YouSaid · the spoken record

Lyse Doucet

lines on the record: 54
first: 2019-09-10
most recent: 2019-09-10
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“I don't our life. You know, I framed it and I carry it with me everywhere I've gone I've carried this poem, and I think that's how I continue to live, timorous or bold, it will have been our life. So in other words, you know, don't worry about the small things and the worries and this visa or this story but just keep going just keep going to do the things that you think matter and hopefully they'll matter to other people who are listening and watching. You're definitely not timorous least you said thank you so much Thank you This is the final episode of this first series of How I Found My Voice. So until next season, goodbye from me, Samira Ahmed, and the producer Barajet.”
2019-09-10 · Intelligence Squared · How I Found My Voice: Lyse Doucet · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I love working for the BBC. I've worked for the BBC from the beginning. The BBC has been my passport to allow me to travel around the world. There has never been an editor in the BBC who said Well these you shouldn't go there, not really a place for a woman or you shouldn't do this or that story. I mean of course there's been issues throughout the decades of my accent and competitiveness of journalism. You know, I've had my share of trying to have my voice within many voices of the BBC. But I feel very comfortable with the BBC and if I moved it then I would be thinking that well it's a job but I think it's not really just a job. It's how you live, it's your personal life and you know Afghanistan's not just a story for me it's part of my life so why would I leave this life?”
2019-09-10 · Intelligence Squared · How I Found My Voice: Lyse Doucet · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, no, no, 1755, the British expelled us from our land. And it's regarded as the first ethnic cleansing by Britain. And there are Acadians who think we should get an apology from the Queen. And the queen did recognise the suffering of the Acadian people, but there hasn't been an apology. So every time I meet a member of the royal family, I feel I should say my people are very thankful that you have recognized our suffering, but there are those who would like an apology. So for me, and it's not just me, people saying British Empire, I think that is okay for me with my ancestry to accept this, but back to where we started, I think, well, should you really be inducted into the order of Canada for journalism? This is what we do. We're telling other people's stories, and I think more and more we also have to ask ourselves whose stories can we tell because we're living in a time where people can tell their own stories. So what stories should I be able to tell? So it's a nice honor, and I think we need to just take them in our stride and remember who we are and what our job requires us to do and know more than that.”
2019-09-10 · Intelligence Squared · How I Found My Voice: Lyse Doucet · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Those words are a little bit tricky for me the OBE because my ancestry is that I'm an Acadian, which from the eastern part of Canada, and it's one of the little known parts of British history. In seventeen fifty five, you know, my part of Canada had gone back and forth between British and French control.”
2019-09-10 · Intelligence Squared · How I Found My Voice: Lyse Doucet · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“idle Arab idol so he wanted to sing for us and all of these we wonder what is extraordinary people I wish I could show put these people on air to say you know you think that these are just victims that these that you can't relate to them because they look so different from you or I but in the midst of them are people that are kind of fascinating full of energy they want a future”
2019-09-10 · Intelligence Squared · How I Found My Voice: Lyse Doucet · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of course, the overarching story is very negative. These are some of the darkest, most violent stories of our time. But you have to still find ways of reporting on people's courage, how they keep their families together, how they survive, what is it that keeps them going, and so often the light that you find is only one of perhaps of courage, but for example, I went to Syria, I went to Aden, and I met like all these extraordinary young Yemenis. There was a sixteen year old boy with a big grin and a little red bow tie, and he would come and he'd be working in the restaurant as his father was the manager, and every day he would be really kind and trying to help us, and then the chef was from Syria and he would stay late to make us falafel and hummus so we had something special to eat, and then there was a Yemeni who came to work with us who'd been to Egypt and he was a contestant on Middle East.”
2019-09-10 · Intelligence Squared · How I Found My Voice: Lyse Doucet · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It is also incumbent upon us to look at those as human stories because that is what they are, and that is the best chance of conveying to everyone that those serious war is not just about Syria. It's stopping just about Syria a long time ago. It's our story too. The Syrians are not out there somewhere. They're down the street. They're in our schools. They're all around us and we have to understand them because no story now is just within borders.”
2019-09-10 · Intelligence Squared · How I Found My Voice: Lyse Doucet · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“People get up in the morning, they worry about their children going to school, they worry about whether they have a job to support their children. As humans we need to survive, we need to have a bit of humor, a bit of hope, a bit of humanity. Those are the attributes that I find are the shining lights in the middle of such darkness, and I look for them wherever I go. And what people, you know, editors in the BBC are saying to me now, the news agenda is so depressing. You know, I've started to think we should have positive news on the BBC because it's so depressing. Even I, as a news junkie, find it hard to listen, but that the message we're getting from sisters and viewers is that when they hear a story, they want to leave that story thinking that there's a way out, that there's some hope in that story, that all is not lost. And so I do try to find the threads, and you don't make them up. They're there. For those of us who are privileged to be able to witness what are the important stories of our time.”
2019-09-10 · Intelligence Squared · How I Found My Voice: Lyse Doucet · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But we just broke down crying. My Syrian colleague, and of course that's just for us. That's not for reporting because it's not about us. But you go into you think, oh my God, how do people survive? How do they carry on? But people do carry on. And when you ask me about trying to find the hope and happiness, what I've learned time and again, and I'm sure I'm not the only one, is that when you approach these stories, which are the consequential and complex stories of our time, they don't get much more complex and consequential in Syria or Afghanistan, that if you drill down to it, what are these stories? These stories are about mothers and fathers and children and neighbors and friends and societies. And for me that has been the way to try to convey to people outside, including my sister who says, Lise, what do I need to know about Syria? It's so complicated. I don't really understand it. It's a story that all of us should relate to.”
2019-09-10 · Intelligence Squared · How I Found My Voice: Lyse Doucet · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's Ms. Lindsay Holstom and I laugh is the wrong word, but she says, you know, some people who run these trauma organizations provide counseling, they come up here and say, you have it. You must have BTSD. You must have, you must have. And Lindsay goes, no, no, I don't have it. I tell you, I don't have it. One of the things which helps a lot is when we're in Afghanistan, we work with Afghans and trusted Afghans. Afghans who are our friends, Afghan drivers, Afghan producers. When we're in Syria, it's with Syrians, when we're in Iraq, it's with Iraqis and so on. So that when you're arriving, when you're talking to people, when you're arranging interviews, when you're traveling to high-risk areas, they're with you. And you're so profoundly aware that whatever you feel, you're going to leave some day, and that your Afghan or Iraq or whatever colleagues they are, this is their home. This is where they're raising their families. This is where they're”
2019-09-10 · Intelligence Squared · How I Found My Voice: Lyse Doucet · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm a migrant. I came from the far east of Canada, and now I traveled around the world, and wow, I've ended up in London. I live in a safe place in a neighborhood with hedged trees and is quiet and as peaceful. It's a gift. And then you go to other places, and it's not to say that you can't if you live in Kabul or if you live in Sinjar in northern Iraq, or if you live in Colombia, wherever you live, that you can't find joy and happiness and possibilities, but more and more the world in which we live in, where you are born, defines your life chances.”
2019-09-10 · Intelligence Squared · How I Found My Voice: Lyse Doucet · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“For class could have been a doctor in another world, and you stand there and you think What can I say to them? I ended up saying if only I had a magic wand that somehow I can make it better, but you leave feeling so depressed because you realize that the only thing these women have in its extraordinary gift that they have is their defiance and their courage. But life has dealt them such a bad hand, and life will not give them that much better, except their survival and their biddy to raise their children away from abuse of husbands, that perhaps there be some light somewhere in that dark corridor, but their life are not going to substantially be substantially different. And you feel now I feel so profoundly this gratitude and I don't say people listening it's a bit cheesy for these to say today I come back to London and I feel gratitude the whole time to be born in a western country which is afforded me the opportunity for education.”
2019-09-10 · Intelligence Squared · How I Found My Voice: Lyse Doucet · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Though I felt this really profoundly on my last trip to Afghanistan. I often say that away a country treats women is a barometer of where that country is and where it's going, and in Afghanistan now, eighteen years since after the fall of the Taliban, when you meet women and women's groups, either you feel so inspired, they're so articulate, educated, passionate, or you feel so utterly, utterly depressed, and this happened when we went to a women's shelter, four women bravely said, but with a lot of reluctance we will talk to you, but they had to be, you know, they wanted to make sure they were all covered, etc. And after they pour out their story, which is almost without exception, child marriage beaten by their husbands, imprisoned by their fathers, having to flee, no prospects inside even in one case a woman who was at the top.”
2019-09-10 · Intelligence Squared · How I Found My Voice: Lyse Doucet · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But time and again they would open up and their stories would pour out, because sadly I went to this area of northern Iraq to the ancestral lands of the Yazidis years after the Islamic State had come and gone where they felt I've never seen a community which felt so forgotten and so feeling so profoundly that their fate depended on whether the international community would either come and protect the militarily or give literally the whole community visas in order to leave. So they wanted to tell their story. They wanted someone like me to be able to hear their story, so they told their story time and time again, and you feel so humbled, you feel so profoundly saddened by what they've had to go through.”
2019-09-10 · Intelligence Squared · How I Found My Voice: Lyse Doucet · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's so hard, Smear, and you would know. I mean, when you come to one of the worst things that can happen to man or woman. Being raped, I was dreading going to the areas that so-called Islamic State had stormed into, taken thousands of women hostage, kept them as sexual slaves, and I said to my producer I don't want to do any interviews unless we are absolutely sure we're going to use those interviews. I don't like asking those questions. So when I sat down with any of the women, I would just say, you know, thank you very much. It's been hard. Or how are you now? Something so broad I never use the wor word, and I'm leaving it up to you, in other words. If you want to share it with me, do. I'm giving you this I'm here someone from the West who has a voice on a big global broadcaster, and if you see me as someone you want to tell your story, that's fine, but I'm not going to with very detailed questions try to prove.”
2019-09-10 · Intelligence Squared · How I Found My Voice: Lyse Doucet · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I sometimes joke and it's not completely a joke that journalism is an excuse for bad manners. That we do we think, oh wow, I'm so important Oh I'm covering the story Oh this is you know here I am I must get the story and that the story matters more than anything else and I think we have to be humble it is just a story and it's not even our story and the countries we are covering are not our countries. We're there often because of the kindness of strangers and the people that are around us and they're also cultures that have a very are very sensitive Why wouldn't we show a little kindness? I don't have to talk to us. They don't have to talk to us. No.”
2019-09-10 · Intelligence Squared · How I Found My Voice: Lyse Doucet · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To this day, where I'm dressed in the Schalwark Camees with my hat, my hair up under the trolley hat that's quite well known now for in Pakistan and Afghanistan. And as we were driving in, my Pakistani colleague said, the guys in the pickup in front of us are discussing whether you're a man or whether you're a woman. But I also still have to this day a photograph when we met this gorilla, this Mujahideen leader with his big white, in fact, orange beard that sometimes painted orange as a sign of respect. Big press conference, lots of men and me dressed as a man, and I got the seat right next to him. So I was dressed like a man but given all the courtesy to a woman that I would get the best seat in the press conference. And this is why we say with some of these groups it's changing now because groups are becoming more extremist is hospitality over ideology. It was a very pragmatic and practical solution to a problem I wanted to report in that story. He wanted the BBC.”
2019-09-10 · Intelligence Squared · How I Found My Voice: Lyse Doucet · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They make sure that you don't come in harm's way, and I ended up spending five years then in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran. And in that time, the only time there was really a significant time where my gender got in the way was in nineteen ninety two before the fall of Kabul, the Afghan Mujahideen had taken a big city host in the east of Afghanistan. And there was the group that won that war. They're now on the terrorism list, but at that point they weren't. So they called the BC office in Islamabad. Hello, we've just had this major military victory in Host. I said, yes, it's extremely important in the war. They said we would like the BBC to cover this. I said, great, we want to cover it too. And he goes, wow. So who's coming? I said, well, me. He goes Oh, we want the BBC, but we don't want a woman. And then I don't know where I found this the composure to think, and I said, okay, well, I will come, I will dress like a man, but I will come as the BBC. And he goes, okay, fine. So I went, and we have still picked.”
2019-09-10 · Intelligence Squared · How I Found My Voice: Lyse Doucet · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“People have come up with different phrases, and you keep thinking about these phrases, is that acceptable now in the way we think of our language? So when I was in Pakistan, so that was in the late 80s, early 90s, people used to talk about the third gender. You're not treated like the women of the country that you're reporting from, but you're not treated like the men either. So you have this special status, neither male nor female, but also for all of the criticism of Islam and the more say the harsher, stricter interpretations of Islam, there is also, as you know, the thread which talks about respecting women. In some cases it can turn out to be suffocating women, but in my case it was that you would get the first seat on the bus, the first seat in the helicopter, and believe me there were times when I didn't want the first seat in the helicopter. But they take care of you.”
2019-09-10 · Intelligence Squared · How I Found My Voice: Lyse Doucet · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In a way, it's not. Because I think my job is to get them to talk to me. And if they're going to focus on my legs or my hair, that gets in the way of what I want to do, and I don't have, you know, I'm not going to wear burqa. I'm not going to wear black, but I will wear a headscarf. I dress conservatively anyway, quite frankly. It's a version of what I wear in Britain. And so that we can focus on what I want to do, which is to ask them questions and get answers from them, and they can focus on what they're going to talk to me about.”
2019-09-10 · Intelligence Squared · How I Found My Voice: Lyse Doucet · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it's important to remember back to where we started that we are hashtag just journalists. We're not celebrities. We are not the story. We are there to ask people questions. For me, that's what defines journalism, the kind of questions we ask. Because in choosing the questions we ask, we're choosing the answers we want to hear. We're choosing the stories we want to tell and who we want to speak to in order to get those full stories. You know, you mentioned I wear a headscarf. You know, my view on this has always been, and it's something that women discuss a lot.”
2019-09-10 · Intelligence Squared · How I Found My Voice: Lyse Doucet · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I was so committed to the story. I mean, bear in mind that this was a time, this was the golden days of the BBC where the survey said that something like ninety five point eight percent of Afghans in the refugee camps were listening to the BBC, and all my dispatches were being translated into Persian and to Pashtu, and you really felt at that time there was a story, and I don't think it's apocryphal, that the wars would stop on the battlefield, so that everyone would listen to the BBC and Pashtu and in Persian to find out what was happening on the battlefield. And of course my dispatches were translated often by a man, so they thought Lisette was a man, but I was so engaged with the story that I decided decided to stay, and to this day I still go to Afghanistan.”
2019-09-10 · Intelligence Squared · How I Found My Voice: Lyse Doucet · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Dark, gloomy all the clocks had stopped. History had really stopped. Dark and gloomy in the guy at the end behind the reception desk said How long are you staying? It was sort of like Africa all over again I thought Am I staying for six days? Am I staying for six weeks? And I said well I'm not sure six weeks I said and it ended up I stayed a year and that was the time where within months or actually very few months the British pulled down the flag, the Americans pulled down the flag. All the Western diplomats left Cobble to try to put pressure on the Soviet backed government so it would collapse and the Mujahideen were outside the city so the moment was coming up to february fifteenth which was the end of the Soviet troop withdrawal and lots of journalists left and people said please they're good you're going to get killed you better leave but I was so there's something inside you I often call it this pang in journals you feel it in your gut that the Afghans I'd met were so”
2019-09-10 · Intelligence Squared · How I Found My Voice: Lyse Doucet · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'd really still remember to this day the first Afghan family I met in refugee camp just outside Queta, and was really taken by the feistiness of the women, the kindness of the families, and I became so interested in the Afghan story. And yes, you know, the Afghan Mujahideen, who basically were trying to defeat the government in Kabul, said Oh, Lee's going to”
2019-09-10 · Intelligence Squared · How I Found My Voice: Lyse Doucet · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes. And the BBC is saying, oh, that's interesting from Queta. Oh, and so suddenly my story started appearing on the BBC because no one was in Queta. So it was that sort of thing at that point is trying to be finding the gap. And I found this little gap and suddenly said, oh, well, Lee's come to Islamabad, start reporting from Islamabad. But I wasn't senior enough to get the Pakistan job. And when the Pakistan job came up, the person who got it said get least to set out of here. My partner is going to be doing the freelancing. I don't want her in Pakistan, so I was about to leave, and kindness of strangers someone intervened, got me that golden visa for Cobble they were not giving visas to the BBC'cause after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in nineteen seventy nine it became very difficult. So suddenly there I was through contacts, the tried and true journalistic way I got a visa for Cobble and that's why I flew in on my birthday in the harshest of winters at the end of the day.”
2019-09-10 · Intelligence Squared · How I Found My Voice: Lyse Doucet · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“serve as the Persian service. Hi, I'm thinking of going out there. Oh thank you, Lise. That's so kind of you. We have enough people. No, no, no. But for some reason I had a friend who said Lee's Pakisana is in your karma, so after my six months at the BBC I said, Well, I'm going to Pakistan. As with Africa, no money, real, not really a lot of experience, because I knew the Pakistan correspondent was coming up. And I went to Queta. Nobody was in Queta, which turned out to be the at that point you had the war against the Soviet back government in Kabul, the Mujahideen back by the West, this cold war going on in Afghanistan, and nobody was in Queta, which is where Hamid Karazai and other people were based, and I started filing from Queta.”
2019-09-10 · Intelligence Squared · How I Found My Voice: Lyse Doucet · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“While my Catholic upbringing, I'm sorry I can't lie to you. I really need visa. Can you possibly give me a visa for London? And he couldn't. So the diplomat in Lagos spoke to the West African Committee of the Foreign Office, and I was sponsored to come for six months to work in London on a work permit. They didn't tell me who did it only years later did I meet the person who actually sponsored me. I met her in Jerusalem. She was ambassador to Beirut, and I said, She goes, Lee, you know, I'm the person who signed the form that she changed my life. I said, Oh my goodness, what do we do? Like, oh what should I do? I felt like I should take her out to dinner or something. So I did get to London, but my visa ended, and I had to leave. I literally, at that time, it's much harder to do it now. I would take out maps, and I would think, where does the BBC not have anyone? And I thought Pakistan, Afghanistan. And then I went around the BBC's to the Urdu service, the Pashtun.”
2019-09-10 · Intelligence Squared · How I Found My Voice: Lyse Doucet · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And he said, What are you going to do now? And I said, Well, I really would like to go to Britain, but I can't find a way. And I'd even done this thing like out of a William Boyd novel. Someone said, Go to an outpost, one of the consular offices in northern Nigeria, and go an unsuspecting visa officer and try to get a visa that way. So I went to see an unsuspect so called unsuspecting visa officer in the north of Nigeria, and I sat down in front of him and then I said”
2019-09-10 · Intelligence Squared · How I Found My Voice: Lyse Doucet · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I ended up spending about five years in Africa because I'm not one of those journalists who just goes for a day. Whenever I go to a place to this day, I like to state out. In fact, some of the volunteers I worked with versus a volunteer teacher, when we would visit villages, after a while they said Lise, do you realize that every place we go village town city in West Africa as we're travelling, you always end up saying Oh I could live here and to this day everywhere I go somewhere in my mind I think Oh I could live here where's the grocery store? Where's oh this is a really really really nice park So I ended up staying in West Africa for five years then it was the question of I really should come to London to get some training and I couldn't find a way to get here everyone said Oh Lee's you're Canadian you're the right there was no way I was a bit too old for the student visa and there was no real way and I just happened to be speaking to a diplomat in Lagos in Nigeria”
2019-09-10 · Intelligence Squared · How I Found My Voice: Lyse Doucet · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I quickly had to understand how to report, and of course I had no knowledge of Britain then, you know, the only knowledge really was watching Mary Poppins growing up, and I still remember, of course, I would listen to the BBC World Service then once I was in Africa, this is London So I remember my first flight to London which was a few years later, and waking up in a hotel room in London and opening the curtains and thinking this is London and very excited to find me in London. That was the nineteenth, the nineteen eighties.”
2019-09-10 · Intelligence Squared · How I Found My Voice: Lyse Doucet · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, this was a time when actually it was a really interesting time in journalism. This was the time that the newspaper, The Independent, was formed. And with Amancha to say we want stories from the African continent to be on the front page rather than the inside page. We want to do the stories that other people are not doing as much on. And so this was a time where people were becoming more interested in what was happening in that corner of the world. And unfortunately, it was at that time a time of famine in the Sahel in the early eighties, a time of military coups across West Africa, so things were happening all the time. And the correspondent, Alexander Thompson, had to cover some twenty six countries, so of course he was off and away, and there I was in the office answering the phone. So it was real kind of baptism of fire.”
2019-09-10 · Intelligence Squared · How I Found My Voice: Lyse Doucet · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So then I was becoming there on the ground saying, Here I am, I don't. I'm a journalist. And so that's how I started. And so, you know, here I still am clinging on.”
2019-09-10 · Intelligence Squared · How I Found My Voice: Lyse Doucet · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Place, right time, that magical, magical word for a journalist. The BBC was opening up. News readers read the news. So when is this received pronunciation, which was a southern London, quite posh accent? So they decided to experiment a little bit with Scottish accents, and there comes Lis Duet from Africa in the middle of this. And this is what they're doing.”
2019-09-10 · Intelligence Squared · How I Found My Voice: Lyse Doucet · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What were they must have been thinking that here are these Canadians who'd never been to Africa, studying Africa? You know how it is when you're studying, you get a sense of yourself, you read so much and you know so much. But in fact we know nothing at all. We know enough to ask questions, but I thought how gracious of them to sit in these graduate classes with these Canadians pretending that they know about Africa when they know nothing at all, and it was a reminder that those people who know most are those of course who are from the area of it's under their skin and as much as any of us can try that actually if it's not our own story we will never know the full extent of the story.”
2019-09-10 · Intelligence Squared · How I Found My Voice: Lyse Doucet · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“people know Justin Trudeau, his father Pierre Trudeau, had married this young woman, Margaret Trudeau, who by then was hanging out in studio fifty four in New York and the marriage was breaking down, and here I was in this little village in West Africa, and they had this young Canadian there and what they wanted to know from me, forget my master's degree, what is Margaret Trudeau doing? Is she still partying with Mick Jagger at Studio fifty four? So it was my first kind of real introduction into what are the questions we ask and what kind of information do people want to hear? How interesting. I had a lot of young African graduate students from Tanzania, from Sudan in my graduate class at the University of Toronto. And years later, I would joke with them in thinking,”
2019-09-10 · Intelligence Squared · How I Found My Voice: Lyse Doucet · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I think in my case, though, I was clear to me that I was going out to become a journalist because they were trying to find a placement for me and my first, they first suggested Ethiopia, and the Ethiopians said no, she's interested in journalism, we don't want her to come. And then there was something in India, and I was still finishing my degree, and then they thought with a name like Lise Dusette, she must speak French, so they sent me to Ivory Coast. So I went there and spent four months teaching in a village school in Adzopay, and I remembered to this day, here I was, young Canadian, I had a degree, a master's degree, an international relations with a focus on African agriculture, and to this day I think African agriculture? Why was I interested in African agriculture? And I thought, you know, chess puffed up, I'm going to West Africa. I've got this degree. So there I go. And so I met by this representative and I'm thinking he's going to ask me questions about my knowledge of Africa. And his first question to me was, how is Margaret Trudeau, who was at time married?”
2019-09-10 · Intelligence Squared · How I Found My Voice: Lyse Doucet · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“First of all, political science, and then I went on to the University of Toronto. Once I got to Toronto, which is a far more diverse city, I felt more at home there, and that's going to Queens opened up Canada for me in the sense of elitism that the world is a very hierarchical place, but then when I went to Toronto for my master's degree, then suddenly I started meeting people from around the world and I joined a volunteer organization called Canadian Crossroads International. And to this day, those people that I met at Canadian Crossroads who were young Canadians going out, they send people to do volunteer assignments around the world.”
2019-09-10 · Intelligence Squared · How I Found My Voice: Lyse Doucet · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I went to Queens, which was a big, to this day was the biggest culture shock for me, even more than going to Africa or the Middle East, so I left my small town on the little bay on the far eastern corner of Canada and went to central Canada to Ontario, to Queen's University, which is a very elite university, I have to say. It was my first real engagement with the wider world. It was a real cultural adjustment.”
2019-09-10 · Intelligence Squared · How I Found My Voice: Lyse Doucet · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Now, I don't have that book, but I have the late slip, so God knows where the book is now. So that, to me, is my first proof that even As a high school student, I decided to become a journalist.”
2019-09-10 · Intelligence Squared · How I Found My Voice: Lyse Doucet · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“For while I was interested when I was young and being a lawyer, but then one of my best friends at the time, her father was a lawyer and he was an alcoholic, and that affected me. And I thought, well, maybe that's not so good. And I don't know at what point I started thinking about journalism, but I did find a late slip in our local library, and I should say that when my little town finally got a library, I was the first to stand at the door and raced inside, so I was the first one to take out a book which was about trees. I ran into the park next door, read the book on trees, and then ran back in and got a second book on the first day in the library. And I have a late slip for a book entitled How to Be a Journalist.”
2019-09-10 · Intelligence Squared · How I Found My Voice: Lyse Doucet · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Source asked questions. I went back to being a very good student and then graduated with all the honors. And I think it's, again, this is the family structure. You come from a family, your church going family. If you could stray a little bit, but ultimately you come back to the fold.”
2019-09-10 · Intelligence Squared · How I Found My Voice: Lyse Doucet · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Wow, this is really this is a lot of information, Samira. This is telling. I was naughty in my secondary school, you know, the teacher said, well, these would be better at math if she wasn't so interested in boys. But drinking and drugs and going to the town, you know, at a very young age. But by the time I got to high school,”
2019-09-10 · Intelligence Squared · How I Found My Voice: Lyse Doucet · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To this day, when I buy something I buy a second one, so and often then I'll give it to my producer if my sister's not here, if I see my sister I'll go so I buy one in blue and one in green for her or if I'm not going to see my sister I buy for my producer. You always buy for two or more You know I was the only one when we were doing the Iron Nuclear talks I would go in at lunchtime and I would buy for everyone you know I'd buy sweets and flowers and it's just you know I sometimes say to you know friends who live we don't I don't know what the right word is now whether to the south or to other parts of the world just because I have a western upring doesn't mean I don't have a big family that I don't have family values and I also that I don't think of the community you know they think of us in the West that we're very insular we are very self-centered and of course we probably are a little bit of all that but we also have a great capacity for thinking beyond ourselves of sharing”
2019-09-10 · Intelligence Squared · How I Found My Voice: Lyse Doucet · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A big family has six children, so also you grow up having to negotiate your place in the family. Where were you in order? And I'm the oldest girl, but this is the second.”
2019-09-10 · Intelligence Squared · How I Found My Voice: Lyse Doucet · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Saying, What What do you mean great to be in Damascus? Oh what's so dangerous out on my court? Because I love going to Damascus. I've been going there since'94. I have friends there and the places at rest.”
2019-09-10 · Intelligence Squared · How I Found My Voice: Lyse Doucet · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Damascus, and so my arrival in Damascus after crossing the border from On. And my first tweet is great to be in Damascus, and all of a sudden there's a flood of people.”
2019-09-10 · Intelligence Squared · How I Found My Voice: Lyse Doucet · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I tend to go with a smile. I'm off, my producers have this message from me. Please tell me to stop smiling because you'll be in a place, you know, five miles from You're smiling, and my bruises stop smiling, Leez, because you give a wrong impression. The irony is that people always say. Old Lee's, you go to such dangerous places, but I don't think of them as such dangerous places. There was one time when I went to”
2019-09-10 · Intelligence Squared · How I Found My Voice: Lyse Doucet · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Religion is just the way you live. It's how people live and live together. So I didn't see it as something divisive. I think in that sense I lived a charmed existence in a very small town, in a far away place. And to this day, when people say to me, Well, what are the skills that you have all this experience and these honorary doctorates and what are your skills as a journalist? And I say, if I have any skills as a journalist, it is because I grew up in a place where people don't shut their doors, where you have grandmother saying just be nice to everybody, you know, they've buy the golden rule, treat others as you would like to be treated”
2019-09-10 · Intelligence Squared · How I Found My Voice: Lyse Doucet · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was the kind of upbringing which the When people today ask me about religion because I tend to go to places where religion is not just faith, it's an issue, a defining issue, and a divisive issue. And for me, religion growing up where I did is community. It's people coming together and all the important rituals of life, of baptisms, of weddings of that. I grew up as a Roman Catholic. I went to a Roman Catholic school, so I was taught by none sacred heart school, and we played against the girls who went to the Protestant school.”
2019-09-10 · Intelligence Squared · How I Found My Voice: Lyse Doucet · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Which are the east coast? So when I was growing up, it was about 60% French and 40% English basically divided between Protestant and Catholics with a sprinkling of a few Jewish families who kept their faith really quietly.”
2019-09-10 · Intelligence Squared · How I Found My Voice: Lyse Doucet · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source