AR-News: (CA) Globe and Mail: 1 arcticle, one letter to ed., both pro-seal hunt

[Barry Kent MacKay]

http://www.globeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/TPStory/LAC/20040410/COBLATC
H10//?query=seal+hunt

I stand with the seal hunters

Though the international media sniff in disapproval, I salute the 
tough-minded folk who go out on the ice and try to make a living in a harsh 
land

By CHRISTIE BLATCHFORD
Saturday, April 10, 2004 - Page A19


My time at the Newfoundland seal hunt - the last great gasp of that era - is

admittedly coloured. I fell in love with those the late Irish Times 
columnist Flann O'Brien might have called The Plain People of the Rock.

In my defence, I couldn't help it, having been pre-programmed by my late 
father, who was stationed in Newfoundland during the Second World War and 
had nothing but fond memories such that for the rest of his life, he hired 
Newfoundlanders at his hockey rinks whenever he could because of their 
penchant for hard work and bitter humour, and because he simply liked to be 
around them.

My whole experience at the hunt was glamorous. I drove with a photographer 
from Deer Lake to St. Anthony, at the very tip of the island. We were 
working for the Toronto Star, where money was then no object, and had 
chartered a helicopter to take us out to the ice floes every day, and our 
pilot was one of those self-contained men with such an air of all-round 
competence that I would have flown into the eye of a hurricane with him.

I stayed in a small guest house, where I felt like I was visiting far-flung 
relatives I'd not met before, but who embraced me as one of their own, right

down to trying to make sure that I ate properly and came in at a decent 
hour. By day, I cavorted over the frozen North Atlantic; by night, I played 
darts in the local pub and fed money into the jukebox, listening obsessively

to Dire Straits and The Sultans of Swing.

Once, our chopper ran out of fuel, and we had to set down on a patch of ice 
to wait for another pilot to drop off a can, just enough to make our way 
that night to the coast of Labrador and a tiny place called Black Tickle, 
which remains the best dateline I've ever had as a reporter.

It is with this background that I read this week, in the New York Times, the

news that the seal hunt is back, and with a vengeance, baby.

It was a classic news story, with that perfect balance taught in journalism 
schools and sought by serious newspapers - some quotes from those opposing 
the revival of the hunt, now apparently six years old but especially large 
this year, and some from those who argue that this hunt -- governed by rules

that prohibit the killing of the youngest seals, and produce better-trained 
sealers -- is not the same as the bad old one.

Yet there was nonetheless to it an edge of hold-your-nose disapproval, born 
perhaps in the accompanying front-page picture of bloodied baby seal 
carcasses and the reporter's descriptions ("the hunt looks nearly as brutal 
as ever," with burly men crushing seal skulls and sometimes "leaving the 
young animals in convulsions") or perhaps just that it appeared in the 
Times, which seems to disapprove of so much.

(Managing to convey a strong point of view in what is an apparently a 
perfectly fair news story is something that J-schools must also teach, and 
serious newspapers strive to attain, because there's always a fair bit of it

about.)

I wondered what the ordinary reader would make of the story, or more 
important, take from it. Would the animal-rights folks, and a protest 
movement still in its infancy, be given a boost? Would a celebrity emerge as

the new Brigitte Bardot and pose, as she once did, cuddling up to a pup?

Two decades or so ago, in the contest between the welfare of Newfoundlanders

versus the welfare of seals, I never had any difficulty picking sides, and 
still don't. It surprises me, because I am usually sentimental about 
animals. But I am more sentimental, I suppose, about my fellow Canadians, 
and their efforts to find honourable work in that hard-luck, hardscrabble 
part of the country.

Squeamishness about the seal hunt, as with squeamishness about 
slaughterhouses, is a luxury born and bred in the cities. Urbanites in the 
normal course are so far removed from the land and the sea, and from the 
harsh realities of sharing space with other living creatures, that our 
relationship with animals is inevitably informed by our view of our house 
pets. Given that there are psychiatrists and chiropractors for dogs and 
cats, not to mention entire lines of clothing, this is troubling.

The best lesson I ever learned in this regard was not delivered at the seal 
hunt, but rather at the Calgary Stampede just a few years ago. I was 
fascinated by the small agricultural rings where children struggled to lead 
in heifers probably five times their size for judging, and the friend who 
was my tour guide explained that as part of their 4-H club membership, the 
youngsters were responsible for taking care of the animals all year. Each 
child would groom and feed a heifer, inevitably become fond of it and give 
it a name, and I could see all that on the faces of the children -- pride 
and affection and pleasure.

Then the Stampede would start up, and the children would bring their animals

in for judging, vying for one of the top prizes. And then, said my friend, 
that day or the next, the animals would be slaughtered, and the children all

knew that, and accepted it as part of the cycle, and sometimes they were 
even there to see the meat auctioned off.

I love that story, probably because it confirms my suspicion that respect 
for animals is not incompatible with valuing their usefulness, and because 
it speaks to a certain toughness that doesn't exist in my own citified soul,

but which I recognize is admirable. In the end, it's why I'll always pick 
cattle ranchers over cows, Newfoundlanders over seals. I believe I probably 
am a species-ist. cblatchford at globeandmail.ca

___________________
In praise of labs


By MICHAEL GILLARD
Friday, April 9, 2004 - Page A14


St. John's -- I assume from his letter on the seal hunt (Selective 
Compassion -- April 7) that S. K. Wood is a hemp-wearing vegan who does not 
suffer from diabetes or any other disease that owes the discovery of its 
primary treatment to one of those research laboratories he decries.

_________________________________________________________________

Barry Kent MacKay
Canadian Representative 
ANIMAL PROTECTION INSTITUTE 
www.api4animals.org