Canada calling

I was on CBC Radio Canada yesterday.

Alberta@Noon is an hour-long phone-in broadcast on CBC Calgary and yesterday’s topic, hosted by Judy Aldous, was the UK’s generational smoking ban.

The programme began with a clip of me explaining that if you can drive a car, join the army, purchase alcohol and vote at 18, when you are legally an adult, you should be allowed to buy tobacco as well.

Although I was listening via the Zoom link, I wasn’t scheduled to take part in the discussion until the second half of the programme.

I was brought in earlier than intended however when another guest, representing Action on Smoking and Health Canada, questioned why someone with tobacco industry links was on the programme.

His name was Les and he sounded even more insufferable than Deborah Arnott!

However, while Deborah merely tries to undermine me by pointing out that Forest is funded by tobacco companies, I don’t remember her ever questioning why someone with tobacco industry links has been invited to take part in any particular programme.

(She might do it privately but I've never heard her say it on air.)

Anyway, I was invited to respond, and then talk about the UK's generational smoking ban, so I was happy with that. Thanks to CBC Calgary for the invitation and what seemed to be a well-balanced discussion.

Being on CBC Radio reminded me of the five days I spent in Toronto in July 2005. It was my first trip to Canada and the reason for the visit was to meet representatives of two groups that were fighting demands for public smoking bans in Ontario and elsewhere.

One was a new consumer group, mychoice.ca, that had been launched the previous year with the support of the tobacco industry in Canada.

I heard about it because in September 2004 it was reported that:

The Canadian Tobacco Manufacturers Council announced Tuesday it was giving $2.5 million to fund a new website dedicated to promoting smokers' rights.

Nancy Daigneault, president of mychoice.ca, said the site would give voice to the concerns of Canadian smokers, who face a growing number of increasingly comprehensive provincial smoking bans as well as personal demonization.

I was keen to meet Nancy, a highly experienced political lobbyist, because I thought I could learn something from her, so we met in Toronto for lunch and she was as impressive as her CV suggested.

One of the things that drew me to mychoice was the fact that, within a few months, they had 40,000 subscribers online.

This was achieved, Nancy told me, through a series of commercial radio ads, and I was interested to learn more because in 2004 Forest had launched its own campaign against a workplace smoking ban, and I wondered if we might do something similar in the UK.

Sadly, the history of the international smokers’ rights movement is littered with false starts and abandoned campaigns and after two years the tobacco companies pulled the plug on mychoice.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Another person I met in Toronto represented a second tobacco industry funded group that, if I remember, was similar to a UK initiative called Atmosphere Improves Results (AIR).

The purpose of AIR, before the smoking ban was introduced, was to promote the scientific fact that the installation of modern air filtration units could remove many of the gases and particles that are a consequence of smoking and tobacco smoke.

Pubs and restaurants were encouraged to improve air quality and significant progress had been made, in England especially.

AIR's counterparts in Toronto (whose name I can't remember) ran a similar campaign, so the aim of meeting them was to share ideas and messaging.

Unfortunately the introduction a workplace smoking ban in Ontario in 2006 rather scuppered that initiative, and it was probably the reason why, the following year, mychoice lost its funding as well (too soon, in my opinion).

Without Nancy Daigneault, who left, it limped on for a year or two before being abandoned. (The URL – carelessly not renewed – was later picked up by the anti-smoking lobby, but that’s another story.)

The third person I met in Toronto was someone I had been keen to meet ever since he contacted Forest with details of a song he had co-written and recorded.

His name was Matt Finlayson and when I met him he could not have been nicer or more hospitable.

Not only did he give me a guided tour of Toronto, he also drove me to Niagara Falls, a round trip of 160 miles.

He even invited me to his house for dinner where I met his wife and Eric Layman, a close friend.

Eric was a poet and writer. Sadly, he died a few years after I met him, but in 2001 he wrote ‘The Smoke Police’, a poem or lyric that was subsequently set to music by Matt whose semi-professional band, The Intended, included it on their excellent CD Route 101.

Confusingly, there is (or was) another, better known, band in Canada called The Intended which may explain why there is now little or no trace of ‘The Smoke Police’ or Matt’s band on the internet.

I still have my Route 101 CD though and it brings back very happy memories of meeting Matt and visiting Toronto.

PS. The outgoing flight was one of only two occasions when I have been upgraded to business class. The other was on my honeymoon when we flew to Miami en route to the Florida Keys.

I dislike flying but business class, like first class (which I have flown once and at someone else's expense), does make it bearable.

The downside is that every time I turn right rather than left when boarding a long haul flight, I silently weep, knowing what I'm missing.