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WHITBY FREE PRESS, WEDNESDAY. JULY 2. 1986 PAGE 5 w Advise and Dissent Aw..kly neom oommntary from ont of anada'. outatending umwu roalh. 'PIC 0F TRIUEMN A£NHEANa PQE GLOEALNUaW8 OTTAWA - I concluded a recent comment with a reference to T.S. Elliot's line of poetry about the world ending not with a bang but a whimper, and I said that on quiet days I thought I was beginning to hear the whimper. The next day, I had a visitor named Michael Bloomfield, a young man who is trying to head off the end of the world, no matter what way it expires. He has decided that he should begin his mission by encouraging debate about our treatment of what he refers to as the "non-human" animals. Mr. Bloomfield has a bachelor's degree in Animal Science, a master's degree in Wildlife Biology, and a lot of experience with animals in both their natural surroundings and in urban en- vironments. He has concluded that we treat animals arrogantly, mindlessly, even brutally, and that what is needed to raise our consciousness about other living creatures is education. Mr. Bloomfield quit his job as the Managing Director of the Humane Society of Ottawa-Carleton not long ago because he simply couldn't take any more killing. He. points out that the single largest cause of death among the companion.animals that most of us call pets is euthanasia. And he adds: "The irony that those of us who care most about 'animal welfare are forced to kill them by the millions each year in North America is lost on a cynical society". Mr. Bloomfield feels that confrontation over these issues is not only not the answer, but an ad- mission in advance that the situation is insoluble. He has taken a year off to set up the Harmony Foundation of Canada to promote calm and reasonable dialogue. One of the foundation's goals is to establish a chair of environmental ethics and animal welfare at a prominent Canadian univer- sity. It was at this point in our conversation that I told him I supported what he was trying to do but that I thought it was too late. He said he supposed I had a right to be cynical, or words to that effect. But I am not cynical, which implies that I am hardened to it; that I don't care. It is simply that I despair. I can't swim in or drink the water, I see the trees dying, I know the factory farming prospers, and that people still buy veal, for example. I know that family pets are abandoned, scattered around the landscape like empty beer cans, and for the same reason: people have had what they wanted out of them. I know we're inside so much that we have lost touch with the weather and the seasons, that we have become desensitized about all animals and the natural environment, and I believe that most people don't even know that anything is wrong. I wonder whether people who have to be taught not to foul their own nests are not beyond redemption. And I know as I wonder that Michael Bloomfield is right and I am wrong. Only rarely are people beyond redemption. No one knows better than I do that change is always possible, and no one forgets it more often. Some of us imagine that a concern for ethics and rights is ingested with mother's milk, in infancy, but it is not. Mostly, it has to be taught. WITH OUR FEET UP By Bill Swan A friend approached me at work one day and for- ced me to sit and drink coffee with him. "I have a story that is unbelievable." We fetched the coffee. "This," he said, "actually happened. To a couple from Whitby. Friend of a friend. A couple in their fifties. Fairly well off. Kids grown up and married. "Seems a few weeks ago, they took their first vacation in years to New York City. Visited museums, art galleries, took in some theatre, musicals, broadway, that sort of thing. "The last day in New York. They had been staying in one of the best hotels. The husband went out to meet some people. He left his wife alone in the hotel room. Now this woman is no world traveler; she felt uncomfortable in the big city. But after a bit she decided she wanted something to read. So she took the elevator to the lobby. "She's riding down this elevator, see. Now she's read a lot about crime in the big city, and how tough some people are, drug dealers, white slavers, you know. "So part way down, she's alone in the elevator, when it stops and who gets on but this dude with the biggest, meanest Doberman you've ever seen. "Well, this Doberman takes one look at this lady, and he starts to growl. And this dude, he fixes his eyes right on the lady. "The dog continues to growl. "The dude leans toward the woman and prac- tically shouts at her: 'Lady sit!' "Well, she's so frightened by this time that she did exactly what she was told: she sat down in the cor- ner of the elevator and whimpered. Just then, they had reached the lobby and the elevator door opened." "And?" "Everybody was embarrassed. The dude apologized, says his dog's name is Lady, and he is sorry he frightened her. "Next day, when the couple go to pay their hotel bill, they find it has already been paid. Who paid it? they wanted to know" "Oh," said the clerk, "the guy you met vesterday in the elevator. His name's Reggie Jackson." The Reggie Jackson story I've since heard as having happened to people from London, Toronto, Winnipeg. Always to a friend of a friend. It belongs to a special category of stories which are too good not to have happened. My first acquaintance with one such happened in the fall of 1971. The Canadian Press moved an item out of Ottawa. It seems this woman went into a well-known Ot- tawa store to try on a fur coat. While she was doing so, she shook one sleeve. What should pop out but a nice, long, slithering snake. In one version of the story, the snake bit her. In any event, she fainted and was rushed to hospital. The event never happened, of course. But the story developed a life of its own, and almost put the store out of business. The CP story carried some of the outrage of the store manager. How could he fight such an insidious lie? A few hours after I first read the story I travelled home to see my parents. There, my sister told me about this strange event that had happened the weekend before right there in Woodstock, Ont. It seems that this woman was trying on a fur coat in Reed's Furriers, when this snake slithered out of the sleeve and... You've likely heard your own versions. The oldest of these wonderful tales must be the one about the guy who drove a cement truck. He lived in Scarborough, see, not too far off the 401.'So one day, when his route took him near home, he decided to make a surprise visit home for lunch. So he drove up in front of the house and found his boss's convertible parked in his driveway. He walked in and what does he see but his boss and his wife in what best can be described as a com- promising situation. So busy are they, they don't even notice his arrival. So the truck driver walks back out to his truck, backs up to the boss's convertible, and dumps the whole quick-setting load into the front seat. It's true. I know a guy who knows a guy who... "I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mird of man." - Thomas Jefferson