Storylines

To celebrate his 30th birthday, Ottawa-based artist Aquil Virani decided to send 30 letters to 30 people, saying thank you. His mailing list runs the gamut from a childhood martial arts instructor to a friend’s mother, to a famous hockey player, a broadcaster, contemporary artists, and political activists. Aquil's inspiration for the project runs much deeper than a milestone birthday, though. It all comes from the one letter, years back, that he didn't send on time. It’s the story of a life thus far, in 30 letters of gratitude. PLUS, advice from Doc Project listeners to their 30-year-old selves.

After Pat Maloney passed away, it was a year before his widow, Joanne Pickett, was ready to venture into the attic where Pat stored his stuff. And that’s when she found the tapes. Dozens and dozens of tapes, all part of the life Pat had hidden away for nearly 30 years. PLUS, In 1970, the first two Tibetan refugees arrived in Canada. Tsering Wangkhang was one of them. His son, Rignam Wangkhang, was 10 when Tsering died in 2000, and doesn't have many memories of his dad. But he does have his father's unfinished memoir, documenting Tsering's harrowing escape from Tibet, fleeing on foot through the Himalayan mountains to freedom. Now, Rignam shares his father's story.

Prairie Harm Reduction is a non-profit organization in Saskatoon, a sort of community centre offering services to vulnerable people. By the time Jason Mercredi became executive director in 2016, he had seen 120 clients die. There have been more deaths since then, and Jason predicts more to come, now that the opioid overdose crisis has settled into Saskatchewan. That's why Jason and his team worked so hard to open the province's first supervised consumption site last fall — and fought like hell when their funding fell though.

In June 2020, in the wake of George Floyd's killing, the chairperson of Montreal's West Island Black Community Association (WIBCA) received an e-mail that she couldn't believe. "I'm like, is this a setup?" Kemba Mitchell remembers thinking. A white woman named Rachael Seatvet was reaching out to WIBCA. "This has never happened before, a white individual contacting us... enquiring about a book club for them to identify their own privilege. Wow. Ok," recalls Kemba. Doc Project producer Shari Okeke follows the story of how, for the first time in its 39-year history, WIBCA has a program just for white people: The Confronting Racism Discussion Group.

In two large apartment buildings in the upper east end of Toronto, the ripple effect of COVID has been playing out for nearly a year now. Precarious employment leads to a job loss. Support systems evaporate. Then, as the money dries up, tenants reach a desperate final frontier: They default on rent. In the hallways, residents of these two corporate-owned apartment buildings started talking. The property managers were offering rent repayment plans... but when would people even be able to start paying rent again? How long would COVID go on? Faced with losing the last thing they have — their homes — tenants are organizing around systemic change. Doc Project producer Julia Pagel follows three people who've decided that to stay put, they have to take action.

COVID-19 hasn't quashed Trevor Campbell's search for love. It’s just raised new questions: like, do they make hand sanitizer that smells like French cologne? How do you make a move from 2 meters away? Trevor shares his lessons on finding love in lockdown. PLUS, ever since she can remember, Samantha Lui has been a fangirl. These days, she's obsessing over the K-pop group BTS. Her love of the South Korean boy band sensation began at the beginning of 2020, just before the pandemic. And while she has found it has brought her connection during this time of isolation, she also has a feeling of shame for her fangirling — and she wants to understand why.

In 2019, while living on the streets of Hamilton Ontario, Penny O’Radical started filming his experiences with homelessness and addiction. Using nothing but a broken Samsung, he began posting videos on his own YouTube channel, and turning the lens on the people he had gotten to know in shelters and on the streets. PLUS, When Wesley Altuna was growing up in the Philippines, food was always connected to his sense of home. But when he came to Canada as a kid, wrenched from his mother's arms at the airport, that picture of safety and joy was also left behind. Wes struggled to find his way as a teen but when things were at their worst, Wes would cook to ground himself. Now that the pandemic ransacked his career, he’s realized that returning to his love of Filipino food and sharing it with others is his way forward — and his way home.

When Ash Abraham was a little girl, something changed with her mother. "Ma" started behaving oddly. She'd drag a suitcase around with her everywhere. She stopped paying her bills. Started sleeping a lot and having volatile emotional reactions. As a teenager, Ash had to move out as Ma lost her job, her car, and her home, and ended up being supported by a relative. Now, Ash wants to find out what's really behind her mother's increasingly troubling behaviour, to see if she can help her... or at least understand her. PLUS, When Graham Isador was 21, his dad suffered a heart attack. But it wasn’t Graham’s dad who needed his help — it was his mom. In a moment of simple, kind clarity, Graham did the only thing he could think of to help her.

The first time Nate Sanders was called the N-word, he was in Grade 2. By high school he’d heard it so much, he became convinced that being Black was bad. But as that word, the embodiment of racism, set out to break him, something else stepped in to build him up: the power of books. PLUS, Dawson Ovenden-Beaudry has played ringette his whole life. But when he transitioned at the age of 16, embracing his identity as a young man meant losing access to the other core aspect of his identity: being the best ringette goalie in Quebec.

Two guys head out for a canoe paddle one evening after work, near downtown Edmonton. On the bank of the river, something peeks out… and they can’t believe what they are seeing. It’s a stump, but, it’s also a rock? More than a metre across. They become obsessed with the artifact and learn that they have found a 70-million-year-old petrified tree stump. They begin the journey to get the stump out, so the world can see and enjoy this ancient piece of natural history, and as roadblocks arise, their determination only grows. PLUS, Sam Mullins was trying to make it as a comic, so when a guy at a bar approached him to star in an upcoming film, Sam gave an enthusiastic “'kay.” The film in question? Was a zombie-themed driver safety video shot deep in the B.C. forest, paid for by the municipal government of metro Vancouver… for internal use only. But Sam was going to be a star! He even wrangled a role for his friend Peter. It was all going so well until Peter ended up behind the wheel of the government truck... Hijinks ensue. [EXPLICIT LANGUAGE]