Transcript of Pull Quotes - Episode 2: Nicholas Hune-Brown Rahaf Farawi Hello, I'm Rahaf Farawi, co-host of Pull Quotes. Gabe Oatley And I'm Gabe Oatley, the other half of Pull Quotes the podcast where we take you behind the scenes of Canada's top long-form stories. Alright, so Rahaf, you spoke with our guests this week? Who did you chat with? Rahaf Farawi Yeah, so I spoke with Nicholas Hune-Brown, who is the senior editor at The Local and he's published features with Toronto Life, Hazlitt, and Canadian Business. Gabe Oatley Sweet! And why did you want to chat with Nick this week? Rahaf Farawi Yeah, so I wanted to talk to him about a story he published in The Walrus called “The Shadowy Business of International Education.” And it's a story about international students coming to Canada, and Nick really shows that for a lot of these students, it's mostly about becoming Canadian, which is never really guaranteed. And so, these students end up being really vulnerable to exploitation. Gabe Oatley Hmm, sounds like such an important story. And I heard a lot of buzz about this piece when it was published. What are some of the things that really surprised you about the conversation that you had with Nick? Rahaf Farawi Yeah, so he talks about how his story just kept shifting. And initially, it was going to be about students in China. And then he spoke to students coming from India. And it was interesting to see how he just kept following the narrative and how he found that story that was most important to tell. And just about how he got so much detailed scene material, like about a small village in India over zoom, and just overall, he was a really thoughtful guy. And it was a great chat. Gabe Oatley Amazing, sweet. Okay, I can't wait to listen to it. Rahaf Farawi Yeah, let's, let's, let's play it. Rahaf Farawi Hi, Nick. Nicholas Hune-Brown Hi, Rahaf. Rahaf Farawi I'm super excited to have you on the podcast. So thank you for being here. Nicholas Hune-Brown Thanks for having me. Rahaf Farawi We're here to talk about your piece that you recently published in The Walrus a few months ago, and it's headlined “The Shadowy Business of International Education.” So to start, could you give us a little summary and tell us what is the shadowy business of international education? Nicholas Hune-Brown Yeah, so that the piece is about international students going to post-secondary schools in Canada, and over the last decade or so that number has grown incredibly, it's tripled. So now 40 per-cent of, you know, funding comes from these international students. I think not enough attention has been paid to who these kids are, why they're coming here. And kind of, how vulnerable they are. And sort of, you know, the fact that these post-secondary institutions are becoming completely dependent on these students. And they're coming here for reasons that maybe aren't exactly what you expect. And they're kind of pretty vulnerable once they arrive. Rahaf Farawi Yeah. So I'm just curious how you came about this story? And like, what inspired you to write a feature about it? Nicholas Hune-Brown Yeah, this story was the longest story I've ever worked on, it had a lot of different iterations that took years and years. But I think back in 2017, people have been writing about international education for a while, but international students. And I read a newspaper article about, actually, a Chinese student in a Scarborough kind of rooming house who had died in a fire. And I was just thinking about how a student from China ends up in sort of a basement in Scarborough going to a college here, and I was interested. I knew that international education was huge was bringing in tons of money and was transforming post-secondary education in the country. But I think I wanted to figure out exactly who was profiting along the way and what that meant. So at the time, you know, I thought this was going to be a story about Chinese students primarily. For a long time, China was the primary source of the biggest source of international students to Canada. And over the years, that changed dramatically, like, India has become the, you know, 34% of students come from India at this point. And they're increasingly going to community colleges rather than university. So the whole landscape has sort of changed. In the meantime, the pandemic happened, it took years and years, this story kept shifting. At a certain point, I had a reporting trip that I was planning in early February 2020 to India, and, you know, luckily, I did not go. And in the end, this ended up being one of the stories that took place. You know, most of it was reported from my room over zoom over a number of years, so it was really, it was really a long, a long story. Yeah. Rahaf Farawi Okay, it's interesting that you said it took years. So I'm kind of curious, at what stage did you decide to pitch it to The Walrus? Nicholas Hune-Brown I pitched it pretty early, and it was an entirely different story. Again, it was focused on China. I was thinking about going to China, for an education fair. I was still interested in this sort of– a lot of the story is about these agents who were able to bring students from their home countries to Canada. So that was a sort of business side of the story I was interested in for a long time. But yeah, I pitched them then. And it shifted completely over a long time. And, you know, I’m thankful that my editor was patient and was able to see that the story, you know, could go in different directions. Rahaf Farawi Yeah. And you mentioned a lot of it was on Zoom, and you had planned this trip to India. And, like, reading it, the opening scene of the piece, describing Kushandeep’s hometown, it was very vivid and very specific. And, like, you wrote about the mud and the growing layers of asphalt, and I just felt like I could picture it all so perfectly. I'm kind of curious how you managed to get all that scene material about like a small village in India, especially during a pandemic? Like, what kind of questions were you asking to get such rich material? Nicholas Hune-Brown Yeah, yeah. I mean, with any story like this - especially when you're reporting from a great distance, like over the phone - it's fully dependent on finding subjects who, who are, you know, willing to speak. I mean, one of the biggest problems with this story was finding the person who would be at the center of it. And you know, I interviewed dozens of international students, and you're looking for someone that has an experience that is representative and an experience that is also dramatic. And you're also looking for someone that can share that experience in a way that feels right. And Kushandeep was just so patient with me such a good talker, you know, he was the one who was describing these things, and they were so vivid. And in a piece like this, you go back over and over again. And as a journalist, you kind of, you know, the thing I say is, like, “I'm gonna ask you a bunch of detailed dumb questions, just tell me. You know, you probably won't remember what colour your room was, or whatever. But you know, I'm trying to catch as much of those details as possible.” And once I get those details from someone, I was asking for photos, of any photos that he had of his house. I was on Google Maps and Google Street View, trying to kind of get images of the village. You're doing sort of some secondary research to flesh all of that out. And then trying to make the scene as vivid as possible. But it starts with the subject. Rahaf Farawi That's interesting. Like even you wrote, “At eighteen, Kushandeep was a baby-faced teenager with big brown eyes and a thoughtful, earnest way of expressing himself.” I was kind of curious, like, do you ask for a picture? And then you come up with that? Or is that something like you go, “How would you describe your face as a teenager?” Nicholas Hune-Brown I know. It was from a picture. Rahaf Farawi It was a picture? Nicholas Hune-Brown Yeah. And that’s how he looked. Rahaf Farawi Okay, interesting. Okay. And how did you manage to find all these international students to interview and, like, how did you know that Kushandeep was like your guy, and that was the main story you wanted to tell? Nicholas Hune-Brown Yeah, it was a long, long process. And again, like a lot of these students, so they arrive, and they're incredibly vulnerable, right? Like they have specific work visas they're trying to work towards, they're desperate to get permanent residency here. So, they are some of the most vulnerable people that you can interview. They don't really understand the, you know, necessarily, the rules that exist here. So, finding people who want to talk about labour exploitation, and so on, was difficult. I used a number of strategies. I, like, joined a whole bunch of like WhatsApp groups for international students and Facebook groups, and kind of spoke to people through that. I talked to a number of immigration lawyers and asked if they had clients who might want to speak and I spoke to some advocacy groups. One voice out on the West Coast the Punjabi health services, I believe it's called here in the GTA, and sort of, through them I asked if they had any people that that might be willing to speak. So yeah. So from that, I ended up speaking to a whole bunch of people. And to begin with, you're trying to find out, like, what the story is. So you hear from advocacy groups like this is what's happening with international students, they are being exploited by education agents, once they arrive here, they're often being exploited by their jobs. And you kind of want to have that confirmed by as many individuals as possible. So you're kind of getting a sense of the landscape and what the story is. And then you're thinking about who to put at the center of it. And I spoke to Kushandeep fairly early in my reporting, actually. Then I wasn't sure if he was the exact right person to put at the center of it or not. There were a number of different people who could have been it could have been there or it could have been a piece that sort of told multiple stories and thread them through. But as reporting went on, it felt like his story contained a whole bunch of what I thought were some of the biggest issues here. It didn't contain everything right. So it's not the perfect, the perfect representation of all the issues I see. But it had enough of it. And he was a compelling character, that he made sense at the center of everything. Rahaf Farawi Yeah, for sure. And one of the other voices that you spoke to was Kamal, a funeral-home owner, and he talked about the trend he was noticing with the growing number of young students who were showing up at his funeral homes. So, that part was really hard to read, but it was such a strong voice to include. Could you talk about your decision to speak to him? And how did you decide that he would be a good voice to include? Nicholas Hune-Brown Yeah. I mean, I was trying to be very delicate around that section. So he's a funeral-home owner who I had heard through a different subject, or different source, that there was this funeral-home owner who had seen these things. So I reached out to him, and he, you know, he kind of says that over the last few years, he's seen more and more international students end up, you know, end up dead, I guess. He talks about them taking their own lives, about suicide. So I mean, I think that was a very powerful voice to include. I wanted to be very careful about how I was reporting that and representing that, but I think including that perspective, was sort of the most, you know. A lot of, a lot of bad things can happen when you bring 18-year-olds who have never left their village, and you put them in huge amounts of debt and send them to a college across the world. And this is, you know, this represents the very worst thing that can happen. So I think it was important to include that. Rahaf Farawi Yeah. And like, as a reader, I got really emotional when you touched on, like, sensitive subjects like suicide and sexual exploitation. And I'm wondering how it was like, during the reporting process, while touching on these sensitive subjects and hearing these stories? Nicholas Hune-Brown Yeah, I mean, I think when I'm interviewing people and they're talking about subjects like that, I think. Yeah, I don't have any tricks or anything, other than just listening, and kind of tried just being as sensitive as possible, but also, but also professional. Like, I think I think it's important not to, sort of, pretend you're someone's best-friend, when you are trying to, you know, make sure that they understand that this is an interview, and, you know. But I was, yeah, I was conscious of thinking about how to balance, how much of that stuff to include. Like, you know, there is there was stuff about sexual exploitation that could have been more prominent, I guess, but it didn't feel appropriate. You want to, you want to choose things that are, you know, that show the gravity of the situation, but it's a fine line between feeling a little bit exploitative or, showing things that are not necessarily representative of what everyone's experiencing. So I think, I think, it was, it was about toeing that line. Rahaf Farawi Yeah. And you included a lot of data from like the number of international students, the percentages at certain schools, tuition numbers. I'm curious, was that data easy to access? Or was it difficult to kind of gather those numbers? Nicholas Hune-Brown It was difficult, yeah. A lot of the numbers are not like, the biggest number that's hard to find is how many of these international students actually are able to become permanent residents, because, you know, in the story, that’s what I'm saying– is that the people who come here that's, that's what they're looking for. They're not necessarily looking for a two-year degree from Conestoga College or whatever. They want to be Canadians. Finding how many of those people are successful is not something that the government reveals. So that's, that was a very difficult thing. And you're looking for different ways to tell that. And in terms of growth at the colleges themselves, that was a matter of, like digging through a whole bunch of annual reports, and trying to figure out, you know, trying to look at the numbers. Like, they're not necessarily sharing that the number of international students has increased 12-fold in the last five years. But you can dig into older reports. So it's, yeah, it was a matter of, again, trying to show the numbers but not overwhelm readers with millions of statistics. Rahaf Farawi Yeah, definitely. And while reading the piece, it felt like the problem just kept growing and growing, and you even talked about the situation during the pandemic. So I'm curious as to like when you knew to stop? At what point did you feel like you spoke to enough people, you've gathered enough information to tell the story? Nicholas Hune-Brown Yeah, well, that was obviously kind of a disaster that took years, right. And I think the pandemic in particular - I was ready to dive in before the pandemic - then the pandemic threw international education completely upside down, right? So for a while, I thought the story is gonna to just be about the pandemic. And then, you know, a few months or maybe even a year into the pandemic, I thought, “no this the story, it's about the longer arc here. The pandemic is part of it, but let's tell the story of what's been happening over, you know, a decade rather than over the last year.” And, in terms of when you know the story's done. I think someone, it was a straight Twitter thread, I can't remember who to credit. But someone was talking about once you realize you're probably okay to start writing, that you've got the story, is when you just keep hearing the same things over and over again. And that's, that's definitely what happened here. You know, I'm speaking to my fifteenth student, and they're saying the same thing. I'm speaking to, you know, another immigration lawyer, and they're telling me the same issues. I’m speaking to an advocate from the west coast or from the east coast, and they're telling you the same thing. So then you begin to feel some confidence that yeah, this is the story, I've got it right. I'm not learning a whole lot more from the people I'm speaking to. I'm ready to kind of get this down. And even then, like, I'm never someone who does all my reporting, and it does all my writing. I'm constantly making calls, trying to fill stuff in as I’m writing something. Rahaf Farawi Interesting. If you did manage to go to India, like, what do you think would have changed in your story? Nicholas Hune-Brown I mean, I think being able to get even more - So the way my story is constructed, is it's kind of all constructed backwards, right? Like, it's, it's told from beginning to end. But I'm getting that beginning by talking to Kushandeep years later. I think maybe the piece would have been the same, but I think the idea would have been to follow one of these students from, from their home, you know, to Canada and see what happens there. I think I would have gotten. As well being able to speak to agents on the ground there and get a sense of them. We don't have that character in the piece. People who are kind of, you know, what those agencies look like what, what that means in a small town, in rural Punjab. But, to be honest, I'm happy with how a lot of that reporting worked out just going over the phone. You know, I'm happy with that section of the story. So I'm sure, I'm sure, it would have been different in ways that I can't even, you know, think about because I didn't get to do that reporting. But, yeah. Rahaf Farawi Yeah, I wanted to talk about the last section of the piece where you wrote, “It was an appealing vision– a twenty-first-century version of the immigrant dream. It's the kind of story that travels, carrying the promise of a better future. It’s something you could sell on a billboard.” I'm curious how you came up with that, and why you chose to end your peace with it? Nicholas Hune-Brown You know, I think a lot of that was working with my editor, Daniel Viola at The Walrus. We were trying to find the right ending. And I think I think this ending, which feels a little ambiguous, it's, you know, it's not a brutal ending for Kushandeep. It's, you know, there's some promise there. And I think if you zoomed out and you said, “Hey, here's this guy, he came to Canada now he's got this good job. He's moved.” You know, that's, that's a story that's appealing. I think the whole, the whole work of the pieces is to complicate that narrative and to, you know, think about what they're selling on Billboard's isn't the reality and that, you know, Kushandeep was lucky, but there's a whole lot of people who are, who are less lucky. So I think, you know, ending it on that slightly, ironic, kind of note, I think, I think was appropriate. And, you know, just like a callback as well. It feels satisfying in a certain way. Yeah. Rahaf Farawi Yeah. And you mentioned working with your editor. So I've heard that, like, the editing and fact-checking process at The Walrus is like, pretty intense. Could you talk a little bit about that process? And like, how it was like to fact-check your piece? Nicholas Hune-Brown Yeah, I mean, I was a fact-checker at The Walrus years and years and years ago. I was an intern, you know, when I first graduated from university and started doing this. So I appreciate what they do. And honestly, as a writer, it's like the greatest comfort to me that some smart person is going to be going over my piece, and making sure that every inch of it is factual and correct. Like that's, that's a huge relief. You know, it's like working with a, with a, really strong net underneath you. So it's something I appreciate about magazines like The Walrus, or Toronto Life, or what have you. Fact-checking this, I think, was very difficult. I think, the fact-checker did a fantastic job. I’m trying, you know, as I'm writing, I'm trying to keep, keep notes as best as I can, footnotes about where everything's coming from, account for each detail. In terms of the editing process, I had a great time editing this with Daniel, he's a smart editor. And I think in this piece, like I'd spent so long with it and really worked on it, that the structure, in the end, didn't require like a full, full reconstruction, which can sometimes happen with a feature at The Walrus or any place where you have to kind of bring things, tear things apart to build them back together. Like here, it was pretty straightforward. I think my vision of the piece from the first draft ended up being pretty similar to that was at the end. And that's not always the case. But I think in this case, it was just something that that worked. Rahaf Farawi Okay. Before we end, I kind of just want to ask you a more broad career question. So I'm curious to learn a bit more about your path to building a career in magazine feature writing in Canada? Nicholas Hune-Brown Yeah. I think, I mean, people do it in all sorts of different ways, right. But I think, I mean, my particular path I graduated from McGill. I didn't have any journalism school experience. And I was writing these sort of culture essays, I guess, is what you'd call them. I was writing, you know, think pieces about, about films and books and culture and stuff that felt familiar to me as an English major, where I didn't have to interview a lot of people, which seemed scary. And at a certain point, I realized that the kind of stuff that I liked reading the most, like by Susan Orlean, or Michael Lewis, or whatever, we're with these sort of long-form features, and that's the kind of thing I want to do. And I started pitching them and trying to figure out how to do it. I pitched Toronto Life a story about the so-called Ethnic Press, which ended up being a really complicated feature about Chinese language newspapers in Toronto. And I think, I mean, yeah, I do think that pitching is the only real way to do it and that's, you know, that's like, a specific skill. But it's also, you know, now I'm now I've been a feature writer for a long time. I've also been a feature editor. And I think pitching is very much like, the same skill, which is like understanding what makes a good magazine article. And I think that carries over between editing and writing and pitching itself. And it just comes from reading a whole bunch of magazine articles and thinking about what the elements are, and kind of really, honing your instinct for what makes that work. So yeah, I mean, to begin with, I just concentrated on writing a few really good features, not doing a million pieces. And, you know, that comes with like, a certain amount of privilege, I didn't have a giant student loan, I was living in a big apartment with a million artists. I was living like a student for like, years and could afford to make very little money. So that's a different path for everyone. But, yeah, I think building a portfolio was the most important thing. And I think, that's- I mean, I encourage people to do that, if possible to, you know, to take time out of doing whatever daily hits you need to do, or the short pieces and to kind of, you know, if you can invest the time to tell one really good feature. And from there, you know, things begin to open up. People are always looking for people that can really write a smart, good, well-reported feature. I don't think that's, I don't think there. Yeah. I think that's a skill that’s still important. Rahaf Farawi Yeah, for sure. And I think that's a great way to, kind of, end off this chat. Thank you for being here. And it was really great to have you on the podcast. Nicholas Hune-Brown Yeah. Thanks for speaking with me. Rahaf Farawi And that's the end of the second episode of our season. Pull Quote’s is published by the Review of Journalism X University. Our show hosts are Gabe Oatley and me, Rahaf Farawi. Our podcast team also includes Andrew Oliphant and Annika Forman. Technical and audio support is provided by Angela Glover and web support by Lindsay Hannah. Our executive producer is Sonya Fattah, and the music is by Harrison Amer. Join us in about 10 days for the next episode.