Storylines CBC STORIES

Claire Hafner at 47, is among the top women boxers in the world. She’s just about ready for retirement but wants to win the Canadian title before hanging up her gloves. 

However, a question hangs over the timing of when retirement will come. 

Claire is also among a small group of women athletes who are participating in a landmark study on the effects of trauma in mostly combat sports. 

Every year she gets tested for signs of head trauma to see if all those hits are leading to a long-term degenerative brain condition, known as CTE or chronic traumatic encephalopathy.

In this documentary we follow Claire to Las Vegas where she’s undergoing a new round of tests, and if they show a sign of decline, she’s going to retire before attempting to win that last Canadian title. 

At the end of the show we’ll hear another documentary about boxing, but this one with a surprising twist. We’re going to drop you into a chess boxing match in London,UK. You can win by a KO or by checkmate. That documentary was reported by Laura Lynch back in 2011 for Dispatches.

Reported and produced by Katie Nicholson. Story Editing by Acey Rowe with help from Liz Hoath.

Storylines is part of the CBC Audio Doc Unit

CBC producer Naheed Mustafa, then a freelance writer and broadcaster, landed at the Kabul airport on a blistering hot summer day back in 2008. She’d come to report on how the country had been transformed by the U.S. led war. 

By that point a lot had changed. In Kabul Afghans felt free to come and go as they pleased, women wore burkas but they also wore jeans, tunics and pretty headscarves. There had been an election too, but at the same time, a violent Taliban resurgence was underway.

Mustafa didn’t know it at the time, but that resurgence would continue until the Taliban recaptured the country. 

It's been 10 years since Canada officially ended its mission in Afghanistan. Now, Mustafa is looking back at the documentaries she made, and listening to the voices of everyday Afghans living through a key moment in their country's history.

Reported by Naheed Mustafa. Produced by Julia Pagel. Original Dispatches doc produced by Donna Cressman. 

Storylines is part of the CBC Audio Doc Unit 

When Julia Pagel was seven months pregnant, she and her husband faced all the usual new parent decisions: making a birth plan, deciding which stroller to buy and whether to use reusable or disposable diapers. 

However, there was one choice that was extra tricky for the two of them. What would their child's last name be? Should they just go along with standard practice of giving the baby the father’s last name? 

The tradition of giving the dad’s name to the child didn’t sit right with Julia, but her husband had come to Canada from Serbia as a 9-year-old, and his last name meant a lot to him. So Julia set out on a mission, to see how others had managed this last name quandary.

The documentary was reported by Julia Pagel and story editing by Karen Levine.

On May 1st the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion will begin commercial operations. 

It marks the end of a 12 year saga that included protests, legal challenges and the purchase of the pipeline itself by the federal government. 

When Ottawa stepped in to buy TMX six years ago, it had an estimated price tag of $7.4 billion dollars. Today the cost has grown to $34 billion dollars. 

As the polarizing project nears the finish line, CBC producer Allison Dempster visits communities along the pipeline route, from Edson, Alberta to Burnaby, B.C. She meets people who worked on the project, people who campaigned against it and Indigenous leaders who one day hope to own it. 

In the second half of the show, we join Anna Maria Tremonti on a road trip she took along the route back in 2019. She hears from Western Canadians deeply divided on the pipeline project. 

As you’ll hear, the expansion is almost complete, but the debate over its legacy is far from over.

Reported by Allison Dempster. Produced by Jennifer Chevalier.

Storylines is part of the CBC Audio Doc Unit 

Mary Kajumba needed money to make a better life for her daughter. So, with the help of a placement agency she left her home in Uganda, and went to Iraq where she got a job as a restaurant cleaner. It wasn’t long after she realised she was in trouble. Mary says she found herself working 18 hour days, sharing cramped accommodation with 30 other workers and never getting paid. 

But then, help came from an unexpected place. Voice memos, from a man in Vancouver who was working for an anti trafficking organisation. 

This week on Storylines freelance journalist Jazzmin Jiwa brings us Mary’s story. We follow Mary as she tries to break free from the shackles of human trafficking and forced labour with the help of an NGO. 

Stories like Mary’s can be found across the Middle East, where workers from sub-Saharan Africa are trafficked, transported, threatened and forced to work for little to no wages. They find themselves working as cleaners and domestic servants, after landing jobs through recruitment agencies that don’t ask many questions about working conditions.

Reported by Jazzmin Jiwa. Produced by John Chipman. Story Editing by Julia Pagel and Liz Hoath. This documentary was supported by the Pulitzer Center.

Storylines is part of the CBC Audio Doc Unit

Over the past near-century, Academy Award categories have come and gone. In the silent film era there was an award for Best Title Writing. You know, the written cards that summarized the “dialogue”? Oscar worthy. 

This year’s 96th Academy Awards broadcast saw Oscars handed out in a whopping 23 different categories, from the big wins like Best Picture, to awards for behind-the-scenes expertise in costuming and score. But one group of people thinks there should be yet another added to that list: best stunts. 

Stunt actors are real life action heroes behind the biggest movies, but it’s unlikely we know their names and faces, at least not if they’re doing their jobs right. They risk life and limb to bring films to life. The chariot race in Ben-Hur? The entire Fast and Furious franchise? None of them would be possible without stunt coordinators and performers. 

On this week's Storylines, Joan Webber tells the story of a decades-long effort to get stunt workers their Oscar due.

Produced by Joan Webber. Story editing by Julia Pagel. 

Storylines is part of the CBC Audio Doc Unit