Article 8: Arguing in a Circular Line

by Blake Marks

The audio drama podcast has three characters: Annie, Danny, and Franny:
Annie: a resident of Churchill who has been waiting so long for the repair of the railway line between Thompson and Churchill. The line hasn’t being functional since May of 2017.
Danny: the representative of Omnitrax, the rail line company which was approached by the Canadian government in September 2017 to provide a repair plan for the damaged rail line.
Franny: member of the Federal Government who refuses to take responsibility for the repair of the damaged line.
In this podcast, Annie is fed up with Danny and Franny from the government after their back-and-forth argument. Annie doesn’t want to take a side in this argument and she is not sure when the argument will end with a solution. Thus, I call it “Arguing in a Circular Line.”

While the characters in this audio drama are completely fictional, the problem is very real, as it continues to plague the communities, especially the exponential high prices of daily food items, which are being shipped up from the South. Being at 58 degrees North Latitude, Churchill’s harbor on the Hudson Bay is frozen most of the year and shipping only works during certain months. Shipping by air has increased the prices of everything in Churchill.

More than the highly priced food, the community has lost an important link to the South since the railway line was flooded in May 2017. Furthermore, tourism which used to be the major economic stay of the community has seriously been affected by the condition of the railroad. Not many tourists can afford the high cost of flying there.

I was inspired to revisit this issue not only because of my desire to visit Churchill, but because I often hear my friends from Churchill, who are students in The Pas, complain that they couldn’t go back home as frequently as they were used to do. Imagine being unable to return home just because the only land-based access to your home town has been partially whipped out, and air travel costs an arm and a leg.

I hope that this satiric audio drama in podcast can contribute to bringing an awareness of this problem to the public, especially with the two parties (government and rail company) constantly arguing without proffering any solution. Let’s deal with the line repairs, and both the government and the company can share the cost. That is only my suggestion! Click here to listen to the radio drama.

About the Author: Blake Marks was born in 1992. He became blind because of aspersers syndrome. Currently he studies at University College of the North with a double major in history and Aboriginal Northern Studies. He loves making audio podcasts because it is a fun process. The idea of placing various texts to speech voices as a finished audio drama gives him feeling of extreme satisfaction with the world, glad that he can hear and feel. Blake also wishes to visit some of the places that he learned about his history classes, such as countries in Asia and the Middle East. He loves meeting people from different countries, especially from the places he wishes to visit. He is also a regular viewer of CBC News Network, and a fan of The Sunday Scrum with Natasha Fatah, and the Weekly with Wendy Mesley.

Instructor’s Remarks: The flood-damaged rail line to Churchill has not only affected Via Rail, which used to carry passengers at least twice a week in her dome cars to Churchill for sightseeing in busy seasons, it also affected the daily life of Northern communities. Blake Marks, a student at UCN with visual impairment misses the sound of a hustling and buslting railway station in The Pas where he lives. He produed an audio drama podcast to show this unending argument on repairing the rail line. Blake hopes to hear the bustling sound from his hometown train station soon. (Dr. Ying Kong)

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