Susan Tran: Canada Is Racist
EPISODE DESCRIPTION
Susan Tran is a Vietnamese Canadian who was kidnapped from her mother in Vietnam at the age of two. But she never knew that she even had a mother because her abductor was her own father, intent on keeping her abduction a secret. After immigrating to Canada, Susan discovered that her mother’s strength and resilience was the foundation for her own self empowerment. Which now allows her to fully embrace her own family and culture, and also empowers her to confront Canada’s special brand of deep seated racism head on without reservation.
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EPISODE CREDITS
Written, recorded, mixed, and mastered by Luz Fleming. Original Music by Luz Fleming, Jacob Bronstein, Sajato Jarrett, and James Ash. Executive Produced by Jacob Bronstein. Production assistance by Davis Lloyd. Theme music by Andy Cotton. Yard Tales branding was designed by Andy Outis.
RELATED LINKS
Visit the web site of our storyteller from this episode’s Call-In Yard Tale: Cal Fussman
Listen to Cal’s podcast here, Big Questions with Cal Fussman, or on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or Google Podcasts.
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Yard Tales – SUSAN TRAN: CANADA IS RACIST
Luz Fleming:
What up, this is Luz Fleming. You’ve come to place where we tell tales of the train and the bus yard, the tenement yard, and the prison yard. We detail close calls and chase stories. We dig into larger conversations about crossing boundaries, the other side of the tracks, borders, and forbidden space. Whether to make big life changes, to forward the artistic or professional practice, to escape peril, or just for the sheer thrill of it.
Susan Tran:
And the worst part about it is I only found out, I’d say decades later, that my dad had kidnapped me and that he had also kept my existence a secret from my mom.
Luz Fleming:
Today I am happy to have Susan Tran share her incredible story. As a Vietnamese refugee, Susan not only tells of her own border crossing but she also digs into the boundaries that she finds within her own family, the city of Vancouver where she immigrated and in the deep ceded colonial racism she experiences as an asian Canadian woman living in BC.
Susan narrates how her mother strength and resilience exemplifies strong women and how that has informed how Susan is today. You do not want to miss this one, trust me. So sit back and let Susan Tran tell you some of her very own Yard Tales.
Susan Tran:
My name is Susan Tran, I am a Vietnamese refugee. I came to Canada in 1981 and I live in Vancouver with my husband and three children.
Well, I’ll give you the most recent history in my generation, my mom’s generation. So, my mom and dad are actually from Hanoi so they are northerners but they kind of saw the writing on the wall and didn’t agree a lot of what was going on so they escaped and I only found out recently that my mom was actually from the north because growing up we always, you know, we were proud southerners. We still referred to Ho-Chi-Minh city as Saigon.
I believe my mom and dad separately came down to the south, I would say, right when he Vietnam war started. Just because it was becoming a very heated place for them to be and especially when you don’t agree with the government, or the communist for that matter. I think they would have most likely been, I’d say, in their twenties—quite young. They escaped down to Saigon and an interesting story is that they didn’t know each other growing up. They were actually an arranged marriage. The marriage was arranged on an agreement that my maternal grandfather would share his business and recipes, he owned a confectionery shop, with my paternal grandfather. And so essentially my mom was sort of sold off for a candy recipe.
You know, so they got married and it wasn’t really a happy marriage, right? Because it was arranged, right? And they kind of progressed throughout the Vietnam War with the government basically coming in and taking away peoples businesses, burning people’s businesses, taking like, no, disappearing family members. That was a very tough time for them and my dad was actually in communications which I think to this point only means he only ran toilet paper. I’m not sure.
My mom had me when she was twenty-seven, so the war had been over for I think two years. But we’re still dealing with the after effects, especially now that the communist have taken over.
My dad was not always on the up and up on being a great husband So there was a lot of infidelity and eventually my mother who was at this point pregnant with my younger twin brothers, she’d had enough. So she just decided, you know I am going to take my daughter and I am going to go back to my mom’s house because in Vietnam, on our culture, when you get married you now belong to your husband’s house. So you live with his household and so that was really progressive for my mom at the time because it’s just unheard of for a woman to take charge like that. She’s an extremely intelligent woman, very educated as well, so she took me and she took me back to her house.
And during that time my dad actually tried to escape Vietnam twice without us and he was going to leave us behind. And he got caught twice and got sent back. The third time, this is when my mom kind of had it, right, and she had taken me back and my dad being the proud Vietnamese man he was was just not going to have it. So he, uh, I was playing in the backyard and he kidnapped me from the backyard.
I was two and a half. My dad really wanted to stick it to my mom and that’s the reason why he kidnapped me. Because he could not fathom a woman telling him what he could do. I absolutely remember none of it and I have a pretty good memory. I can remember as far back vividly as age 5, but anything before that. sometimes I have to wonder if it was so traumatic that I somehow locked that away. And my mom has all these wonderful memories of me when I was a child and I can’t remember a thing.
I actually came here with nine of my uncles. It was eight of my uncles and two friends, but we’re Vietnamese. Everyone is your uncle. Everyone is your aunt. I am pretty sure that they had couriers during this time to bring people along, you know, agents who’d say, “Hey I got a way to get you out of Vietnam, right, you just have to pay me this and I’ll get you across” but you know everyone knows that’s a gamble.
I don’t know if you’ve ever seen the scene where there’s a helicopter coming down on the embassy and everyone is trying to get on that plane? That was it. That was the last time, right, anything after you’re on your own.
And we had to crawl through, like, open sewers and the jungle, and like this is all things that my dad had told me and it was not a short short trip. You’re eating bugs, trying to stay alive, trying to escape, trying to get to the water. Where we got on a boat and we floated with a bunch of other people. Really not knowing where you’re floating. And you know, these aren’t boats that are modern by any sense. Sometimes they’re rafts, right and there is, you know, a hundred people on them and there’s no food cause we can’t carry any food hardly with us. So you’ve got people that are dying around you and they’re sick, right, there’s not much. You have to make some hard decisions.
And thankfully we got to Thailand and we’re admitted to a refugee camp there. I believe that was in July of 1981 and we were there for two months and anybody who’s ever been in a refugee camp can tell you it’s the worst place possible. It’s not even roughing it, there’s nothing, and there’s nothing to go around because there’s so many people there.
What you do in the refugee camps is they go around, they say ok where would you like to go and my dad said he would really like to go to Japan but Japan was I think something like six months away and that’s a maybe if they’re going to take you. But they’re like we have a plane that’s leaving in two weeks and it’s going to Canada.
They gave my dad two choices: Prince Rupert or Vancouver, and I’m very thankful he chose Vancouver. I think my life would be completely different otherwise.
And then we hopped on a plane and came over here with five dollars in our pocket with nine of my uncles. I was three years old when I came to Canada. I actually have a photo that is dated for when we arrived in Canada and we went to a motel that is right up the street on Kingsway. I believe that was October, 1981 and basically we lived downtown. That was the first place we lived, was in the Georgian Towers which are still there. And then we eventually moved to the Mau Dan Gardens which was also called the Pink Projects in Chinatown. And we had the first townhouse that was in there and it was me and ten guys, right, living in Chinatown and my dad got a job washing dishes.
And somebody came up to him and said, “Hey BC Tel is looking to hire, uh, would you be interested in…” you know he was an electronic technician by trade, and he was like maybe I’ll get a chance and he did. He applied and his first job was putting together old rotary phones, or modern rotary phones at the time, in the boot which was Telus’s main office here.
And eventually, slowly, my dad started sponsoring over his parents, his brothers and sisters and some friends and he actually never spoke about my mom. So growing up I didn’t actually, I never thought about it, it was an out of sight out of mind kind of thing. My dad just never spoke about my mom, never spoke about my brothers. There were girlfriends that came and went, right, but again, I just never thought about it and it was really difficult because you know you’re here right and everyone has to work so there are a lot of times even at five years old where I was left alone in the house because people had to work. And so eventually I think my dad just got tired of looking after a little girl and he just wanted to be independent so he sponsored over my brothers and my mom.
And the way I found out was he came to pick me up from school and he says, “We’re going to the airport. We’re going to pick up your mom and your brothers”. And the first thing I’m like, “I have brothers? I have a mom?” And that was literally the first time that I met them.
I was here for seven years before my dad picked me up from school that day to go to the airport. And it was just so bizarre and the worst part about it is I only found out, I’d say decades later, that my dad had kidnapped me and that he had also kept my existence a secret from my mom. He had instructed everyone back in Vietnam to just tell her that I was dead. And I just can’t even imagine, just as a mother myself, what that must feel like. But, you know, my mom is such a strong person that I am so thankful for the person that she is, but yeah that was the first time I met my mom. And she’s just been my source of light and strength the whole time and a true.. she’s just such an inspiring person and she really shows me that when you have difficulties and hardships that you can overcome anything.
And that’s really who she is.
And so she finally came to Canada and the cute thing about it was coming to Canada and coming to place that’s so modern versus Vietnam was hilarious. So her first kind of years here she was trying to emulate what a good Canadian mom would be. So she would let us have like milkshakes for breakfast, bacon, eggs, tater tots, whatever and then she realized, “Oh this isn’t really healthy.” But she has really integrated herself into Canada and made it her life and she’s so proud to be here. But she always does talks about that time because it was difficult. I can’t even imagine, seven years of wondering where your child is. And then she was left back in Vietnam pregnant with my twin brothers and she did tell there were times where they had nothing. She didn’t have enough food for herself in order to breastfeed my brothers so she would actually have to give them milk that was watered down because they didn’t have enough milk also.
So you know there’s a lot of guilt that my mom carries from that. But she never begged, she always worked, and so having her here in Canada I sometimes, you know, growing up I probably gave her a lot of grief because what teenager doesn’t. But now that I’m a mother and a lot more, hopefully wiser, older and wiser, I see what a strong person she is and what a shining example of mothers and women, strong women. So I feel that my confidence in who I am stems from who she is.
She had an inkling of what was going on, but what can you do. In Vietnam it’s so difficult to be a woman, especially during that time because everything is your word against your husbands and everyone is going to take your husbands side, right, and you know there’s a lot of gaslighting that goes on too, like, you’re crazy, right, you know why would he do that, you know obviously something happened to your daughter. No one expects to have their daughter, their child playing in the backyard of their home and to be gone the next minute. And I think about how she must have felt so crazy that day and being pregnant and having to go through everything she went through. To giving birth to my brothers, right, and to having to work, I mean especially what she would do was make some cakes every day or make some items and sell them on the street, right. Sell them on the market.
Whatever she could do to survive and even though she had the support of her parents, right, no matter what as a woman you’re very much on your own. And when I think about her story I think about how deep she had to dig in order to find the strength to carry on.
And even to this day she still suffers from having to deal with my dad’s family. They have never been kind to her. She has actually lived an extremely unkind life at the hands of his family. So she just dug in and said I have two boys that I need to take care of and I think where I get my eternal I guess sunshine and happiness and positivity is from her. Because all I see from photos back in Vietnam is her, and my, they’re always smiling. It was always, you know she made everything fun for them because she knew that she had to continue on. Right, it’s either fight or flight.
When my dad sponsored them over and we to the airport to pick them up. My Dad actually kind of acted as if like, “Oh here’s your mom, here’s your brothers.” I know other people can understand this if they’ve ever had a situation like this but how do you connect with somebody who you know youre supposed to have a connection with but know nothing about them. And it was difficult because I’d only known my father so for a long time I had a lot of animosity with my mom because it’s confusing as a child right. Here’s your mom and think to yourself, “Where were you?” Because in my eyes I see everyone else coming from Vietnam but I didn’t have a mom. And my mom desperately wanted to have that connection and relationship with me but it’s been so many years it was really difficult.
So they ended up moving right into the townhouse with us in the projects. So my dad allowed his brothers, his sisters, his mom and his dad to live on the upper floors and we had to sleep in the basement, on a mattress, on the floor. My brothers and myself were treated very poorly by my paternal grandmother. She absolutely detested us, she didn’t want anything to do with us. She hated my mom for no reason at all and it was really hard to be in that house because my mom knew that her only mission at this point was to protect us and our interest against these other people that didn’t care about us.
Luz Fleming:
What’s up guys? This is Luz, the producer of Yard Tales. I want to take a minute to ask you for a favor. A show like this takes a lot of time and effort to produce, we’re not a big team. We don’t have any sponsors contributing money or influencing what I make or what I say. This is independent media. If that’s something you support please help me to keep making this show and providing it to you for free by donating to Yard Tales. A single dollar helps but if even a small percentage of listeners gave the price of some of those bomb ass rolls of seven flavor beef from Song Huong well... you get the idea.
Just go to yardtales.live/donate and click on the button that says “donate now” That’s yardtales.live/donate, any amount is really appreciated. Thanks so much.
And now let’s get back to the new family dynamic that Susan faced with her mom and brothers moving in with her.
Susan Tran:
My parents just never got along, so my dad was a philanderer, he cheated a lot. And my mom always knew something was going on. When were talking from the get-go from the day that she arrived she knew that something was going on she knew that he was having extra-marital affairs but once again it’s her word against his and he just framed it as she was crazy. And then also would tell the kids, us, “Oh your mom she’s exaggerating, she’s crazy, don’t listen to her.” And this kind of went on and then as we got older we did notice things.
Like my dad had an electronic shop and we would go over there and I would be acutely aware that his “visiting friend” was not a friend, per se.
But Christmas day, uh, my birthday is on Christmas day. It was my thirteenth birthday, my mom knocks on my bedroom door and says, “Come on out, I want to tell you something.” She said, “Your dad is, is, he’s been cheating on me.” And you know when you’re thirteen you’re like I don’t know what you want me to do with this information, right. And I kind of told her, “Well, if you’re unhappy then you need to leave, like, you need to not be with dad, right, because this is wrong. You know cheating is wrong, period.” But she never did, she didn’t leave him, she allowed herself to be abused like this for many more years until one fateful day.
So my dad had an electronic shop and my actually ran the front office. And she found out he had been screwing her best friend. That her best friend and my father had been carrying on an affair for at least a year or two. So, again, her word against his, so she gave them one last chance that day, she said, “Listen, I’m going to let you confess that you guys are together and if you are okay I’ll make my decision from there but if you don’t confess I can’t guarantee what’s going to happen next.”
And they were like, “You’re crazy.” She said, “Sure, ok.”
So she knew that they would always get together at his shop after work because she would come home and cook us dinner. They would always call her to make sure that she was at home, but she forwarded our home phone to her cell phone that day. And I was at home with my brothers, we had no idea that anything was going on.
So they called her to make sure and she’s like, “Yeah I’m going to make the kids dinner and go to AquaFit.” but she was really standing outside the shop with fifty of her brothers, and sisters, and friends. And they bust into the shop to find my dad on the floor with this woman, mid coitis. I get a phone call and it’s my aunt, “Come down to the shop right now.”
So I take my brothers, we’re driving down there, like, what’s going on, what happened? We get there and there’s this huge group of people outside and I get in there and my mom is just going off at this lady. She’s just like finger wagging, neck jerking and my dad is in a corner and he is shielding this naked woman behind him.
I punched her. I just reeled back and I punched her right in the face and my dad starts screaming saying things like, “We have to respect our elders!.” right and my mom, she grabbed my hand up in the air and starts ringing it like I’ve won a knockout fight or something. She starts going, “The winner!”
And then just starts telling me to hit her harder, I said, “No, no, we’re going to exit here. Okay? It’s not going to be good for anybody.”
And basically we went home, my dad didn’t come home that night. He comes home the next day, tries to explain to me that I don’t understand what happened and I said, “No I clearly understand what happened and it’s wrong and mom deserves an apology and you have a lot to atone for, but if you guys are unhappy then you need not be together.” And my mom’s concern the whole time was she didn’t want for us to come from a broken home because in our culture to be divorced is as if you’re cursing your family and there was a lot of shame behind that.
I said, “Mom, we’re in Canada there’s no shame behind it, don’t worry.” Right. I am strong enough I can deal with this but what it evolved to is my mom and my dad giving me an ultimatum saying like if you love me you’ll take my side. And of course I take my mom’s side but I’m not going to be ripped apart by my dad either so I said, “I’ve had it, both of you are fucked up. Both of you need to figure it out on your own. I’m moving out.” and at seventeen years old I moved out which was insanely progressive for a Vietnamese girl as well. And it was really difficult, it was really difficult because I knew that I had to move out of there to break out of the situation that was going on. And also break the cycle of this abuse that was going on.
My relationship with my parents was strained for a long time. Strained because there’s a lot of different factors there. There was me not agreeing with how they lived their life which I mean now that I am older I realize it really had nothing to do with me and it wasn’t really my decision but it also had to do with the fact that I am Canadian, essentially Canadian. And I am very head strong and I make my own decisions and I will listen to what you have to say but I’m not going to take your advice if I don’t feel like it. And I am very sassy, I’m very outspoken and it’s kind of funny because my parents always say, oh, they didn’t like the fact that I am outspoken and I thought well I had to learn it from somewhere, right. I get it from you.
And you know they struggle with the fact because they always, you know, the goal is to have a sweet, nice, Vietnamese girl, right, you know, she’s very skinny, she’s beautiful, she speaks well, right, she’s polite to everyone, she cooks and she cleans, and all that, right. And that was just not me, I mean I did all that but I do that because I want to, not because anybody is asking me to and I just didn’t go the traditional route that good asian kids go through. I was a rebel, right, did I get into trouble? One hundred percent but my dad always said, “As much as you were a wild child, you’re very intelligent.” So book smart and street smart which I think was important at the time, right.
Growing up in Vancouver in the eighties, well we grew up in Chinatown which is a predominantly asian neighborhood. You know, I didn’t really notice a difference because there were so many asian people around me, the only time that we did notice a difference was if we went outside of that kind of enclave. And we just experienced your basic run of the mill racism, especially in the eighties everybody thinks that if they see an asian face that you’ve got to be Chinese. Can’t be any other race but Chinese, right. I’ve never in my life ever had anybody even guess my background correctly when my last name is Tran, that’s like Smith for Vietnamese people. So it’s always been confusing why no one can guess but there was just a lot language barriers we came across a lot of racism. People calling you a chink right to your face, you know, people assuming you don’t speak english. You must have an accent talking about how your food is gross, right, but we just kind of motored along in that race game because that’s what you’re used to. You get climatized to it, right. You climatized to people being ignorant and stupid so you don’t really think about it but now in the climate that we are today I feel that hopefully it’s emboldened more people to speak up against it.
In Canada we live in a bubble of ignorance around race relations. You will hear from a lot of caucasian people, “Canada isn’t racist.” Oh no, we’re super racist, right, we’re just different from Americans. You know Americans will, if I don’t like you I’m going to shout it out from the rooftops, I’m going to let you know. Where here it’s very underground, its very passive aggressive, right, there’s you know people whisper it behind their doors, right. You better believe the house next door to you could be full of racists, right. I’ve even experienced, you know, racist remarks within my husband’s family and there have been things that have been said where at the moment I should have said something but I didn’t. I don’t have a problem now but usually it would involve like a grandparent, right, and then you’re told, “Well they’re older and you have to understand.” I’m like no, I don’t have to understand. Your grandmother is racist, I’m going to let you know right now.
You know, I have, I struggle with even my husband because he’s never been through hardship. He’s never been poor, he’s never had to fight for his life, alright, he grew up in a very idyllic life, right. He’s never had someone call him a racial slur to his face. He’s never had someone physically hit him based on the way he looks. So it’s a struggle, right, it’s a struggle every time and it’s hard for him to understand because I try to tell him, “Listen our children are half-asian but they present very asian so growing up they’re going to experience racism. They’re going to experience bias and you need to tap into that because you need to understand when it happens and you need to know when it happens and identify it, right. Because they’re going to be confused when someone treats them a certain way when they’re kids, they’re not going to know what’s motivated behind that.”
I mean even to that effect, we have that at school where my son was having difficulties but not really difficulties but the teacher would just pick on him, constantly. And she would single him out for things, right, and he was even bullied as in physically beat up by a white child at the school. This teacher had the audacity to come to me and say, “Well I spoke that child and they said that they were just defending themselves.” And I could not believe she was saying that to me. When I came to her I said, to tell her something happened and she would try to turn it around and frame. She even went further to tell me that this child is from a very good family and she knows him and he’s a really good kid.
Yes, everything is taken personally, everything is taken as a slight, which, but they don’t even understand you have been dealing with this your whole life, right. There’s not a day that goes by where there’s not some sort of micro aggression, something being said, right, or you know you have a perception of me because I’m X, Y, Z, right. You’ve never walked a mile in my shoes, you don’t understand what it is to live my life. I mean, we as BIPOC and asian people have to literally live our lives every day as if it’s business as usual and if something happens that’s just a bump in the road and we just keep on walking and keep on doing.
I think it’s crazy that we’re talking about whether or not Canada is racist because we have a prime minister that has worn black face on more than one occasion and the strange part about it is even thought Trudeau has done this there’s so many people who are apologist for it saying, “Well it happened a long time ago. You know the context of it was, it was an Arabian Nights theme.” And they say it as if because they’re allowing it that we should just let it pass as well, which I think is just really strange, right. Once again it’s people’s blindness to what’s going and I think if anything the leader of Canada wearing black face is a huge problem and it should have been an automatic, this is wrong, he needs to be put to task for this and really what did he do, he issued an apology, right. But you have your apology but did you do any further work to that? You didn’t you just kind of dropped the ball and you wanted it to be swept under the rug and forget about it.
What we consider liberal in North America is actually quite conservative compared to say Europe. I mean even in the United States, right, they fight over things like universal health care. That’s a political talking point, whereas in Europe that’s a basic human need and that wouldn’t even be a talking point so it is interesting what we in Northern America think is liberal is actually quite conservative.
I’m Vietnamese, we only have one volume and that’s loud. Get out what you need to say, say it, right, so no matter what there are a lot of moments where when I hear about you know violence against asians, right, I just, inside my head I just think, “I wish a bitch would. I wish a bitch would.” And then I’m going to let them have it and I want this to go to the news, I want everyone to know, right, so that my story can empower other people that we’re not taking your shit anymore.
And then on top of that, you’ve got people who are racist, asian cultures that are racist against each other. And I think a lot of that stems from your mom and dad, that generation, it’s starting to die off now. I find that with like say, Gen Z, a lot of people like to make fun of Gen Z, right, but I feel that no matter what they’re paving the way for us to finally get somewhere with understanding that we’re all different and that’s ok and to celebrate those differences. But growing up definitely my mom did not like Chinese people. I asked her one time I said, “Why don’t you like Chinese people?” She said, “Well, they occupied us.” And I’m like, “Yeah, like two hundred years ago, you got to let that go.” Right, but you know she still has it where she’ll think Chinese people are always trying to cheat you. Chinese people are always trying to make things better for themselves, well I’m like we’re all trying to make things better for ourselves, right. But even me, I grew up not like Filipino people because my mom said that they were the lower asians because they are considered the ones that are doing the grunt work, right, they’re the maids and all that.
And there was a point in my life where I realize that’s really wrong, but I still had that engrained in me, forever. That there was a superiority and a ranking of asians.
I know that my story sounds kind of wild, right, and a lot of people can’t wrap their heads around, you know, being kidnapped or coming to Canada but my story is not unique. It’s the story of many immigrants and everything that’s happened to me is, I don’t find it extraordinary because so many people share the same story and when I tell my story, what I am trying to tell people is, it’s usually in response to a caucasian person telling me that I have so much hardship in my life, right, and I tell my story to say,
Listen, you can have all this happen to you and still rise above it. I don’t use it as a woe is me story. I don’t tell people so that they feel bad for me, I tell them so that hopefully my story gives them a sense of gratitude for what they have. That’s my hope for people, but right now as a mother my only job at the moment is to arm my children with the strength that my mother gave me and the confidence to say, I am more than my skin tone. I am more than my racial make up.
I am a person and I am going to move forward and I am going to just be the best person that I can be. That’s all I can hope for them. And as much as I am so Canadian, I’m still that immigrant inside and all immigrants when they come here are in search of a better life. That’s all we want, a better life, and I think that’s my guiding star, that’s my you know, that’s my north star. It’s, a better a life. My parents came here to give a better life to us and my job now as a parent, as an immigrant, is to give my children a better life and to give them a good sense of who they are.
I spent many years trying to kind of live between the western world and the eastern world. Like being a good Vietnamese girl but also being a strong Canadian person and I think that I found my peace and my balance to it and that just came with age, it just comes with a stillness inside of knowing you’re Vietnamese. You’re who you are, I have a strong sense of my culture, I know where I come from, I know how my people are, right, I can speak the language, I can write it, I can read it, and that gives me a great sense of pride and I want to instill that in my family and my kids so that they know, hey guys, at least you’re fifty percent one hundred percent something.
Luz Fleming:
Thanks so much for coming on the show and sharing your Yard Tale with us Susan. These are all conversations we need to have with our families, our friends, our neighbors and even those we might not always agree with.
I recorded and produced this episode of Yard Tales on the unceded territory of the Squamish, Tsleil-Waututh and Musqueam Nations, or Vancouver, BC.
Thanks so much for doing us today. Yard Tales is executive produced by Jacob Bronstein, Andy Outis is the design director, production assistance by Davis Lloyd. Original music by Jacob Bronstein, Sajato Jarrett, James Ash and myself. Shout out to Andy Cotton for the fire theme music. Thanks for letting me put a little yard mix on it. If you like Yard Tales be sure to follow on Apple, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts. And please use Apple Podcasts to rate and review Yard Tales because it really helps to point more listeners to the show. You can find more information, images, and additional audio at yardtales.live, and check us out on Instagram @yardtales, and Facebook @yardtalespodcast. If you want to leave feedback or reach out for anything reason, send an email to info@yardtales.live. Be sure to listen to the end of each episode where we feature audience member’s own call in yard tales. And be sure to tune in next week when renowned radio documentarian Garth Mullins tells his own life time of yard tales.
Garth Mullins:
It’s so grim, I couldn’t possibly want to stand there and said I had anything to do that, it’s terrible, you know, we’re losing. Things are fucked. I’m fucking holding a mic out into this howling storm and documenting the apocalypse.
Luz Fleming:
And if you’re still listening that means you might have had a real connection to Yard Tales and maybe you have a Yard Tale of your own that you want to tell. If so, go to yardtales.live/callinyardtales for detailed instructions on how to do so. If we dig your story, we’ll feature it in a future episode. And now we’ll let the one and only Cal Fussman take us out with his own call in Yard Tale.
But before he does, I got to say, Cal, sometimes you cross a line that benefits yourself, not realizing how much it harms others and sometimes you get what’s coming to you because of it. I’ll just leave it at that.
Cal Fussman:
Hey this is Cal Fussman and I’m happy to be here with Luz Mob on Yard Tales. Forbidden space, alright, I got a story to tell ya. So this goes back to, the beginning of the nineties, at that point, I was writing magazine stories in New York and Life magazine asked me to investigate sharks. Now when you think of sharks you think immediately, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, I can’t even do the music well, I am sorry about that but you get the idea. It’s that John Williams theme from Jaws and all the hysteria that was created from that movie. Well so we have this image of this gigantic mouth filled with teeth, coming at us to chomp down. But the nature of this story was to look at reality and the reality is is that very few people get killed in shark attacks around the world every year, very few.
And at the time close to a hundred million sharks were getting killed by people every year, they were being fished to provide shark fin soup, they were basically under attack around the globe. And there were consequences to this because sharks were like the sanitation workers of the sea. They would hunt down lesser creatures or certainly the weakest would fall to them and it kept the ocean healthy. And so it was a terrible thing that we’re doing, killing all these sharks, while at the same time creating this mythology that if you go in the water you better watch out because you can get eaten alive at any second.
So I went out to just look at the reality. I started studying all kinds of sharks, going to different places to observe them and it’s one thing to look at a shark in a Seaquarium but you got to go into the ocean if you’re really going to do this right. Now I’m not a deep sea diver and it’s Life magazine, and Life magazine back then it was a monthly magazine that was famous for its photography. And so the story was going to be written with like a picture of me, next to a shark. We’re going to have to do something under water, I don’t dive but I was just going to figure a way how to get close to a shark and I got, I started to get very curious, I started to appreciate sharks. And so I wanted to know what a shark felt like because I heard that their skin was like sandpaper. I wanted to get close to a shark, but, like how do you do that?
Well there was a group of scientists in the Bahamas that were researching sharks and what they would do is they would go out and fish for sharks, catch the sharks, and then all night the shark would be fighting against the line and by the next morning the shark would be really tired and then the scientists could go down and get close to sharks and observe them. Do whatever research they wanted to do. And so they said, “Why don’t you along and when we catch a good shark you can go down, you don’t even need to have your divers license, because we’re going to be in pretty shallow water and you can do it with a snorkel. Just snorkel at the surface, hold your breath, go down under and you should have enough time to get close to the shark, maybe even touch the shark and then you come back up.” Very simple, ok cool.
So, I got down to the Bahamas, everybody’s really nice and at night they catch a shark. A tiger shark, it’s like eighteen feet long, and they’re all very happy. The sharks been fighting against the line all night, “Okay Cal, come on down! You’re going to get a look at the shark up close.” So I go down, there’s no cage, there’s no protective anything, I’m just a guy with a snorkel and swim trunks and one of the scientists gets me close. Points out to where the shark is and says, “All you got to do is just hold your breath, go down, get close to the shark. Only you will know how much breath you have, but as long as you’re feeling like you can hold your breath, stay down there and when you’re running out of air, come on up. Mission accomplished.”
Okay, great. So I dive in, got the snorkel on, I’m swimming around, they point to where the shark is and now I go down. And it’s very hard to explain the feelings that you get when you’re approaching like an eighteen foot tiger shark. Now they’ve told you, “Look it’s almost sleeping, it’s really tired. It’s been fighting and fighting and fighting. Don’t worry about it. You can get close.”
So I am getting closer, closer, closer and now I’m like touching the shark’s back and it is like sandpaper. And now I’ve got two hands on the shark’s back, and now I’m moving forward, and now my whole body is basically over the shark, it’s like I’m riding the shark. I got plenty of breath. I’m thinking, “Wow, this is, this is amazing to be in this situation.” And then, in an instant, this shark’s head just wheels on me. I can see its face, I can see its teeth and since we’re very close to the bottom here. When it moves, all of this murkiness is kicked up because the water was very clear and now it’s all murky and I’m just thinking, “Oh man, that’s it” Because I entered forbidden territory. You know, the shark is saying, okay, I’m tired, you want to feel the skin, fine, but you ain’t riding on my back. You know this ain’t no bronco riding course and just turned on me. And this is all happening in a fraction of a second. I see this shark’s head and now everything is murky. I don’t even know, like, am I in the shark’s, am I in the shark’s belly? And I’m just frantically, frantically, paddling, paddling to just get up to the surface and suddenly next thing you know, my head pops over the surface, I’m kind of gasping for air. Swimming back to the boat, people are kind of like laughing, but that’s the last time I’ll do that.