of the matter at hand is actually a genuinely fascinating one, involving legal and moral issues that are complicated. It's hard for me to separate my affection for Supriya from the bigger picture, but that doesn't stop me from granting that the matter under dispute is important.
But one thing isn't complicated, and is very simple. Supriya deserved better than she got, and I suspect those that let her down will come to regret that. Indeed, I suspect they do already:
Perhaps more to come later. But for now, please do read those articles.
And now, the recap.
At TVO.org this week, I wrote, with relief, that Toronto has decided to open up outdoor city run rinks (and other amenities) to allow Torontonians to get some fresh air and entertainment in during what could be a long, difficult winter. "Toronto has a deserved reputation for being a place where fun came to be murdered by a bureaucrat," I wrote. "Is the (city's outdoor recreation) plan perfect? No. Could it go further? Sure. But the fact that the city isn’t planning on using flamethrowers to melt any patch of ice lest some naugthy citizen/potential-COVID-incubator even consider lacing ’em up was a pleasant surprise."
I love Toronto, but yeah, my cynicism slips through sometimes. This town is often great in spite of its government, but credit where it's due.
Also at TVO.org, I wrote in sympathy with small business owners trying to keep up with ever-changing rules and regulations. It's literally my job to keep up with this stuff, but this week, for the first time, I found myself honestly not having a clue what I was supposed to be doing. "As I pulled into the parking lot in front of a big-box store," I recounted, "on a mission to obtain food for a fish, I realized that I had no idea whether I was allowed inside or not. After months of changing rules and regulations, I had no idea what I was supposed to do. ... Many others were having the same problem. A small gaggle of us stood befuddled at the doors of a big-box pet-supply store as a friendly but strained manager explained, over and over, no, you can’t come in. Yes, we are open, but we’ll have to do curbside. The manager even helpfully explained that one of the meal-delivery services in Toronto was now also delivering pet supplies."Even by the standards of what has been a bizarre year, that still made me blink. A bento box for me and some chew toys for my little friend here. Full-service in the time of COVID-19. I wonder whether, in a few months, we’ll be Ubering our vaccines."
Over at the National Post, I wrote on a report by CNN, using leaked Chinese documents, that examines the very beginning of the pandemic, starting with the first reports of something new and dangerous in Wuhan. The Chinese response was, to put it mildly, dysfunctional and ineffective. But it was dysfunctional and ineffective, I argued, in predictable ways. If we're to do better next time, we're going to have to rely on ourselves, not rapid early warning and response from abroad.
"When this is finally over, we’ll have blue-ribbon task forces tripping over public inquiries while trying to evade royal commissions," I wrote. "We’ll spend decades studying the last year. But even now, in the thick of it, certainly we’ve learned the value of preserving stockpiles of critical medical equipment, of having better domestic production capacity for vaccines and other essential goods, of improving our own government communications and responses, of a faster, more meaningful response at points of entry into Canada. (Readers may recall my column from March, in which I described returning to Canada from the United States and strolling through Pearson Airport like I owned the place, even as the Liberals continued to insist that the airports now had enhanced screening. Not so much!) And it especially means not running our hospital system at beyond 100 per cent capacity as a matter of routine, leaving us with no margin for error in the face of a new threat."
That's here, for your reading pleasure.
Also in the Post, I wrote about the reports that a deal between the U.S. and China may be in the making, and how this deal could — could — mean freedom for the two Michaels. "The plight of the Michaels, while obviously tragic for them, is, if nothing else, instructive," I said. "China thought nothing of grabbing two innocent men and throwing them into constantly lit rooms for years on end, denying them access to the outside world and contact with their families and counsel, entirely to put political pressure on Canada. They could have rounded up even more, of course, but two was enough to send the message."But was the message received? Canadian officials, dazzled by the economic value of Canada’s exports (and in some cases, one suspects, the prospect of lucrative Chinese-linked consulting gigs after their time in office is up) have been reluctant to impose whatever costs Canada can on China. Our means are limited, but they are not zero — Australia, a country smaller and more vulnerable than us, has shown far more courage in taking on China than we have. But in Ottawa, just a few weeks ago, while our foreign affairs minister managed to mouth a few platitudes that struck something close to the right notes, he soon fell into observing how valuable tourism from China is to our hospitality sector. As I noted in a column at the time, it was refreshingly honest: our values, and our national self-respect, don’t quite measure up to the value of China to our economy."
And there was my weekly video for the Post, too, on what we know, and don't know, about vaccines.
And by coincidence, I did a longer talk on that very same issue with Jordan Heath-Rawlings for The Big Story podcast. It's always a pleasure to go on with him.
That’s it for this week. Thank you, as always, for reading. Please subscribe if you haven’t yet, and share widely. Take care.
mgurney.responses@gmail.com
Twitter.com/MattGurney