In Bed with the Elephant

Adrian is joined by:  Nora Loreto is a writer, organizer, podcaster and journalist. She is the author of a number of books including “Take Back the Fight: Organizing Feminism in the Digital Age (Fernwood 2020)” and “From Demonized to Organized: Building the New Union Movement” (CCPA 2013). She’s the host of Sandy And Nora Talk politics with Sandy Hudson. Judy Rebick is a writer, academic,  commentator and former TV host.  She is the former president of Canada’s leading feminist organization the National Action Committee on the Status of Women. Matt Fodor is an author and political scientist. He is the author of From Layton to Singh: The 20-Year Conflict Behind the NDP’s Deal With the Trudeau Liberals.’

Iranian journalist Amir Ahmadi Arian sits down with Adrian to discuss the escalating horrors in Iran.   While living in Iran in the 2000s, Amir Ahmadi Arian was a regular contributor to reformist newspapers. Arian’s essays have appeared in the New York Times, The Nation, The Paris Review and the New York Review of Books. He is currently an assistant professor of creative writing at Binghamton University in upstate New York.   This episode is brought to you by our founding local partner, Perfect Books Ottawa.    You can find more from Ricochet at ricochet.media and support the show at ricochet.media/donate.

Canada’s Green Party Leader Elizabeth May joins Adrian to discuss her long history as politician and environmental activist and her views on Canada’s current climate leadership.    2026 marks 20 years since Elizabeth May became leader of Canada’s Green Party. She is the longest serving female leader of a federal party in Canada’s history. In 2011, May became the first Green Party member to be elected to the House of Commons. She remains the MP for the Saanich-Gulf Islands riding in British Columbia.   This episode is brought to you by our founding local partner, Perfect Books Ottawa.  You can find more from Ricochet at ricochet.media and support the show at ricochet.media/donate.

Here are some excerpts from some of our interviews from Season 1 of In Bed with the Elephant with Adrian Harewood! Thank you for your continued support. 

Yousra Elbagir has not stopped telling the stories of Sudan and the Sudanese people. Over the last decade Elbagir has established herself as one of the most respected and celebrated foreign correspondents of her generation. The Sudanese- British Sky News Africa journalist has told riveting human centred stories across the African continent and around world, often from the frontlines of the major conflicts of our time. Most famously she has been one of the few journalists to consistently get access to Sudan, a country close to her heart.   Early on in her career Elbagir distinguished herself with the quality of her reporting.   In 2016, she was awarded the Thomson & Foreign Press Association Young Journalist Award.   Yousra Elbagir comes from a storied family of journalists. She is part of the 3rd generation of journalism practitioners.  Her older sister Neema is CNN’s Chief International Investigative correspondent. Her father, Ahmed Abdullah Elbagir, was a pioneering journalist who was the publisher of the Sudanese newspaper El Khartoum. Her mother, Ibtisam Affan, was the first female publisher in Sudan.   Yousra Elbagir was recently in Ottawa to deliver the prestigious Peter Stursberg Foreign Correspondents lecture sponsored by the School of Journalism and Communication at Carleton University.

Ira Wells, wants to live in a world without book bans. A world bathed in literature… with more conversation, more civic engagement, and less censorship. Ira Wells is a critic, essayist and professor of English literature at the University of Toronto. He is also the President of PEN Canada. His latest book is called On Book Banning: or How the New Censorship Consensus Trivializes Art and Undermines Democracy

Since October 2023, the Southwestern Ontario-raised, Ottawa based primary care doctor and public health practitioner has been outspoken in his defense of the human rights of Palestinians and has condemned Israels’ actions. For this stance he himself has come attack by those who accuse of him of antisemitism. Dr. Ge has been undeterred. He has volunteered as a physician in Gaza and even joined a small fleet of ships meant to bring vital supplies to Palestinians to break Israel’s blockade of Gaza. He is a member of the Canadian Medical Coalition Against Genocide. Here’s our conversation.

Nisrin Elamin is a professor in the department of Anthropology and the African Studies Program at the University of Toronto. Her work investigates the connections between land, race, belonging and empire-making in Sudan and the broader Sahel region and is currently working on a book project based on 15 months of ethnographic fieldwork in central Sudan. Sudan is the site of one of the world’s great humanitarian disasters. Since war broke out in April 2023 between The Sudanese Armed Forces and The Rapid Support Forces or RSF, catastrophe has overwhelmed it. Tens of thousands of people have died. Out of Sudan’s population of 48 million, over 13 million have been displaced, making Sudan the largest internal displacement crisis on Earth. Some 30 million Sudanese are in dire need of food aid in a country that could easily feed itself and the entire region.

Andrew Coyne has been one of Canada’s most formidable and free-thinking political commentators since the early 1990s. He currently writes for the Globe and Mail and is a charter member of CBC’s At Issue Panel -Canada’s most watched weekly politics panel. He has just published a new book called The Crisis of Canadian Democracy. 

Rex Brynen - a renowned scholar over three decades and one of the most astute and informed  observers of the Middle East. The Summer of 2025 will be remembered as a time of transformation in the Middle East.  On June 13, 2025, Israel launched a surprise attack on military and nuclear facilities in Iran. Israel claimed the so-called pre-emptive strikes were meant to prevent Iran from building a nuclear bomb. In the ensuing 12-day war. Israeli strikes  killed over 900 Iranians. Iran’s retaliatory attacks killed 28 Israelis. On June 22, the US joined Israel’s campaign and bombed Iranian nuclear plants. The next day US President Trump announced that Israel and Iran had come to an agreement on a ceasefire which took effect on June 24th.  In addition to the 12 Day War the chaotic  political situation in Syria, and the ongoing genocide in the Gaza  are altering  the political landscape in the region.   Since mid-July in the Southern Syrian city  of Suweyda  clashes between  Druze groups and  Bedouin tribes have displaced 175,000 people and caused over 1000 deaths. On July 16 Israel bombed the Syrian Defences ministry in central Damascus along with other military sites in the capital and targets in Southern Syria claiming to protect minority  Druze communities and sending a warning message to Syrian President Ahmed Al Sharaa.  In the occupied Palestinian Territories of Gaza every day seems to bring more stories of horror and devastation. Since October 7  2023 when an Hamas led attack   killed 1200 Israelis  including over 600 civilians and 39 children, Israel has killed 60,000 Palestinians   including over 18,000 children according to the UN, displaced millions and leveled much of Gaza. The UN reports that Israeli forces have killed 1000 desperate Palestinians seeking aid since May 2025.  For the first time two Israeli human rights organizations B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights Israel have officially declared that Israel is committing genocide in the Gaza Strip. This follows an earlier determination in December 2024 by the respected international human rights organizations like Amnesty International  that Israel was committing genocide in real time. The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (or IPC), a global hunger monitoring system, states in a new report that the “worst-case scenario of famine” is unfolding in Gaza. The IPC has confirmed that   at least 122 Palestinians including 83 children have died of starvation.  Even US president Donald Trump whose government, continues to provide Israel with  both moral  and material support in the form of billions of dollars worth of weapons, is acknowledging that starvation is occurring in Gaza.  

Ricochet Media Summer Fundraising Campaign: https://ricochet.media/donate/ Fred Anderson was born in Mississippi in the late 1940s. He was among the youngest full-time SNCC workers in an organization defined by its youth. He was a courageous young rebel, a teenage wunderkind, who at 15 was working as an organizer alongside such civil rights luminaries as Fannie Lou Hamer, John Lewis, Hollis Watkins, Stokely Carmichael and his mentor and future Montreal roommate Bob Moses. Anderson is a Forest Gumpian type figure, who was present for many of the seminal moments in the history of the civil rights movement. He participated in Freedom Summer, was in the room when it was announced that the three civil rights workers- Mickey Schwerner, James Chaney and Andrew Goodman- were missing, and attended the historic 1964 Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City with the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. On Jan 6, 1966, SNCC became the first major civil rights organization to come out against the Vietnam War. The statement the group issued was bold and categorical. It did not equivocate. “We believe the United States Government has been deceptive in its claim of concern for the freedom of the Vietnamese people, just as the Government has been deceptive in claiming concern for the freedom of colored people. The United States Government has never guaranteed the freedom of oppressed citizens and is not yet truly determined to end the rule of terror and oppression within its own borders…We ask where the draft for the freedom fight in the United States is?” Towards the end of 1966 Fred Anderson left the United States to avoid being sent to fight in Vietnam. He moved  to Montreal with his friends Herman Carter and Bob Moses,  and for the next 10 years lived underground not revealing his true identity out of fear  that given his role in SNCC he’d be targeted by the FBI, apprehended and sent to prison in the US,  as he had heard had happened to other Black civil rights activists and war resisters who’d escaped to Canada. Anderson became engaged in political organizing and community life in Montreal. He attended the historic Congress of Black Writers Conference at McGill University in 1968- one of the major Black Power gatherings of the decade. During the 1969 Sir George Williams Affair, still the biggest student occupation in Canadian history in which Black, Brown and White students protested against racial discrimination in the classroom at the then Sir George Williams University now Concordia, Anderson played “a critical organizing role” behind the scenes trying to mobilize the community to support the students. He drafted petitions and wrote editorials in community newspapers.  He had close relationships with the prominent Black student leaders Anne Cools, a future Canadian Senator, and Rosie Douglas, future Prime Minister of Dominica, both of whom were jailed for their involvement in the Sir George Williams events. He was close friends with a Who’s Who of the English Canadian literary scene. Novelists Margaret Laurence  , Timothy Findlay, W.O. Mitchell and Mordecai Richler. He considered Austin Clarke, Giller Prize winning author of The Polished Hoe, his best friend. But he also counted many members of Quebec’s literati and radical political community as close confidants. He knew the Quebec independendiste firebrand Pierre Bourgault and had close relationships with Quebec poets Roland Giguere and Victor Levy- Beaulieu. He was very close with physician and Governor General Award-winning novelist Jacques Ferron, Roch Carrier-beloved author of The Hockey Sweater, acclaimed writer Dany Laferrière, and the Quebec historian and author of A People’s History of Quebec, Jacques Lacoursière. He was involved with the NBCC (the National Black Coalition of Canada)- arguably the most significant pan-Canadian Black organization in history - and later helped found the Concordia Summer Institute for community organizers.  Fred Anderson has been a lifelong change agent. His journey has taken him from the Deep South of the United States to the Far North of Canada where he has worked in Cree and Inuit communities.  Fred Anderson is a formidable builder of relationships and institutions, and a bridge between solitudes. He’s just written a memoir that documents his extraordinary life. It’s called Eyes Have Seen: From Mississippi to Montreal.  

Amnesty International’s Secretary General, Agnès Callamard, has been a defender of human rights for most of her life. Her maternal grandfather fought for the French Resistance during the Second World War. Callamard was born in 1963 into a lower middle-class family in a small village in Southeastern France about 60 kilometres north of Avignon. She attended Sciences Po Grenoble for her undergraduate degree. Earned a master’s in international and African Studies at the renowned Howard University, a historically Black college in Washington DC where she was one of a handful of White Students – an experience she describes as transformative. And she received her PhD at the New School in New York City. Prior to becoming Amnesty’s Secretary General, Callamard was the UN’s Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions and the former Director of the Columbia University Global Freedom of Expression project. Adrian Harewood sat down with Agnès Callamard in May 2025 at the head office of Amnesty International Canada in downtown Ottawa. We spoke about, growing courage, fighting impunity investigating the murder of the Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, the current state of human rights in the world and the ability of Amnesty International to affect change.

Niigaan Sinclair is one of the most creative, provocative and dynamic thinkers of his generation.  As a journalist, academic and son of the late lawyer, jurist, Senator and chair of the Indian Residential Schools Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Murray Sinclair, he has spent his life and career thinking about the relationship between Indigenous peoples and the Canadian state. In his 2024 Governor General Award-winning book of non-fiction, Winipek: Visions of Canada from An Indigenous Centre, Niigaan Sinclair outlines new transformative possibilities for healthier and more productive relations between Indigenous people and Canadians. He imagines a new politics, proposes a collective immersion in Indigenous histories and philosophies, and a return to Indigenous practices in order to inform our collective way forward. Niigaan Sinclair is a professor at the University of Manitoba where he holds the Faculty of Arts professorship in Indigenous Knowledge and Aesthetics in the Department of Indigenous Studies. He is also an award-winning columnist for the Winnipeg Free Press.   

Bob Plamondon is an acclaimed writer and Canadian historian who thinks for too long John Diefenbaker has been unfairly maligned by his critics and hasn’t been given his due.  He’s the author of six books. including Blue Thunder: The Truth About Conservatives from Macdonald to Harper & The Shawinigan Fox: How Jean Chretien Defeated the Elites and Reshaped Canada. His latest book is called Freedom Fighter: John Diefenbaker’s Battle for Canadian Liberties and Independence.  Diefenbaker was a political maverick- a prairie populist who rose from humble beginnings to become Canada’s 13th Prime Minister.   He was a complex and at times polarizing figure who throughout his 39 years as a Member of Parliament, remained a political outsider, even within the Conservative Party he led.  Diefenbaker’s strong personality alienated some of his fellow MPs in the Tory caucus who regarded him as a lone wolf – brusque, domineering and untrusting. But Dief the Chief’s charisma captivated ordinary Canadians who were inspired by his commitment to their health and welfare, his oratorical flair, and his common touch. They saw  John Diefenbaker as a “Man of the People.”  John George Diefenbaker was born in 1895 in Neustadt, Ontario. In the southwestern region of the province. He was the grandson of German and Scottish immigrants.   When he was 8 years old, he and his family moved West where he grew up poor in the fledgling province of Saskatchewan.  John Diefenbaker served as a lieutenant in the First World War.  After graduating from the University of Saskatchewan in 1919, he became a small-town lawyer who reveled in fighting for the marginalized, downtrodden and dispossessed. He was a self-described “sworn enemy of discrimination and injustice.”  As a young man, Diefenbaker brimmed with political ambition. It took him some years to find his footing, but once he finally won an election, he never lost his riding again.    In the mid-1950s, Diefenbaker took over a fractious and moribund Conservative Party, refashioned it in his image, and transformed it into a political juggernaut, winning three consecutive federal elections, one of them in a historic landslide. John Diefenbaker provoked strong emotions. His critics accused him of being an erratic, reckless and ill-disciplined leader. They blamed him for what they regarded as a series of foreign policy blunders, including mishandling Canada’s critical relationship with the United States. They attacked him for canceling a Canadian aviation marvel - the Avro Arrow.  His supporters though hailed him as a principled visionary, praising him for giving Indigenous peoples the vote, championing the Bill of Rights -a precursor to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, instituting a more inclusive immigration policy, and boldly opposing South Africa’s readmission to the Commonwealth due to its failure to renounce its White Supremacist system of Racial Apartheid.  John Diefenbaker was a man of contradictions.  He could be petty, vindictive, unforgiving and even cruel.  But also, warm, witty, generous and magnanimous.  At this fraught moment, in which Canada is facing existential threats to its economy and political sovereignty from the sitting president of the United States, Donald Trump, John Diefenbaker provides a historical example of an idealistic, impassioned political leader who was a fierce, unrepentant Canadian nationalist, and refused to capitulate or bend the knee to American hegemony.   

Sean Speer is an academic, policy analyst influencer, public commentator, and guide, described as one of the brightest intellectual lights in Canada’s Conservative firmament. During the government of Stephen Harper, he was a senior policy advisor in the Prime Minister’s Office responsible for the Finance and Treasury Board portfolio. He was Finance Minister Jim Flaherty’s Director of Policy and later worked at the Fraser Institute as Director of the Centre for Fiscal Studies. Sean Speer is currently a Senior Fellow at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy and an editor- at large at The Hub a Conservative-leaning news and commentary website that he helped found in 2021.

Omar El Akkad is a Canadian writer and journalist who has neither ducked nor run for cover. He hasn’t averted his eyes or closed his ears or his heart to the suffering unfolding on our tv screens, tablets and smartphones in real time. Omar El Akkad was born in Cairo, Egypt in 1982. He grew up in Qatar settled in Canada as a teenager and graduated from Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. He now lives in the the Pacific Northwest of the United States. His books include the award-winning novels American War and What Strange Paradise. Both were finalists in CBC’s Canada Reads and winners of the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Award and the Oregon Book Award for Fiction. His latest book is called “One Day Everyone will have always been against this” and it addresses what has been transpiring in Israel, Gaza and the Occupied Palestinian Territories since 2023 and long before…

Someone who is well versed in the current state of human rights in the US is the Irish-born Harvard-trained lawyer, Paul O’Brien. He is the executive director of Amnesty International USA – one of the world’s leading human rights organizations. I recently sat down with Paul O’Brien when he visited Canada in early May 2025. We spoke at the headquarters of Amnesty International Canada in downtown Ottawa. Here’s our conversation. In a recently released review of the first 100 days of the Trump presidency, the human rights organization, Amnesty international USA, outlines how the Trump administration is pursuing an agenda that seems bent on “eroding human rights protections, fostering fear and undermining the rule of law.” “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.” That’s from Article One of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted on December 10th, 1948. The principal author of the landmark document was a Canadian. The New Brunswick born McGill University law professor John Peters Humphrey. Around the world, institutions and individuals dedicated to the defense and protection of human rights are facing increasing attacks. Human rights are under extreme duress in the United States.

Judy Rebick has lived her life at the intersection of community activism and political party organizing. ` Born on August 15th 1945 on the cusp of the Baby Boom, Judy Rebick has been at the forefront of Canada’s most significant social movements for the last 60 years , whether it has been as a student activist in the 1960s , an organizer and journalist with socialist revolutionary groups in the 1970s, spokesperson for pro-choice groups and ally of abortion rights advocate Dr. Henry Morgentaler in the 1980s, president of Canada’s leading feminist organization the National Action Committee on the Status of Women and progressive commentator and tv host in the 1990s , writer and academic in the 2000s. Throughout that time, she has also been either associated with or at the centre of numerous groupings and organizations determined to reform and transform the NDP. Whether as an engaged member of the Waffle Movement, the Campaign for an Activist Party, the New Politics Initiative or the Leap Manifesto. And so given her history , there’s no better person in Canada to assess the current state of the NDP and to consider a path for its future, than her.

Armine Yalnizyan has spent her career explaining budgets, markets and fiscal matters to generations of Canadians. She’s an economist and the Atkinson Fellow on the Future of Workers and a regular columnist to the Toronto Star. In 2023 she was awarded the Galbraith Prize in Economics. Named in honour of the esteemed Canadian economist John Kenneth Galbraith.    

John Vaillant's 2023 book Fire Weather: The Making of A Beast chronicles the gargantuan Fire that engulfed Fort McMurray, the fourth largest city in Alberta and centre of Canada’s oil industry nine years ago this May. He describes how residents, politicians, civic officials and firefighters dealt with a cataclysmic event that destroyed 2400 homes and structures, damaged thousands more, and caused over 100,000 people to flee their homes in Northern Alberta in what remains the biggest single day evacuation in the history of modern fire. John Vaillant is one of Canada’s most celebrated writers. His work has appeared in the New Yorker, The Atlantic, Outside and National Geographic. He is the award-winning author of four books including The Golden Spruce: A True Story of Myth Madness and Greed, The Tiger” A True Story of Vengeance and Survival, and a the novel Jaguar’s Children. He is the recipient of the Governor General Award, The Writer’s Trust Non-Fiction Prize, and the Windham Campbell Literature Prize