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Why is Gen Z so bad at adulting? What is using AI to write doing to our critical thinking skills? And how much protein do you really need? We look at these kinds of big and small questions on The Current, our award-winning podcast that brings you stories and conversations to expand your worldview. My name is Matt Galloway, and like you, I'm trying to wrap my head around these times that we are in. We
We look for solutions to wicked problems. We listen to each other and we try to find delight in the everyday that exists in our world. You can find The Current wherever you get your podcasts, including on YouTube. We'll talk to you soon. This is a CBC Podcast. I'm Dr. Brian Goldman. Welcome to White Coat Black Art in the Summer.
June is National Indigenous History Month in Canada. This week, we have an encore broadcast of a show that first aired in December of last year. It's about one of this country's Indigenous luminaries. Our show this week is about music that means everything to you. That song they played on a first date. The track that psychs you up for a job interview. The song you play when you need to have a good cry.
That personal soundtrack can be essential listening at the end of life, especially when you're in a hospital.
You just need to find the right musical talent. Hi, my name is Quinton Don Poitras. I am a Métis musician working for Artisan Healthcare. I play music for people in mostly healthcare settings during the week and hopefully make their day better. You can often find Quinton making the days better for patients at St. Boniface Hospital in Winnipeg. As
As he mentioned, Quinton is part of the Artists in Healthcare Manitoba music program which launched in 2003. He's one of 20 musicians who play for thousands of patients every month at 17 healthcare facilities in Manitoba, including St. Boniface. I have a pacemaker problem, so I have to have a test done. What's one of your favourites? My favourite Elvis song is Heartbreak Hotel. If you know it...
I have heard of Elvis before. So, let me do something else for a minute. Okay? White men say only fools rush in. But I can't help falling in love.
Lately, a lot of people in hospital have been falling in love with Quentin's voice. Our show this week features Quentin in conversation with the son of an extra-special Canadian he met doing his thing at St. Boniface. Bonjour. My name is Negan Sinclair. I'm a writer. I'm an activist. I'm a professor at the University of Manitoba. I'm an Anishinaabe, and I am a person who...
I got to meet Quentin as he played for my father during my father's final days in the hospital. My father is a former senator, a former chair of the Truth Reconciliation Commission, Murray Sinclair. Yep, that Murray Sinclair, who was admitted to St. Boniface Hospital in August. On Monday, November 4th, he died there, surrounded by his family. Quentin regularly visited him in hospital, playing his favorite tunes and bonding with him.
Quentin's music and his voice have stayed with Sinclair's family, including son Negan. The two of them had something of a reunion in our studio in Winnipeg. Hello, hello. Hello. Quentin is the star of the show. Ah, shucks. You don't seem very thrilled to be the star. It's going to hit you one day and go, oh, everybody knows who I am. It's a problem. Your father told me the same thing. Did he really? Yeah. You know, we talk about how he had that problem.
Oh yeah, his problem was he never could go anywhere without... Everything had to be a three-hour trip. You'd think Quentin and Negan had been friends their whole lives, but they only met this summer. And all because of Murray Sinclair. Canadians know Sinclair championed the rights of Indigenous people and has been lauded for his leadership in justice, education and reconciliation. What you're about to hear in this conversation is a much more personal side to a Canadian icon. Thanks to the music.
Quinton Poitrasen and Negan Sinclair, welcome to White Coat Black Art. Really happy to be here. Thank you. Quinton, we just heard you playing to patients at St. Boniface Hospital. This is a pretty unusual gig for a musician. How did your music journey prepare you to be involved in artists and healthcare? Yeah, so my, I guess my father took me to the Winnipeg Folk Festival every year until I was 18. And he took me to the Winnipeg Folk Festival every year until I was 18.
And maybe when I was about 14, he got me a guitar and I started playing it. And I was, you know, I was really awful, but I just loved it so much. I was going to stick to it. And I just kind of brought my guitar everywhere with me. And yeah, I never I never got training. I never went to school. I just emphatically play nonstop.
And so maybe four years ago, I finally found Artisan Healthcare. And now I've been working there since then. And it's just been perfect because I love to meet people. I love talking with people. And I love connecting on music. You're the first musician with the Indigenous Health Music Program at St. Boniface. What does your work at the hospital involve? Like, who do you play for? What do you play?
Yeah, so I'll either be in like a random area like the atrium perhaps or down a hallway. But Indigenous Health will give me a list of names. They've talked to these patients and asked maybe or just felt out that they would enjoy some music. And I go and I basically like cold call them. I show up with my guitar and I say, hey, like, is it cool if I serenade you for a bit? And
Like, what's your favorite kind of music? Yeah, so four hours of the day we'll be just playing music for people in their hospital bedside. Negan, I want to bring you into the conversation. I just wanted to say, first of all, that I'm sorry for your loss. Oh, me what? Thanks. Yeah, it's been one month since Dad started his travels to the West, as we say in Anishinaabe.
Yeah, it's not an easy time, but it's something that during Dad's final days, it was really, really remarkable to meet Quentin. And Dad spent a lifetime mentoring Indigenous young people. He always had time for Indigenous young people. It didn't matter if he had a keynote, he'd make them all wait for half an hour while he gave life advice or just listened to people's stories. And I think he really developed a bond with Quentin.
Quinton, one day in August, you had Senator Murray Sinclair on your list. And I want to know, what was your first time playing for him? And I would like to point out that he did not know who Dad was. Yeah, I found out when you told me. I said, look at this book. Look at this book here. Give me a quick sum in like two seconds. And Dad goes, oh, that's my book.
And it was his autobiography. And I said, like, Quentin, do you know who you're talking to right now? This is like Senator TRC and Quentin, to your credit, just spend a lot of time in music, probably not in politics. No, I'm just starting. So that's what was I'm starting to learn about these sort of things. That's one heck of a steep learning curve. Beginning with Murray Sinclair's memoir, Who We Are, Four Questions for a Life and a Nation, published in September.
At the time Quentin first met him, Murray Sinclair's body was dealing with the end stages of congestive heart failure, which he talked about in his memoir, along with the nerve damage that led him to use a wheelchair. Neither diminished his intellect, his spirit, nor his deep connection to music. What was it like meeting him for the first time? The very, very first time, when I had no idea who he was, it felt good because it was comfortable.
Immediately, I showed up with my guitar and he's kind of like, what? What's what is this? Like, is this for me? And I was like, yeah, it's for you. And, you know, same thing. I go like, well, what kind of music do you like? And he's like, oh, you know, like blues. So I just played on blues guitar for like 10 minutes. Kind of had the thought as I was leaving, like, who is this guy? Like, he seems like a like a judge or something. Negan, what do you remember about the first time you heard Quentin play for your dad?
Those were the early days where we, dad was on a road to recovery. And so we were planning to have dad leave. We didn't plan to have him there for very long. And so it was frustrating because his health was sort of deteriorating slowly. And we'd have some hope and then really hard crash. It's like a roller coaster. Yeah. And Quentin coming in was this absolute break from all of that.
And I'd heard about Quentin before I'd met him. And my sister said, there's this amazing musician that comes by and just sings to dad. And he's so happy. And I have this video of him singing end of the line to, from the traveling Wilburys to dad by his request, I think. It was your request. Was it my request?
Oh, that was your request. He likes this one. So, Quentin, you played requests from the whole family, not just Marie Sinclair. I think I said traveling Wilburys because I knew dad liked that. So I have this beautiful video of Quentin playing for dad and he's just bopping his feet. And dad couldn't move much, but he got to sit up and his feet were bopping. It was like he was dancing, but lying down.
You've already mentioned that Maurice Sinclair loved hearing the blues. And one of the songs that he requested was Bob Dylan's Don't Think Twice, It's All Right. Quentin, that you play it. So let's hear a little bit of that. It ain't no use to sit and wonder why, baby If you don't know by now It ain't no use to sit and wonder why, baby It'll never do no how When your rooster crows at a
Break it down, look out your window, honey. I'll be gone. You're the reason I've been traveling on. Don't think twice, it's all right. Negan, what do you think hearing that song and what it did for your dad? I can see him now. He's bopping his feet and he's happy. Did he ever talk with you about the music he loved when he was younger?
Oh, all the time. Yeah. He loved his time in the 60s where he felt a lot of joy and a lot of freedom. He was maybe dreamed at one point to be a musician as well. He had a guitar. He had a guitar when I was a kid up on the wall. He didn't play it much, but when he did play it, he'd try. But I would say that he always sang to us all the time. He...
Yeah, he always had a song to sing, you know, it was some sort of song he'd often make up or sometimes it'd be something like that. So, yeah, he had a musical love, you know. Quentin, what do you think as you're hearing this? I just, I think you guys are just so strong as a family. I just think about how amazing he was to me in a short time. Yeah, that's beautiful. That's what I have to think.
Negan, you knew your dad. This was a rocky time for him. Was there physical distress that the music changed? Yeah, undoubtedly. I mean, it gave him an escape. He loved music. One of the ongoing jokes in our family was when he liked to go to sleep, for some reason he really liked the heaviest metal possible you could imagine. It would be like ACDC and he'd be like, okay, it's time to go to sleep. ACDC as well. And I'm going to put on Metallica and ACDC.
See, I didn't know that. That's how dad slept. I would have played him some Metallica to go to sleep. Quentin, do you ever do that? I mean, not often do I get asked for Metallica, but I will do it, yes. And whenever he would go through a procedure over the years, because dad also had a stroke a number of years ago, he also lost his gallbladder, and he would always turn to music to cope with it.
Of course, he grew up in the 60s, and so the 60s was really a big time for music for everybody in terms of giving voice to a lot of the voiceless. I would say in many ways, my dad's often revolutionary side came from his experience with music. And so seeing this joy through music that Quentin would give to dad, I can only describe it as...
He became young. He became vibrant when the music would be played for him. You've talked about what the music was doing for your dad. What do you think the music was doing for you and your family? Well, I mean, Quentin became a bit of a family member.
We'd talk about him in terms of, was Quentin there today? Like, we had a family chatty, and we'd get the daily reports from the doctors, and it'd always pick us up when we heard that Quentin was with Dad for a while. We got to hear our own songs that we liked to hear, and Dad, he loved our music too. Indicative, I think, of Dad's appreciation of all music. One
One thing that he did that was during the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, he always ensured that survivors would hear music at every single national event. And part of that was because he knew that music gave people a lot of catharsis. And the gift of music was something very sacred to students in residential schools too. And so I think Quentin playing music at this time was able to give...
give a real tangible joy and love in a time when it was not always easy to be found. Negan says Murray Sinclair's abiding love of music might have turned into a career, though he had other plans. Sinclair harnessed music's power to bring catharsis and to help bring reconciliation. We'll be right back.
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You're listening to White Coat Black Art. This week, remembering Murray Sinclair through the music he adored during and at the end of his life. A scene through the eyes of Quentin Poitras, an Indigenous musician with Artisan Healthcare who played for Sinclair at St. Boniface Hospital in Winnipeg. And Sinclair's son, Nigan, who, along with his family, was there during those final days.
Murray Sinclair's eclectic tastes ranged from Bob Dylan to Metallica. Quentin played them all and helped his patient through the tough times in hospital. And sometimes, the patient inspired Quentin to make music of his own. Quentin, you not only played songs at Murray Sinclair's request, you also were inspired to write a song while playing for Murray Sinclair.
What story did he tell you? Well, he was telling me a story about, I think it's the first story in his book, about a man...
trying to stick him up. And he recognized him as somebody who sat before him as he was a judge at the time. And instead of succumbing to his emotions, he just talked with this man. Didn't let fear or hate get in the way. He just wanted to understand. Then you wrote a song. Tell me about that. For sure, when I was writing it, I was definitely thinking about the influence of
And I was thinking about how light he seemed all the time. How light, how bubbly. I'd always be like, man, you're chipper. How are you so chipper right now? It's hard to be like that if you're stubborn. And the name of the song that you wrote is Stubborn Stone. Let's hear a bit of that. I am not the river but the stone The current always takes the things I know
And I cannot wait patiently here anymore. Won't be long before you are gone. Have to learn to not hold on. Negan, you must have heard that story and now you've heard the song. Do you see a connection between the two? Oh, I definitely. I hear a lot of...
dad's spirit in that song. So it was very nice. The story actually is a kid from the child welfare system. He was sort of in his jacket pretending like he had a gun. And even when he pulled his hand out of his pocket, he still held his fingers as if he had a gun. And which tells you a little bit about, I think, with the struggles that that young man was going through. Very neglected, very mistreated by the system. And there's a line in that story that dad says, that young man could have been me.
Yeah.
And sometimes his relationship with us kids too, you know? And so when you, that line that is in the song, and it's the first time I've heard it is today, I'm not this water, I'm the stone. I am not the river, but the stone. I'm not the river, but the stone. That...
That says a lot, I think, about dad's struggle. In the end of the day, they're actually made up of the same materials. Yeah. But yet they feel so different, the water and the stone. That's what we get to by the end of the song. Oh, okay. I think dad, well, he would have loved the message very much. When I showed it to him, he liked it. He was like, that's really great. In October, Marie Sinclair was moved to the ICU, the intensive care unit. How did that affect your ability to play for him?
Yeah, I was really, really sad to hear about this. And when I went over to the ICU, I was kind of messed up about it. To be honest, I was, like, really sad that he had to be in that room. But you were there, Nguyen, immediately. And you were so nice, and you brought me to the family and whatnot. And it didn't affect my playing for him, but, like, I was just really...
you know what, it probably made all my songs a little bit more somber. When we went to the ICU, we were in the kind of figuring out what was happening stage. Now that in retrospect, I would realize that that was what the end of life looks like. Yeah. We had a lot of hope. And I think that one of the things about the ICU that's really important is hope is the most critical currency of that place, is that having hope is what keeps you going. It's also how I think you accept things.
When the call to the West comes, it's not a shock. It's something that you've been preparing for without you knowing that you're preparing for it.
But then also having music in there, it's very relaxing. You know, Negan, a couple years ago in the last few weeks of my sister's life, I started downloading and playing the music that she loved as a teenager. Cat Stevens, Joni Mitchell, Carole King. She had young onset dementia, and seeing her react to the music told me that she was still there. That's what the music meant to her and to me personally.
I kind of take it that when your dad was moved to the ICU, he knew that he was being called to the West, that he was dying. Am I right? I don't know, because we had such hope.
I 100% know this though, that when my grandmother had dementia and she was in her final stages of life, we would play music for her and she would normally be very mobile and quite annoyed and irritated. But when she'd hear the music, she would pause completely and absolutely listen with every fiber of her being because it was that music that brought her to a place, a really special place. I'd say the same thing about my dad. When
When my dad would hear music, particularly when he'd be going to sleep, which was the most important time that he would listen to music, he would go to a place that was very special to him. Because he would be very upset, too, when his battery would be—he lost his AirPods halfway through his hospital visit. And this was like a tragedy and a half. I'd go downstairs and buy him wired earbuds, which was a whole endeavor for him. Yeah.
Quentin, in the last days of his life, you played another one of your original songs for Marie Sinclair. Tell me about the meaning of that song, Inertia. You know, it was really on point with what was happening with Marie at the time. It's about how everything's just coming. It's on its way and it's never going to stop. The main lyric is, you know, it's already happened. You know, it's already there. You're only telling me now, but deep down, I knew somehow. Let's play a little bit of that now.
I can't stop. It hurts you. Inertia. I won't stop. I can't.
Negan, what do you think that your dad would have taken away from a song like that?
He wanted to build and he wanted to create and he wanted to help people in every way possible, particularly people who had been harmed. In our culture, we would call that a shkabe, like a helper, a person who would tend to the fire, a person who would help build. He would take from the message of that song, I think, that being a person who can stand beside others, who can help. And he would probably, most of all, really take the message of motion, right?
Because in our creation story as Anishinaabe people, the most important moment of creation is when movement first came.
And that came through breath, and breath builds motion. That's why you must be careful with what you say or how you say it. And Dad took that very seriously, and that he's talking about motion there, and so he's talking about the ways in which people move, and that's really, I think, what he would take from that. You're not wrong at all. Yeah, it's about the beginning and the end, right? It's always there. You know it deep down. Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Quentin, what was your last visit like with Murray Sinclair? What do you remember playing for him? You know, I think I played some Pink Floyd for him. I think I played Harry Chapin, laid out some blues because I knew he'd be into it. And Murray woke up and he was like, oh, Quentin, how long have you been here? And I was like, I've been here for a song.
And he kind of, I can't remember, he might have said something like, oh, good, and just kind of fell back asleep. And I just played until he was sound asleep. And then you left the room. And then I left the room. Negan, how did music help your dad right before he passed away? It gave dad a live version of music.
What he was already doing is with his headphones and it gave him a relationship that he may not have known about that he would build and that he would foster. And one thing that dad just loved to do in every way, he just loved to visit people.
And so visiting for him was such a crucial part of keeping him alert and engaged. And, you know, right up until dad passed, when we moved him to palliative, he was still joking and he was still telling stories and he was still wanting to visit the best he could. And on the final night of his time in his vessel, in his body,
He spent time listening to music. We had traditional people from Rosa River who came up and they dressed a drum and they sang to him as he started that final journey. And so music was such a crucial and integral part of dad's life. Quentin was a part of that journey. Quentin, last word to you.
One of my favorite things, and I tell this to my band all the time, was when we were in the ICU and Murray went, your show's tomorrow. I said, yeah, I'm having my fundraiser. And he's like, I want to go. And I was like, okay, well, we'll get you in this bed. We'll take all these machines. We'll put it in a van. You could come down to the fundraiser.
And he was like, yeah, okay, sounds good. And, you know, he always made jokes like that, you know, where he was like, yeah, everything's fine. That sure is a nice image in my mind.
Quentin Poitras, I want to thank you for sharing that reflection and all the things you had to say. Negan Sinclair, I wanted to express my deep sympathies to you and your family for your loss. And as we say, may your dad rest in peace and may his memory be a blessing. Thanks so much. Thank you. Through his music and his friendship, Quentin Poitras eased Murray Sinclair's passage to the West. Some of us fear death and dying.
Knowing that this relationship could be forged at that time brings me great comfort. That's our show this week. We're going out with a bit more of Stubborn Stone, a track Quentin Poitras wrote that was inspired by his friendship with Murray Sinclair. I have to learn tonight, hold on, he will have to be.
White Coat Black Art was produced this week by senior producer Colleen Ross with help from Jennifer Warren, Stephanie Dubois, and Prapthi Bamania. Our digital producer is Ruby Buiza. Special thanks this week to Suzanne Dufresne at CBC Winnipeg. That's medicine from my side of the gurney. I'm Brian Goldman. See you next week. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.