For 28 days after her husband’s death, poet Molly Peacock woke up and cried. It was, in her words, a “full moon cycle" of tears. Then, on the 29th day, the tears subsided. The feelings that followed surprised her, they were of a wider spectrum than she expected — she likened it to a “widow’s crayon box”. In the documentary What Can a Widow Be?, Molly takes us with her on her journey as a widow. She discovered the cliché of the widow — the perpetual mourner — does not tell the full story....

This week on Storylines, the voices of Canadian World War One soldiers, sharing their stories of the front lines. You’ll hear these veterans talk about poison gas attacks, shellfire, the mud, the air war, and even the food.    The stories come from interviews with World War One veterans done for the CBC program Flanders Fields which first aired on November 11, 1964.  Also, a story from Montreal about a century-old Catholic church that faced a dilemma over what to do with its bells. After the...

In 2013, American psychologist James Hardt made a promise to Indigenous kids in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan. He said his brainwave training would transform their lives by increasing IQ, curing mental health issues and potentially giving them superpowers like levitation.  Perhaps the most surprising thing — he convinced the Prince Albert School Board and the research ethics board at the University of Regina — to approve this proposal, allowing him to experiment on these children.    On this...

On this week's Storylines, we start on January 6, 2021, when the U.S. Capitol was overrun by rioters A few blocks away, as the dramatic scenes unfolded, CBC journalist Katie Nicholson was confronted by a group of angry Trump supporters who heckled her and said she should get out of their country. One woman accused her of “spewing BS” and said that she and her crew should run.  Ever since that day Katie has been thinking about who those people were, and what compelled them to join the crowd...

Some twenty five years ago, in a small, nondescript building in downtown Tokyo, children gather to look at a suitcase displayed behind glass. They write poems and draw pictures about the suitcase because of the tragedy it represents. The suitcase came from Auschwitz.  This suitcase belonged to Hana Brady, who was born in the Czech Republic, and whose life was brutally cut short by the Holocaust. She was first deported to the Theresienstadt concentration camp in 1942, and then to Auschwitz in...

Tiny forests are taking root around the world. These dense forests, often the size of a tennis court, are jam-packed with trees. The density means the forest grows faster, which has made them popular in communities who want to grow forest canopy, making them a popular trend in urban and suburban areas. But do tiny forests live up to the hype? Join CBC climate reporter Ben Shingler as he explores this forest phenomenon. Ben takes us on a journey that goes to a tiny forest college students...

In 2015, Yasser El Tahan picked up a stranger while off roading in Newfoundland. Days later, Yasser learned that the man he’d taken into the woods was a missing person named Jonathan Hannaford.  Jonathan would be found a few days later, but this chance encounter on a country road haunted Yasser. So he decided to find Jonathan and talk to him about what happened that day.  In this documentary, Yasser and Jonathan reconnect to retrace their steps. Together, they dig into what led to...

She pretended to be a nurse in Colorado, Ontario, Alberta and B.C., posed as a teacher in Alberta and Quebec and worked as a hairstylist in multiple cities. And no matter how many times this serial imposter ends up behind bars, Brigitte Cleroux just keeps returning to her life of deception. In the documentary, “The Professional,” Bethany Lindsay follows Cleroux as she zig-zags across North America, racking up criminal convictions along the way. Disturbed patients, a bullied former student...

Every day, hundreds of people cross the border from Sudan into Chad, searching for safety. They’re escaping a brutal civil war in Sudan which has been raging since April of 2023. In the conflict, men have routinely been rounded up and killed. Women have been raped. Homes and villages have been raided and destroyed. The conflict has forced 10.5 million people from their homes. More than 600,000 of those refugees have ended up in Eastern Chad. For many, their first stop is an area of open...

In this episode, we step inside a Toronto classroom where some 30 students from diverse backgrounds lift their voices and sing as part of the University of Toronto’s first-ever Black gospel choir class. Led by Professor Darren Hamiliton, the students, many with no background in gospel music, learn that there is more to this musical tradition than they imagined.  In this documentary, Let it Shine, CBC doc producer Alisa Siegel follows these students over the course of the academic year as...

Dylan Bullock, a former firefighter with the BC Wildfire Service, has heard about close calls. Like the time a colleague lost sight of the vehicle ahead and ended up in the path of a forest fire. They had to abandon their truck after it got stuck on a tree stump and escape on foot. Another time Dylan was hospitalised after his clothes caught fire during a controlled burn, caused by improperly mixed fuel. Talk to people like Dylan, and they'll tell you fire seasons are getting hotter,...

Early in the morning in Winnipeg, outside a grocery store, Dmytro is about to start his shift. Dmytro, who is in their mid-20s and identifies as non-binary, has only been in Canada for 18 months. They fled Ukraine when the Russian invasion was looming and could only leave the country because of a medical condition.    However, Ukraine amended its medical military exemptions, and Dmytro now fears they would be considered fit for duty. Plus, under Ukraine’s new conscription laws, they is...

30 years ago, the Stanley Cup playoffs ignited a rumour that has been messing with Jane Macdougall’s life ever since.  It was June 14, 1994, and the Vancouver Canucks had made it all the way to Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals against the New York Rangers. The Canucks were magic on ice, so when they lost by just one goal, fans expected the team to come back blazing the next year.  Instead,1995 was a total letdown. The team seemed to have lost its chemistry and when a popular defenceman was...

At a union hall in Detroit’s industrial River Rouge neighborhood, workers have come together to vote for a new leader. The event feels festive, with a fire pit, a tent, and even 'walking tacos,' which are taco meat mixed into a bag of Doritos. But there are dark clouds on the horizon for the future of their industry. Many of these workers are employed by the Great Lakes Steel Works, a massive steel mill that provides raw materials for the U.S. automotive industry. These workers have a lot...

In January, some New Hampshire voters thought they had gotten a robo call from Joe Biden, telling them to skip voting in the state primary.  The robocall voice at the other end of the phone wasn’t Biden at all. In fact it was a deepfake, created by a political consultant working for a longshot democratic challenger to Biden. The audio itself was made by a magician in Texas, using a simple website that created the deepfake using text-to- speech audio using AI.  The fake Biden robocall shows...

Claire Hafner at 47, is among the top women boxers in the world. She’s just about ready for retirement but wants to win the Canadian title before hanging up her gloves.  However, a question hangs over the timing of when retirement will come.  Claire is also among a small group of women athletes who are participating in a landmark study on the effects of trauma in mostly combat sports.  Every year she gets tested for signs of head trauma to see if all those hits are leading to a long-term...

CBC producer Naheed Mustafa, then a freelance writer and broadcaster, landed at the Kabul airport on a blistering hot summer day back in 2008. She’d come to report on how the country had been transformed by the U.S. led war.  By that point a lot had changed. In Kabul Afghans felt free to come and go as they pleased, women wore burkas but they also wore jeans, tunics and pretty headscarves. There had been an election too, but at the same time, a violent Taliban resurgence was...

When Julia Pagel was seven months pregnant, she and her husband faced all the usual new parent decisions: making a birth plan, deciding which stroller to buy and whether to use reusable or disposable diapers.  However, there was one choice that was extra tricky for the two of them. What would their child's last name be? Should they just go along with standard practice of giving the baby the father’s last name?  The tradition of giving the dad’s name to the child didn’t sit right with Julia,...

When Julia Pagel was seven months pregnant, she and her husband faced all the usual new parent decisions: making a birth plan, deciding which stroller to buy and whether to use reusable or disposable diapers.  However, there was one choice that was extra tricky for the two of them. What would their child's last name be? Should they just go along with standard practice of giving the baby the father’s last name?  The tradition of giving the dad’s name to the child didn’t sit right with Julia,...

On May 1st the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion will begin commercial operations.  It marks the end of a 12 year saga that included protests, legal challenges and the purchase of the pipeline itself by the federal government.  When Ottawa stepped in to buy TMX six years ago, it had an estimated price tag of $7.4 billion dollars. Today the cost has grown to $34 billion dollars.  As the polarizing project nears the finish line, CBC producer Allison Dempster visits communities along the...

Mary Kajumba needed money to make a better life for her daughter. So, with the help of a placement agency she left her home in Uganda, and went to Iraq where she got a job as a restaurant cleaner. It wasn’t long after she realised she was in trouble. Mary says she found herself working 18 hour days, sharing cramped accommodation with 30 other workers and never getting paid.  But then, help came from an unexpected place. Voice memos, from a man in Vancouver who was working for an anti...

Over the past near-century, Academy Award categories have come and gone. In the silent film era there was an award for Best Title Writing. You know, the written cards that summarized the “dialogue”? Oscar worthy.  This year’s 96th Academy Awards broadcast saw Oscars handed out in a whopping 23 different categories, from the big wins like Best Picture, to awards for behind-the-scenes expertise in costuming and score. But one group of people thinks there should be yet another added to that...

On October 23rd, 2023 Bob Hallaert, a man with a history of intimate partner violence, shot and killed Angie Sweeney days after she broke up with him. They’d been together for about three years.  What happened that day didn’t just shatter the Sweeney family, it shattered Sault Ste Marie. And many believe what happened to Angie could have been stopped.  Intimate Partner Violence is at a record high in Canada. On average, a woman is killed by an intimate partner every six days in this...

Public washrooms are few and far between in Canada. When nature calls, it’s often a scramble to find a coffee shop or mall restroom that's accessible. In Montreal this is certainly the case, but it wasn’t always so. The city used to boast a decent network of public washrooms, constructed before the Second World War. Where did they go? And why, to this day, do we have so few public washrooms in Canada? On this week's Storylines, CBC Montreal's Ainslie MacLellan uncovers the answers. This...