Anthony Marr: My Gratitudes | #6 – To Anti-Sealers Worldwide
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Gratitude #6 – to anti-sealers worldwide
I was born in China and am a naturalized Chinese Canadian, i.e. by choice. I chose to be Canadian because I loved the country. As soon as I set foot in Canada in 1965 when I came over from Hong Kong on a student visa to study at a Canadian university, I felt at home. The Canadian people seemed polite, warm, kind, gentle, caring, courteous, genuine, fair, humble and simply – nice. In Hong Kong, people used to be elbowed by one another aside to get on a bus; in Vancouver, people let you on to the bus first. Canadian officials were, well, officious, but Hong Kong officials were downright abusive.
It was said that the system back in Hong Kong when I was a kid was “unadulterated capitalism”, and it was brutal. You swim or sink, and many sank, some right before my eyes. In contrast, the Canadian system was said to be “socialist”, and I did not mind it one bit. The various social programs for the old, the young, the poor, the sick, and even for the guilty, appeared to me to be constructed on a foundation of compassion and good will. The Canadian foreign policy and involvement likewise – peace keeping, humanitarian aid, the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA, with which I had personal experience), etc. And in war time, the miniscule Canadian navy was what protected American merchant convoys destined for Britain against marauding German U-boats, while the US hedged behind the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. And Canadian soldiers were among the first to land on one of the toughest Normandy beaches on D-Day… I felt that to be Canadian was to be civilized, conscientious, compassionate, courageous, and valiant. Living in the Canadian society was like living in one big harmonious family. I was happy for many years.
Unfortunately, nothing is perfect, and to complicate things, some of the imperfections were initially well-hidden, at least from the eyes of a new Canadian. When I was studying for my naturalization exam, for example, the text-book did not tell us about the Newfoundland seal massacre, or Big Game Trophy Hunting country-wide, or the massive destruction of the British Columbian old growth forest… These might or might not have deterred my decision to become Canadian, but they certainly burst a huge bubble when I became aware of them. And when I traveled outside of Canada, I could not shake the sense of shame on the score of the seal massacre alone, which by then had become internationally notorious and scoffed at. I still love being a Canadian in many ways, but it is just not the same thing as that initial euphoria and glowing pride, the sense of upstandingness, in which I basked when I swore in as a new Canadian.
Since about 1996, I’ve been involved in the anti-sealing movement in Canada. No, I’ve never been on the ice, but we west-coast British Columbians, who are more anti-sealing than Ontarioans, and much more anti-sealing than Newfoundlanders, do our part to give Canada some semblance of balance.
Every year on March 15, many cities around the world hold demonstrations against the seal massacre, and Vancouver is always one of them. We hold an annual demonstration at the DFO (Department of Fisheries and Oceans) building on Burrard and Dunsmuir in downtown Vancouver. The activists in Victoria and Nanaimo do their own, and I was often invited to partake and speak, if the schedules don’t clash. These demos were usually well attended, with over 100 people in the Vancouver demos and at least 50 in the Victoria and Nanaimo events, sometimes even with police escort (traffic-wise). Seeing my beloved friends Lori, Judy, Bruce, Neil, Rick, Fireweed, Ericka, Lochlan, Annette… distributed in these cities on an annual basis was heart-warming in the extreme; it felt almost like an annual family event. But something kept nagging me in the back of my mind.
No doubt, these annual demonstrations have their benefits. If innovatively done, they would be covered by newspaper and TV, which raises public awareness. But is it enough? I looked at our annual protests from the sealers’ viewpoint, and began to see these annual protests as flashes in the pan. After each flash, the seal hunt would proceed unscathed. To be brutally honest, were I a sealer, I would not feel much heat. I began to see that anti-sealing action should be kept hot throughout the year. Not just one day a year.
I have also done letter writing. First, to my MP (Member of Parliament), then to the DFO, then to the PM (Prime Minister). One day, I received a letter from the DFO head, which of course said that sealing could not be stopped, but at least it was individually and respectfully worded, so I thought. I showed it to Steve Thompson, a fellow anti-sealing activist. He took a glance at it and, without a word, went into his office. A moment later, he returned with a piece of paper which, upon inspection, contained exactly the same letter, word for word, except for the date, which was 2 years prior, and the signature, which was of the previous DFO head. As of that point, I decided to take the campaign outside of Canada, to apply pressure from beyond. And while I set my sight on the U.S., Vancouver activist Ericka Ceballos, founder of CATCA, set her sight on Europe.
In 2003, I launched my first Compassion for animals Road expedition – CARE-1 – which covered 42 states in 7.5 months (more on the CARE tours in a later Gratitude episode). In 2005, I dedicated CARE-3 to the Harp seals and against the Canadian seal massacre. I had my car painted with a slogan: “I AM CANADIAN. BOYCOTT MY COUNTRY!”, and had it lead “funeral motorcades” wherever I went.
One of the most successful was the Houston-to-Dallas Funeral Motorcade for the Seals. The driving distance was 240 miles or 375 kilometers. This is the ideal distance for a seal motorcade. Canadian sealers annually massacre 375,000 baby Harp seals. Our question is: What do 375,000 dead baby seals look like? Sure, 375,000 is a big number for the largest marine mammal massacre in history, but the number usually gets shelved into the left brain somewhere, without having made an emotional impact. We want the right brain to say “OMG!” And our way does exactly that.
Line up 375,000 dead baby seals in single file along a highway and, at 1 meter (3.3 feet) per seal, they will make a single file of 375 kilometers or 240 miles. You have to drive at 70 mph for 3.5 hours to go from one end of the seal line to the other. If you try to get the full impact of the motorcade and concentrate on the vision of the dead-seal-line along the highway, you may get physically sick within the first half hour. The media said “OMG!” All 4 Houston TV stations showed up, plus newspaper coverage in Dallas. While the day before almost no one in Texas knew about the Canadian seal massacre, hundreds of thousands of Texans got to know about it the day after, and some took action against it.
And Texas was not the only one. We did motorcades from San Diego to Los Angeles, from Milwaukee to Chicago, in Detroit and other cities. In general, the truer to the real distance, the more and better the media coverage. Thus, in 2005, because of the motorcades, millions of Americans previously unaware of the Canadian seal massacre were made aware of it, and many took action to boycott Canada because of it.
While CARE-3 was in progress, there was already a Boycott Canadian Seafood drive in progress in the US. What CARE-3 did was to intensified the boycott, and to broaden it to target all Canadian goods and services, including Canadian oil. Across the Atlantic, Ericka worked with European activists to have the EU countries ban Canadian seal products, which has been American policy for years. This dual approach has caused a loss in Canadian revenue from the US and the EU, and, with the loss of the European market for Canadian seal fur, the price of seal fur itself has plummeted, enough to make sealing unprofitable to many sealers. The remaining markets are in Russia, China and Japan, so, we still have a way to go.
“Mr. Speaker, I would like to see the 6 million seals, or whatever number is out there, killed and sold, or destroyed and burned. I do not care what happens to them... the more they kill the better I will love it." - John Efford, Minister of Natural Resources, 2003. 30 animals died for his vanity in this one coat, but over 300,000 die for his evil year after year.
On the intellectual front, I wrote a piece titled Scapegoated Seals Save Cod which has been widely circulated and read. And here it is:
Scapegoated Seals Save Cod
2005-02
by Anthony Marr
While driving from Toronto to Ottawa – a four-hour trip at 100 km/h – I picked up a hitch-hiker on the Toronto end, who, much to my regret, happened to be a sealer. For want of a more civil remark, I told him that he should have walked all the way to Ottawa, as an atonement.
“What for?”
“The two cities are 248 miles or 390 km apart. If you line up all the seals you guys kill every year in a single file, the line of some 350,000 seals, at a bit more than one meter per seal, would stretch from the CN Tower in Toronto all the way to the Parliament Building in Ottawa. I think, out of respect for these sentient beings, the least you can do is to walk a Funeral March for the Hunted, from the first one you kill to the last.”
“A funeral march for seals? That’s ludicrous. They don’t even have souls, for Christ’s sake.”
“Speaking of souls, I might suggest that you take the Funeral March as a penance. It would be good for your karma, too. Some cultures would believe that you will reincarnate as a seal next life, one destined to be skinned alive, if you don’t do something about it now.”
“Yeah, right, I’m quaking in my boots already,” he sneered.
“Personally, though I do find reincarnation a fascinating concept, I don’t believe this interpretation of it either. I just can’t look at an innocent baby seal and think that it used to be an evil human baby-seal killer, reborn to be skinned alive by other baby-seal killers, to atone for that ex-baby-seal-killer’s crimes. It would be adding-insult-to-injury of the worst kind. But I do think that walking the 390 km on the Funeral March for the Hunted would be good for your soul, if you have one.”
“Sorry to say this to you, pal, but your 390 km is way off base. Most of the seals we kill are just babies as young as two weeks old. They don’t measure up to a meter in length. Your line of seals would be well short of 390 km; 300 km max. So there.”
“I rest my case,” I said, without bothering to argue that adult harp seals average 1.8 meters long, which would counter-balance the baby seals’ shortfall, or point out that the sealers and even the Canadian Fisheries Minister have been dismissing the word “baby”. Instead, I asked, “How can you justify this kind of carnage? Don’t you have feelings?”
“Sure I have feelings. But it’s no skin off my back.” The sneer broadened into a lopsided grin. No seal could ever produce an evil expression as this, that’s for damn sure.
“Do they have feelings?”
“Who? The seals? Why don’t you ask them?”
“I don’t have to. Their writhing when you skin them alive says they do. But you don’t think that they feel pain?”
“I don’t know. And, frankly, I don’t care.”
“Can’t you feel their pain?”
“Not a bit. I hear them scream. I see them writhe, yeah. But I feel just fine. In fact, the more seals I kill, the better I feel.”
“Don’t you also feel just a bit cowardly to torture and kill a pup whose mother cannot defend, who can’t defend himself, and who cannot fight back?”
“Better a living coward than a dead hero, is what I say.”
“Have you no pride?”
“How much is pride a kilo, eh? How much per kilo do you sell courage for? Come to think of it, pride and courage are very expensive to buy. So, you can keep’m. As for me, I have seal skins, seal oil and seal penises to sell, at a hundred bucks a pop, or should I say, a pup, haha.”
Even-tempered as I think I am, I was beginning to see red. I took a moment to collect myself. “I believe that deep down you do feel some pain, however much you succeed in concealing it from yourself. Really, tell me. Why do you do it? You don’t make all that much of money out of it. You’re primarily a cod fisherman.”
His eyes lit up above the grin. “Aha! I kill seals because they eat fish, cod in particular. The more seals, the fewer cod, the fewer seals, the more cod. Plain and simple. There are some 5 million seals out there. They eat up a hell of a lot of cod. So, I don’t get enough.
“I think you got too much. It is called over fishing. And you’re scapegoating the seals for your own blunder driven by greed,” I could have sounded a little less hostile, but I’m not a seal; I’m human.
“We follow the law. If the law says it is okay, it is okay. The law says it is okay.”
“Only 3% of a seal’s diet comprises cod,” I pointed out.
“3% of the total amount of fish eaten by 5 million seals is still a lot of cod.”
I pressed on, “In other words, 97% of the seal’s diet consists of other fish species that prey on cod. Without the seals controlling the population of the predatory fish species, the amount of cod eaten would be many times greater.”
“I’ve heard that before. It’s just a theory, and a vague one at that. There is no proof.”
“I don’t know about you, but we on the west coast have proof,” I asserted.
“What proof? Your harbour seals there eat salmon. I’m sure the same law of nature applies. More seals, fewer salmon; fewer seals, more salmon.”
“That’s just it. It’s just the opposite. On the west coast, it is more seals, more salmon, fewer seals fewer salmon,” I sought to humbly inform him.
“That’s ridiculous. Where’s your proof?”
“Before I provide the proof, could you tell me what fish species the harbour seal preys on?”
“Salmon, of course, and some others, maybe herring, smelt, hake, mackerel, something like that.”
“There are about 20 major fish species on which the harbour seals feed. In descending order of volume consumed, they are rock fish, Pacific sand lance, Pacific herring, Pacific staghorn sculpin, smelt, Pacific tomcod, lamprey, flounder, shad, flatfish, Pacific hake, Shiner surf perch, gunnel, prickleback, juvenile salmonids, Northern anchovy, adult salmonids, Peamouth chub and Pacific Macheral, as well as cephalopods like squid.”
“So?”
“Where are the salmonids on this list?”
“I thought you were going to give me some kind of proof,” he said evasively, but in doing so, jumped from the pan into the fire.
“Do you know that there used to be a commercial seal hunt on the west coast too, combined with a bounty hunt?” I asked him.
“Can’t say that I do.”
“Well, it happened in the late 30’s through into the 60s. By the late 60s, the seal population had become so decimated that the hunt was banned in 1969. The ban stays in force today. The seal population has recovered.”
“Bad news.”
“Good news. According to your formula of more seals, fewer salmon, fewer seals, more salmon, the salmon population in the 30s, 40s, 50s and 60s should be high and that in the 70s, 80s and 90s should be low. Correct?”
“Damn right.”
“Well, just the opposite is true.”
“More seals, more salmon; fewer seals, fewer salmon?”
“Correct.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“Believe it.”
“What do you have to back this up? ”
“Could you open the Road Atlas to British Columbia?”
He did, reluctantly. “This better be good.”
“Pick a river. Any river.”
“Why?”
“Just do it.”
“Alright. The Kitimat River.”
“Do you know about escapement?”
“Sure. It is the number of adult salmon that make it all the way up to their spawning ground to spawn in a salmon run. What about it?”
“Now, let’s see. For the Kitimat river, the 1950s escapement of Chum salmon averaged 16,700; 70s, 26,400; 90s, no mistake, 129,000. For Chinook salmon, 1950s, 4,100; 80s, 9,900; 90s, 16,700.”
“You’re making things up as you go.”
“No. Just photographic memory. Try another river.”
“I don’t particularly want to play this silly game.”
“It is no game. Why don’t you write down these numbers, and check them in a government library in Ottawa when we get there?”
“A waste of time.”
“So, you are afraid to find out?”
“Not at all, ‘cause I know you must be wrong. So, lie some more. Here. The Babine River. What numbers are you gonna make up?”
“1950s, Babine River escapement of even-year Pink salmon average 11,800; 60s, 41,000; 70s, 106,000; 80s, 202,000; 90s, 214,700.”
“The Kishwan River.”
“1950s, escapement of Chum salmon 4,000; 60s, 1,150; 70s, 7,350; 80s, 13,200; 90s, 21,000.”
“The Pinkut River.”
“Escapement of Sockeye salmon in the 50s, 27,200; the 60s, 40,500; the 70s, 73,900; the 80s, 241,000; and the 90s, 260,900.”
“Enough of this crap! Even if these are true, they are west coast harbour seal and salmon, not the east coast harp seal and cod.”
“And the natural law is different in the west than in the east?”
“If your figures are correct, it damn well is.”
“So, are you going to do a funeral march for the seals you slaughter or not?”
“Why should I? They eat my cod.”
*Note: The above numbers were exacted from BC government and academic documents
Latest is that last winter, the Gulf of St. Lawrence became ice-free for the first time. 70,000 baby seals were drowned at birth, and many more were born on the shore, making them easy prey for polar bears and Arctic foxes. So, you might expect that in the very least the Canadian government would reduce the sealing quota accordingly, but, surprise again, it RAISED the quota by equal measure. Where is the logic of that?
If Canada lacks the dignity to be honest about what its own marine biologists know to be the truth, and to end the seal massacre on its own accord based on responsibility and compassion, it will be forced to end it either by a global boycott, where the greatest loss would be the Canadian reputation, or worse, by global warming, which will melt all the sea ice, wiping out the Harp seal species. A worthy Canadian government will devote its energy to fight global warming, including banning tar sands mining, towards saving the seals and the polar bears for our children, and more importantly, for themselves.
Anthony Marr Invites you to join The Global Anti-Hunting Coalition
2003-summer
aim animal issues | a publication of The Responsible Animal Care Society (TRACS)
Canada plans on further increasing the East Coast Seal Hunt.
Anthony Marr Invites you to join The Global Anti-Hunting Coalition
We’ve all asked at some point, “Wouldn’t it be powerful for many groups of like mind to collectively wage a single coordinated campaign, from coast to coast, against a single adversary?” Thus was born the concept of the Global Anti-Hunting Coalition.
In the seven months between August 29, 2003, and April 2, 2004, wildlife preservationist and anti-hunting campaigner Anthony Marr, with best-selling local vegan author Brenda Davis and her son Cory Davis, will be conducting the Compassion for Animals Road Expedition (CARE) through 40 U.S. states and four Canadian provinces (see www.HOPE-CARE.org for the state-by-state itinerary). One of CARE’s main objectives is to form the American chapter of the Global Anti-Hunting Coalition. Anthony Marr will be holding meetings with the directors and giving presentations to the members of interested animal advocacy groups en route to discuss participation, campaigns, strategy and tactics.
The first campaign of the Global Anti-Hunting Coalition will be to apply external pressure on Canada focusing on its:
1. East Coast Commercial Harp Seal Hunt (current quota . 325,000/year . the largest marine mammal hunt in the world, known as .Canada.s Shame. . the HSUS has already taken boycott action against Canada on this issue, but the more groups, the better).
2. Western Canada Grizzly Bear Trophy Hunt (current quota ~300/year plus poaching deaths of ~300 out of a hotly debated estimated population of 4,000-13,000).
3. West Coast Commercial Harbour Seal Hunt (currently being tabled in parliament), quota: an incredible 50,000/year out of a total estimated population of only 110,000 . this must be nipped in the bud).
4. West Coast Grey Whale Hunt (currently being planned . this must be nipped in the bud).
5. Central Canada Gopher Derby (2002 kill . ~60,000).
6. Eastern Arctic Bowhead Whale Hunt (this species is classified .endangered by CITES).
7. Trophy hunting and fur trapping (a passive-aggressive form of hunting . currently about 1,000,000/year) in general.
Groups need not have anti-hunting mandates in order to join. A vegan group, for example, is presumably intrinsically anti-animal-abuse, and therefore implicitly against hunting and trapping.
To join the Global Anti-Hunting Coalition, or if you have any questions, or if you wish to meet with Anthony Marr or arrange a presentation for him during the CARE tour, please contact him at:
Anthony Marr has also authored Omni-Science and the Human Destiny
Visit: www.HOPE-CARE.org
Compassion for Animals Road Expedition with Anthony Marr
2004-01-21
Sunday January 25, 2-4pm Compassion for Animals Road Expedition with Anthony Marr
Marr will discuss his anti-hunting / trapping / factory farming coalition, which he is currently promoting on a tour through 40 states with his 7-month Compassion for Animals Road Expedition. For those who are interested in staying later, he should have time to present his “Tigers Forever” slide show which won him the honor of being called “Champion of the Bengal Tiger” in the TV documentary series Champions of the Wild which aired in 20 countries on Discovery Channel, Animal Planet and Knowledge Network. He will also discuss his new book Omni-Science and the Human Destiny.
Location: The meeting will be held in a small theater at 600 Garson Drive NE in Atlanta, a residential complex. (Note: this location is recorded as 3400 Garson Drive NE on mapquest and yahoomaps.)
For more info contact: Lisa Kramer.
Sinikka Crosland
Kelowna Rally
2005-03-12
WSPA announces: Kelowna Rally
Time: Saturday, March 12th, 11:00am
Location: Kirschner St., Kelowna, B.C. (office of MP Werner Schmidt)
Sponsored by: YAAA (Youth Against Animal Abuse) and TRACS (The Responsible Animal Care Society)
Contact: Carmen or Sinikka Crosland, 250-768-4803 or email tracs@shaw.ca
What’s planned? Led by YAAA (Youth Against Animal Abuse) and wildlife campaigner Anthony Marr, marchers for the seals will meet at the office of MP Werner Schmidt and proceed to walk to downtown Kelowna and back again, for a total of 7 km. YAAA members will be collecting signatures on anti-seal hunt postcards, which they will present to the federal government. They have requested a meeting with MP Werner Schmidt and MP Stockwell Day. A motorcade is also planned from Kelowna to Penticton, following the march.
Funeral March for the Hunted | Committee to Abolish Sport Hunting
Funeral March for the Hunted
Washington DC to New York City 375 km / 235 mi
Start date: March 15, 2005
Experience tells Canadian wildlife preservationist and anti-hunting activist Anthony Marr ( http://www.hope-care.org/ ) that when he informs people that the annual quota of the Canadian Commercial Seal Hunt is 375,000 out of a total population of 5 million, they react lukewarmly, some mumbling something about 7 percent, but when he shows them what 375,000 seals look like, they react volcanically, some exclaiming “Oh my God!”, others “Bastards!” or worse, depending on their religious orientation.
So, what do 375,000 dead seals really look like? If lined up nose to tail, at one meter per seal, 375,000 seals would form a single file stretching 375 kilometers or 235 miles – the exact distance between Washington DC and New York City.
In the Animal Rights 2004 conference, Anthony Marr spoke on Engage Media. “It is well-known that in real estate, the three key words for success are ‘location, location, location’. In activism, the three key words are ‘media, media, media’. Basically, what the public did not see on TV did not happen,” he said. “So, to engage media. What you need are seven essential ingredients, the more used per event, the better, all if possible:
1. The event must be original (not copycat);
2. it must be creative (as outlandish as possible as long as it works – without damaging the movement as a whole);
3. it must be new to media (bearing in mind that something new is new only once at one place);
4. it must be photogenic (TV-friendly; a newspaper article without a photo is weak);
5. it must be difficult and/or dangerous to execute (what few would dare to attempt);
6. it must offer a new viewpoint on an old and hackneyed issue (rejuvenated perception); and
7. it must be transformative (from dry statistics to heart-rending visions).
Abiding by his own advice, Marr executed an event in March 2001, called the Funeral March for the Hunted, where he walked 100 km (about 60 mi) along Hwy 7 from Mission City to Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, carrying a Canadian flag with the maple leaf colored black, and a sign saying “Civilize Canada” on one side and “End the barbaric Seal Hunt” on the other. When asked by media for a sound bite, he said, “100 km is the length of a single file of 100,000 dead seals at one meter per seal; you would have to drive a full hour at highway speed to go from one end to the other.
If you think this is outrageous, consider further that 100,000 is less than one-third of the total number. Canada kills 350,000 seals per year. The line would stretch 350 km, all the way from Vancouver to Kamloops. You would have to drive 4 hours at highway speeds to go from one end of the line to the other. Frankly, I don’t have time to walk that far, but you get the picture.” And the people in British Columbia too got the picture, loud and clear, since all major BC media, and many minor media along the march route, covered the event, some more than once. Upon further questioning, Marr talked about the cruelty inherent in the industry and the scapegoating of seals for the declined of the North Atlantic Cod precipitated in fact by overfishing – a human travesty.
Now, in 2005, in view of the U.S. Senate urging Canada to stop the hunt, and the HSUS unleashing its Boycott Canada campaign, Marr feels that a large-scale Funeral March for the Hunted could just be the final push needed to send the seal hunt to the abyss.
According to the above, Marr has determined to execute Funeral March for the Hunted 2005 from the Capitol building in Washington DC to the United Nations Headquarters in New York City, via Baltimore, Wilmington, Philadelphia, Trenton, Princeton, and Newark, to generate maximum national and international coverage of the issue. The departure date has been set for March 15, to coincide with the HSUS’s continental day of protest. The duration depends on the amount of speaking engagements enroute. He will be carrying a Canadian flag with a ban-sign superimposed on the maple leaf.
Anthony Marr will be inviting activists to join him on the March, in whole or part, each carrying a sign or banner of his/her own making.
He will also explore the possibility of organizing many simultaneous marches across the land. This organizing effort would not be too difficult, given the existence of the Global Anti-Hunting Coalition which Marr formed on his 38-states-in-7.5-months Compassion for Animals Road Expedition CARE tour – see http://www.hope-care.org/ .
More than awareness-raising and action-generating (e.g. boycotting Canadian fisheries products and tourism), this is also a fund-raising event, to further advance Anthony Marr’s effort to protect the seals in particular and wildlife in general (e.g. seals, Bengal tigers, grizzly bears, whales, dolphins, etc. – see http://www.hope-care.org/ ). We ask that you make a generous pledge or donation for this march.
Further, please forward this email in its entirety to your friends and email-list contacts.
“I’ll be 61 when the March starts. I want to put my legs to some positive use while they still work,” said Anthony Marr.
2005-05
TERMINATE-THE-SEAL-HUNT CAMPAIGN TOUR WEST
Here at Healing Earth Sat. May 28th!
End the Canadian Seal Hunt Presentation with author Anthony Marr, Heal Our Planet Earth (HOPE)
Compassion for Animals Road Expeditions (CARE)
Saturday, May 28, 5:00 – 7:00, Free Event at Healing Earth
Terminate-the-Seal-Hunt Campaign Tour West
Strategy and Tactics
Anthony Marr’s 90-day Terminate-the-Seal-Hunt Campaign Tour West will be launched on May 13, 2005, Friday. (He is anti-superstition and a champion of the underdog, including the number 13.) His state-by-state itinerary is as follows: AB, SK, MB, MN, WI, IL, MO, AR, LA, TX, OK, NM, CO, UT, AZ, NV, CA, OR and WA.
He has almost single-handedly and without financial aid organized the tour up to this point, and has been successful in booking over 30 events for the first half of his 90-day itinerary from May 15 to August 15. But once on the road, he will need an anchor-person or two to continue developing the latter half of the tour to bring out its full potential, and some financial infusion to fill his gas tank
The major cities with events firmly set so far include Edmonton, Minneapolis, Madison, Milwaukee, Chicago, Houston, Dallas/Fort Worth, Denver, Salt Lake City, Phoenix, San Diego, Los Angeles and San Francisco, some with more than one event – 35 events in all to date. There are about 20 events still in the works, and Anthony would like to see a total of at least 60 events for the entire tour, in addition to the AR2005 National Conference in Los Angeles, July 7-11, in which. he will be a major speaker. California, especially, is a state with huge potential, that has yet to be even a quarter realized.
His strategy differs markedly from those currently being employed. He believes that just as the Canadian government needs more than demonstrations and letter-writing, but an overwhelming economic boycott, to be brought to its knees, so do the seafood merchants need more than talks of cruelty and compassion to be brought onboard the boycott. He believes that the seafood merchants too, being by and large profit-motivated, would respond most readily to economic impetus as well, both positive and negative. In other words, consumer favoritism for those merchants that join the boycott against Canadian seafood, and a consumer boycott against those merchants who do not. The carrot-and-stick approach, as it were.
Anthony’s tactics are as follows:
1. He will work with the AR groups of at least ten major cities to vigorously petition seafood consumers to boycott Canadian seafood. The target is 5% of the population within 6 months. For a city of 1 million population, we will aim for 50,000 signatures. The petition period will span July 1 through December 31, 2005. This is about the same as petitioning to kick-start a referendum initiative. With due diligence, it is achievable.
2. The signers will be urged to patronize only those seafood outlets that have joined the Canadian seafood boycott, and to shun those that have not.
3. While on tour, Anthony will hold meetings with the leading seafood outlets and restaurants of these cities to inform them of this fact, and
to have them each sign a declaration pledging to not stock, sell or serve Canadian seafood. After his departure, the hosting AR group(s) will
continue with this effort, untill all the significant seafood outlets have been contacted. It will be impressed upon these merchants that 50,000
potential customers (for a city of 1 million) will patronize them if they sign the declaration, or shun them if they don not. Anthony believes that
this is the most powerful motivation for them to join the boycott against Canada.
4. Carmen Crosland (age 14), President of Youth Against Animal Abuse (YAAA), will establish and display a webpage on her website
http://www.YAAAonline.org (pending) of all the seafood merchants that have signed the declaration. This database will likewise appear on Anthony’s website http://www.HOPE-CARE.org.
5. Both http://www.HOPE-CARE.org and http://www.YAAAonline.org will provide E-petitions to aid this drive. Anthony will also help other groups to establish an E-petition page on their own websites.
6. Come the new year, Anthony and Carmen, together with all the AR groups participating in this project, will jointly present the consumer petitions and merchant declarations to the Canadian government, as well as to Canadian, American and world media.
7. Come the new year, Anthony will launch his Terminate-the-Seal-Hunt Campaign Tour East, with the same aim. If the petition targets are met, the ten cities (or more), each averaging, say, 1 million population, will have accumulated 500,000 signatures in total, and dozens of mechant declarations, each worth thousands of consumer signatures. If each consumer forgoes $50 of Canadian seafood a year, the economic loss to the Canadian seafood industry would be $25 million, exceeding the $15 million revenue from the seal hunt industry by $10 million.
The ten cities will serve only as a demonstration of the power of the boycott. If the Canadian government still does not succumb, we will proceed with more cities. In a full-scale assault involving, say, 100 cities of 1 million population each, there will be 5 million consumers pledging to not purchase or consume Canadian seafood, causing an economic loss of $250 million to the Canadian economy. This will make the word “overwhelming” seem like the understatement of the century.
Anthony has tried hard with major anti-sealing groups for some financial assistance for this project. Many have shown interest, but none have been forth-coming with the first campaign dollar, so now he is appealing to grassroots support, in both volunteer and financial terms. Please contact him at Anthony-Marr@HOPE-CARE.org and/or phone 604-222-1169 or toll-free 1-866-822-1169. He is driving out on a near-empty gas tank, but he is committed to the project, and will start driving as of May 13, Friday.
The Chinese have a saying. “Let those with the effort come up with the effort, and those with the funds come out with the funds, and the project shall be successful.”
So let’s get together and get it done!
Contact: Anthony Marr
Heal Our Planet Earth (HOPE)
Compassion for Animals Road Expeditions (CARE)
Carmen Crosland
Fish boycott to save seals
2005-05
NEW YORK CITY––Legal Seafoods, a 31-restaurant chain with anchor franchises in New York City and Boston, on May 9 joined Tavern-on-the-Green in Central Park and the 168-store Whole Foods Market chain in endorsing a boycott of Atlantic Canada seafood called by the Humane Society of the U.S. in protest against the Atlantic Canadian seal hunt.
The boycott targets snow crabs, lobsters. shrimp, mussels, and ground fish.
The Legal Seafoods announcement coincided with the arrival in New York City of Canadian ambassador Frank McKenna, who was to make several prominent appearances.
While HSUS is promoting the boycott through a media strategy, Anthony Marr of Vancouver, British Columbia, on May 13 set out on a 90-day “Terminate the Seal Hunt Campaign Tour” of the western U.S. and Canada. Pushing the boycott through personal persuasion and petitioning, Marr said he had 35 speaking engagements already booked, with about 20 more still being finalized.
“Carmen Crosland, age 14, president of Youth Against Animal Abuse, will display a web page at of all the seafood merchants,” who join the boycott, Marr said. Marr will also post the list at his own campaign website, , and welcomes pledges and inquiries about his itinerary at either.
Ashley Fruno
Ban the Commercial Seal Hunt
2005-05
Voice for Animals Society and Vegetarians of Alberta Society
Ban the Commercial Seal Hunt Presentation
Guest speaker: Anthony Marr, world-renowned Canadian environmentalist and wildlife advocate
Voice for Animals Society and Vegetarians of Alberta Society will be co-hosting Anthony Marr’s “Terminate the Seal Hunt Campaign Tour”.
The purpose of the tour is to increase awareness of the cruelty behind the Canadian seal hunt and the Japanese dolphin slaughter. Its aim is also to raise support for and participation in a global Canadian seafood boycott.
“Know Thy Enemy” – a fast paced, visually stunning PowerPoint presentation – will show the Japanese dolphin slaughter at Futo and Taiji and ending with the brutal Canadian seal hunt. Its powerful images are a call to action – to help end the shameful annual Canadian seal hunt.
When: Sunday, May 15, 2005
Where: Riverdale Hall, 9231 – 100 Avenue
Potluck Dinner: 5:30 pm
Presentation: 6:30 pm (free of charge)
Anthony Marr Guest on Lizz Brown Show
Wednesday, June 1st, 2005 – Today’s guests: Anthony Marr Founder of Heal Our Planet Earth (HOPE) – Animal activist on the slaughter of baby seals and his campaign to get America to boycott Canadian seafood in protest of the massacre.
Ashley Fruno
Animal Activists Lead Funeral Procession for Slaughtered Baby Seals
2005-06-08
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: June 8, 2005
Contact: Kathy Landry, Michol Rantschler
Animal Activists Lead Funeral Procession for Slaughtered Baby Seals
Motorcade from Houston to Dallas to mark this year’s dead, lined up 270 miles along I-45
A funeral procession at least a dozen cars long, adorned with massive banners, posters and graffiti will travel around Houston and to and around Dallas Thursday, stopping at the Canadian Consulates in both cities to tell Canada, “Stop the Massacre of Baby Seals!”
What: Funeral Procession for Baby Seals
When: Starting at 9:40 a.m. Thursday, June 9
Where: Begins at 419 Lovett Blvd, traveling around Houston, with a stop at the Canadian Consulate at 11 a.m., and on to Dallas
Renowned Canadian wildlife preservationist Anthony Marr, who is traveling the country to help end the seal massacre, will lead the procession. Houston-based In Solidarity with Animals (ISWA) and Dallas-based Animal Connection of Texas (ACT) have teamed up with Marr to be sure Houston, Dallas and everywhere between is aware of the seal hunt, the largest and most egregious commercial slaughter of marine mammals in the world.
“Even though the vast majority of our citizens desire an end to the bloody, despicable seal massacre, our Canadian government has refused to stop it,” said Marr, . “We’re turning to the American public and merchants to step in with their power as consumers. Americans can save millions of defenseless seal pups from this cruel fate by refusing to support the powerful fishing industry that has our government in its pocket.”
So far this year, the Canadian Government has allowed 317,672 harp seals to be shot, stabbed, or clubbed to death; nearly one million have been killed in the past three years. About 99.5 percent of the seals were less than a month old. A panel of international veterinarians who studied the commercial seal hunt concluded up to 42 percent of the seals they examined were likely skinned alive while fully conscious.
The last time this many seals were killed, in the 1950s, the harp seal population was driven to near-extinction.
Sealing is an off-season activity conducted by commercial fishermen from Canada’s East Coast. They make, on average, one twentieth of their incomes from sealing – the rest from commercial fisheries.
Canadian seafood exports to the United States, in particular, are worth over 3 billion dollars annually to the Canadian economy, dwarfing the few million dollars from the seal hunt.
Marr, ISWA and ACT have joined a global campaign to end the hunt that involves groups in 27 countries, including the Humane Society of the United States, to effect a collective and sustained boycott of Canadian seafood until the hunt ends.
Whole Foods Market and several other major merchants have already joined the boycott. Marr has personally met with local merchants and restaurants on his tour; many have signed a declaration pledging not to stock, sell or serve Canadian seafood until the Canadian seal hunt is banned.
Marr’s campaign tour has two halves. The current western half includes, in chronological sequence, MN, WI, IL, MO, AR, LA, TX, OK, NM, CO, UT, AZ, NV, CA, OR and WA.
For more information, please visit http://www.InSolidaritywithAnimals.com, www.hope-care.org or www.protectseals.com
In Solidarity With Animals – ACT Radio
2005-06-13
Go Vegan Texas! on KPFT
Janice Blue bluevegan@earthlink.net
Mon Jun 13 07:33:48 PDT 2005
In Solidarity With Animals
on Today’s Show …
Anthony Marr, wildlife preservationist traveling the country to help end the Canadian seal massacre and raise awareness about Japan’s dolphin & whale slaughter.
“Even though the majority of our Canadian citizens desire an end to the bloody, despicable seal massacre, our government has refused to stop it. We¹re turning to the American public and merchants to step in with their power as consumers. Americans can save millions of defenseless seal pups from this cruel fate by refusing to support the powerful fishing industry that has our government in its pocket.”
Anthony Marr, Canadian wildlife preservationist
“As responsible consumers and compassionate world citizens, we can prevent the inhumane death of hundreds of thousands of seals and dolphins in two massive hunts currently in progress. Together we can end the suffering, and create a responsible partnership with animals.”
Kathy Landry, Marine Mammal Campaign Coordinator, In Solidarity With Animals
Renowned Canadian wildlife preservationist Anthony Marr, traveling the country to help raise awareness and end the seal massacre in Canada,brought his one man campaign to Texas this week. He led a funeral motorcade procession on Thursday with members of Houston-based In Solidarity with Animals (ISWA) and Dallas-based Animal Connection of Texas(ACT) who teamed up with Marr to be sure Houston, Dallas, and points between are aware of the seal hunt, the largest and most egregious commercial slaughter of marine mammals in the world.
The motorcade from Houston to Dallas marked this year¹s baby seal dead count of nearly 325,000, if the pups were lined up head to toe, their bodies would span the 270 mile distance along I-45 between these two Texas cities.
A funeral procession with at least a dozen cars long, adorned with massive banners, posters and graffiti traveled around Houston and to and around Dallas Thursday, stopping at the Canadian Consulates in both cities to tell Canada, “Stop the Massacre of Baby Seals!”
So far this year, the Canadian Government has allowed 317,672 harp seals to be shot, stabbed, or clubbed to death; nearly one million have been killed in the past three years. About 99.5 percent of the seals were less than one month old. A panel of international veterinarians who studied the commercial seal hunt concluded up to 42 percent of the seals they examined were likely skinned alive while fully conscious. The last time this many seals were killed, in the 1950s, the harp seal population was driven to near-extinction.
Marr, ISWA and ACT have joined a global campaign to end the hunt that involves groups in 27 countries, including the Humane Society of the United States and Sea Shepherd, to effect a collective and sustained boycott of Canadian seafood until the hunt ends.
Whole Foods Market and several other major merchants have already joined the boycott. Marr has personally met with local merchants and restaurants on his tour; many have signed a declaration pledging not to stock, sell or serve Canadian seafood until the Canadian seal hunt is banned.
Anthony is calling on a boycott of all goods and travel to his country.
While in Houston last week, he also gave a teach at the First Unitarian Church and showed graphic slides and video of the dolphin and whale massacre in Japan which he witnessed last fall.
He has traveled throughout the world to execute various conservation projects on Bottlenose dolphins, Harp seals, the Grey whale, Tigers, and Grizzly bears. He also conducts an extensive educational outreach programs. His Tigers Forever slideshow has been presented to over 150,000 students on three continents.
Michol Rantschler, co director of In Solidarity with Animals (ISWA) and Kathy Landry, Marine Mammals Coordinator, In Solidarity with Animals, will co-host today’s show and Vivian Farrell, founder and president of the Houston-based International Fund for Horses, will share with us some late breaking great news about the campaign to end horse slaughter.
Thank you for listening with an open mind and heart this morning to Go Vegan Texas! on Pacifica Radio/ KPFT.
Janice Blue
Host, Go Vegan Texas!
Every Monday at 11am (CDT)
On Pacifica Radio
KPFT, 90.1 FM – Houston and 89.5 FM – Galveston
Listen Live on http://www.GoVeganTexas.org
(Just Wiggle the Cow’s Ears)
Or later on http://www.kpftx.org/archives/kpftsignal
Contact Info on Today’s Guests/Co Hosts:
Anthony Marr
http://www.hope-care.org/
http://www.protectseals.com/
The Heal Our Planet Earth Global Environmental Organization, of which he is the founder and President, is based in Vancouver, British Columbia.
Michol Rantshler, co director, In Solidarity with Animals
Kathy Landry, Marine Mammals Coordinator, In Solidarity with Animals
Rejecting the Cultural Justification for Slaughter
2005-06-18
The Rewilding Institute | TRI News
Rejecting the Cultural Justification for Slaughter
Commentary from Captain Paul Watson
Well, it did not take long. It’s getting to the point that being a conservationist automatically makes a person a racist. Now it appears it is racist to defend sharks. What is even more amazing is that some people consider it a form of “Western cultural imperialism” to criticize Disneyland in Hong Kong.
I’ve been called a racist for defending whales, seals, fish and trees, for speaking out about human over-population and for defending elephants. So I guess it is not surprising to now be called a racist for defending sharks.
Let me see, for defending whales we are anti-Japanese, anti-Norwegian, anti-Icelandic, and anti-Native American. For defending seals we are anti-Canadian, anti-Norwegian, and anti-Namibian. For defending trees we are anti-Hispanic and anti-Native American, and, oh yes, anti-working class. It appears that loggers who make four times the average income of an environmental activist are workers and the lower-paid activists are viewed as wealthy. You see when you work without pay because you know, you feel that the entire future of the planet is at stake, this is viewed as a luxury. In other words environmental activists have the luxury of sleeping in trees and not owning a home, a car or recreational vehicles.
Anyways back to being a racist for saving sharks.
I was sent a response from a man named Hsing Lee who believes that the entire campaign to stop people from eating shark fin soup is motivated by anti-Chinese passions.
I guess that’s why we are opposing Disneyland. Lee apparently believes that it is part of the traditional Chinese culture for Chinese couples to have Disney character fantasy weddings where traditional shark fin soup is served.
Never mind that Disneyland has now become a Mousewich for sharks and that a hundred million of them are being cruelly slaughtered to provide trinkets, and expensive, tasteless status symbol bowls of soup. A hundred million sentient creatures a year massacred for non-nutritive purposes, slaughtered for vanity and justified by culture.
It’s a holocaust for sharks including those killed for the Mouseshirted eco-fascists at Disneyland Hong Kong but Lee is blind to the plight of the sharks and most likely he is as apathetic about the health of the oceans as well.
This is his protest:
You have some Western prejudice in play here on your part.
The medicinal properties of sharks fin soup are well-known, and it’s been used as food and medicine for thousands of years. It’s as traditional a dish as steak and potatoes. Would you prefer that we Chinese give up our culture and identity and conform to Western diet, medicine, and language? It’s not Chinese medicine that brought the world Heroin or Vicodin or Oxycontin or Vioxxx, all of which are infinitely worse for people than a shark’s fin. And I can testify first hand to the medicinal qualities of shark’s fin soup. It really does make you stronger, more virile, and gives you a more adaptable immune system. You fight off sickness faster when you drink it. And unlike Westerners and their whale killing for ambergris, we Chinese actually put the rest of the shark on people’s dinner tables. We even use the highly elastic bone and tendon. There is no wastage unless the shark is one of a handful of breeds that can be toxic.
The tone of this entire article (referring to the article in the Herald Tribune and the New York Times) is ignorant, racist, and just more China and Chinese bashing by a bunch of fucking Nazi crackers who think only Western ways are good or proper and everyone else is immoral.
Hsing Lee makes quite a few factual errors in his protest. It was China that actually introduced opium to the West and heroin is an extract of opium. There are no Western whalers hunting whales for Ambergris which comes only from the Sperm whale and the only nation hunting Sperm whales is Japan. There is no scientific validity to the claims that shark fin is a health benefit. It is not true that the Chinese use all parts of the shark. 90% of shark fins come from sharks where the body has been discarded. Shark fin is not as traditional dish in China as steak and potatoes is for Westerners for the simple reason that the cost of between $100 and $400 per bowl makes it a restricted dish available only to the wealthy.
I sent the following reply to Hsing Lee.
To Hsing Lee,
I don’t fall for the racist guilt crap.
The fact is that sharks are being seriously diminished and a major reason for it is the Asian demand for shark fin soup. My opposition to shark-finning has nothing to do with any prejudice towards Chinese culture. On the contrary my one child is half Chinese and I have quite a few Chinese in-laws, all of whom are opposed to shark fin soup by the way.
Anthony Marr is a Vancouver Chinese activist, originally from China and a dedicated activist against shark finning….
Utah Animal Rights Coalition
2005-06-25
Utah Animal Rights Coalition
Anthony Marr of the HOPE-CARE foundation, as part of his 90-day Terminate-the-Seal-Hunt Campaign Tour West will be presenting Know Thy Enemy, followed by a presentation and discussion of the Canadian Seal Hunt. 2:00 pm at the Salt Lake City Public Library in the fourth floor meeting room
Animal Rights National Conference 2005 (AR2005)
2005-07
Animal Rights National Conference 2005 (AR2005)
Compassion into Action – Sat. 7:45
Individuals turning dream of animal liberation into reality.
Anthony Marr, HOPE-CARE Foundation
In his new book Rafe — A Memoir pre-eminent Canadian talk show host Rafe Mair wrote, “Anthony Marr had spent his working life doing very routine, capitalistic sorts of things, including mining and real estate. At 50, some sort of light fired up in his belly, and he decided to spend the rest of his life saving animals, especially from institutionalized cruelty.” His campaigns have included Chinatown undercover (throughout N. America), anti-trophy-hunting (“highest profile Canadian AR campaign in 1996”), anti-whaling, anti-sealing, Bengal tiger preservation (led three deep-rural-India expeditions), educational outreach (presentations to over 150,000 students), and lecture/campaign road touring (e.g. the 40-states-in-7-months Compassion for Animals Road Expedition — CARE). Mair further wrote, “Anthony has forced me to ask myself about my life-long love of angling… That’s the trouble with real heroes. They make you confront yourself and that isn’t always a whole lot of fun.”
An Animal-Friendly Life
2005-07-09
An Animal-Friendly Life
AR2005 Diary, Day 2 of 3, Plenary Session III – “Compassion into Action”
Tonight’s plenary was all about individuals turning a dream of animal liberation into reality. Lawrence Carter-Long of In Defense of Animals moderated.
The next to final speaker of the plenary was Anthony Marr (HOPE-CARE Foundation). His first campaign was in Vancouver’s Chinatown and saw all kinds of endangered wild animal products. He was instrumental in getting laws enacted legislation against this within four months. In other towns where laws in place weren’t being enforced, he pressured the law to bypass “sensitivity” issues (Anthony is Chinese himself) to crack down and stop shops from selling these products.
After some other overview he got into the Canadian seafood boycott, and how it pertains to the seal slaughter.
2005-07
Terminate-The-Seal-Hunt Campaign Tour West
Anti-hunting activist and wildlife preservationist Anthony Marr on his 3-month Terminate-The-Seal-Hunt Campaign Tour West now in Portland to speak Sunday, July 31st, on a new strategy to end the Canadian seal massacre and the Japanese dolphin slaughter.
Anthony Marr ( www.hope-care.org ) has been on the road continuously since May 13 on his Terminate-The-Seal-Hunt Campaign Tour West. Now, he is in Portland to present a new strategy, which will deliver a devastating punch against the seal hunt (325,000 seals per year), and invite local activists to join the Grassroots Anti-Seal-Hunt Coalition, which will be a powerful force to reckon with.
“I have so far signed up animal rights groups in Minneapolis, Milwaukee, Chicago, St. Louis, Houston, Dallas, Denver, Salt Lake City, Phoenix, San Diego, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. I hope to sign up a group or two in Portland. I am already planning the Terminate-The-Seal-Hunt Campaign Tour East for the fall,” says Anthony.
Anthony was a prominent speaker at the July 7-11 Animal Rights 2005 National Conference in Los Angeles, where he made six speeches, including one plenary, on Indian tiger preservation, the Japanese dolphin slaughter and the Canadian seal hunt.
Anthony was in Japan last year to investigate and save dolphins from the dolphin slaughter (23,000 dolphins a year). He came back with a stunning PowerPoint presentation titled Know Thy Enemy, which he will also feature at the Sunday event.
When: Sunday, July 31st Place: Old Wives Tales Restaurant Meeting Room 1300 E. Burnside, Portland, OR Time: 6:30 pm
For more info contact: In Defense of Animals, 503-249-9996 or connie@idausa.org
Anthony Marr’s “Seal Mobile”
New strategy re. Red Lobster
From: Anthony Marr
Date: Thu Jul 28, 2005 8:09 am
Subject: New strategy re. Red Lobster
Hi all,
In view of the upcoming Red Lobster Week of Action in September (Thank you Andrea!), And given Red Lobster’s steadfast refusal to join the boycott, I would like to suggest that we change our message from “RED LOBSTER, PLEASE JOIN OUR BOYCOTT AGAINST THE CRUEL CANADIAN SEAL HUNT!” to “RED LOBSTER SUPPORTS THE CRUEL CANADIAN SEAL HUNT! BOYCOTT RED LOBSTER!!”
The new Grassroots Anti-Seal-Hunt Coalition, currently comprising about a dozen leading AR groups in as many leading mid-western and western cities, will be making this change in this week of action. Some, e.g. IDA, have already made this change since the last Red Lobster demo at the end of July in Portland, Oregon. We feel that Red Lobster, which boils thousands of lobsters alive every day, has about as much compassion as the Canadian government. So if boycotting Canada is the best strategy regarding Canada, then boycotting Red lobster is the best strategy regarding Red Lobster.
We hope that we will all give Red Lobster this unmistakable message in September, in unison, from coast to coast.
Anthony Marr
www.HOPE-CARE.org
Red Lobster, Canadian Seafood, Clubbing Baby Seals
2005-07-30
In Defense of Animals (IDA)
Portland, OR
Red Lobster, Canadian Seafood, Clubbing Baby Seals
1) Demo at Red Lobster
We are urging Red Lobster to join a list of businesses that are boycotting Canadian Seafood until that country places a ban on its seal hunt. (www.protectseals.org)
When: Saturday, July 30th
Time: 11:30 am – 1:00 pm
Where: Red Lobster
8219 NE Vancouver Mall Drive, Vancouver, WA 98662
We have a real treat at this demo because AR activist Anthony Marr will be joining us. You can learn more about Anthony at http://www.HOPE-CARE.org.
2) Animal Rights Activist Anthony Marr is Coming to Portland and asking IDA Members’ Help in the Boycott against Canadian Seafood:
Anthony will be giving a presentation based on his trip to Japan last year and it will concentrate on Taiji and Futo regarding the dolphin slaughter and the whale meat industry. This will be followed by a talk on a new strategy on how to end the Canadian seal hunt.
When: Sunday, July 31st
Where: Old Wives Tales Restaurant Meeting Room
1300 E. Burnside Street, Portland
Time: 6:30 pm
Please join us to find out how we can help this incredible activist while he’s here in our hometown. Let’s show Anthony how determined and dedicated Portlanders really are! For more information on Anthony visit www.HOPE-CARE.org.
RED LOBSTER SUPPORTS CANADIAN CRUELTY
2005-08-19
Hi all,
I received inquiries about my current Terminate The Seal Hunt Campaign Tour West, which started on May 13, and will conclude on August 5. I have held meetings with the leaders of the grassroots groups in Minneapolis, Milwaukee, Chicago, St. Louis, Houston, Dallas, Denver, Salt Lake City, Phoenix, San Diego, Los Angeles, and San Francisco (where I currently am), including the Circle of Compassion, In Defense of Animals, and Last Chance for Animals, and will hold meetings with groups in Portland and Seattle. A preliminary Anti-Seal-Hunt Grassroots Coalition has been formed. All these groups have agreed upon a new strategy toward defeating the seal hunt, which is different from that currently being used by most groups.
We all know about the anti-Canadian-seafood boycott. Why the boycott? Because the Canadian government cannot be moved by compassion. They can be moved only by economic leverage. Thus the boycott.
So far, we have been using compassion to try to move Red Lobster, in vain. Why? Red Lobster boils alive lobsters by the thousands every day. How much compassion does it have? We must now use the same economic leverage against Red Lobster, i.e. a boycott.
Following is an example:
Portland will be holding a demo in front of Red Lobster on July 30, Saturday, in which I will participate. This time, instead of holding signs saying “RED LOBSTER, PLEASE JOIN THE BOYCOTT AGAINST CANADIAN CRUELTY”, which draws sneers from the management, this time, the signs will say, “RED LOBSTER SUPPORTS CANADIAN CRUELTY. BOYCOTT RED LOBSTER!” And I will personally go inside the restaurant to speak with the manager.
If we do this cross the continent, Red Lobster will get the message and capitulate.
Anthony Marr
www.HOPE-CARE.org
Letter to the Canadian prime minister
From: Anthony Marr, founder, Heal Our Planet Earth (HOPE)
To: The Right Honorable Stephen Harper, Prime Minister of Canada
Date: February 28, 2006.
Dear Prime Minister Harper,
First of all, congratulations for your victory over Ex-Prime-Minister Paul Martin, with whom and whose ministers we have had fruitless and even counter-productive communications until their well deserved defeat. This letter is written with the hope that your the new government will show more economic and ecological acumen, as well as compassion for the innocent, maligned, brutalized and massacred, in regards to the infamous Canadian seal hunt.
Allow me to briefly introduce myself: My name is Anthony Marr. I am a naturalized Chinese Canadian who has lived in Canada since 1965, when I was 21, and in Vancouver, British Columbia, since 1966. I became a Canadian because, after five years at two Canadian universities in two Canadian cities, of two Canadian provinces, I had grown to love Canada – its beauty, its wilderness, its biodiversity, its people, and many of its accomplishments, both at home and aboard, as well as the global leadership it has taken on so many fronts. The day I received my Canadian citizenship was one of the proudest days of my life. I still love Canada as I did that day, in certain respects even deeper, although in the mean time, I received a few very rude awakenings, which happened all to fall under the category of animal welfare, and in places deeper into animal rights.
My first rude awakening came one day in 1995, when I entered a Chinese apothecary in Vancouver’s Chinatown, and found, on open display for sale, medicinal products containing endangered species components, including tiger bone, tiger penis, rhino horn and bear gall bladder. By then, three of the original tiger subspecies had fallen extinct, and the other five tiger subspecies, along with all rhinoceros species, and six of the eight bear species, had been classified as endangered, just one notch above extinction. International law forbade the trade of all endangered species, in whole or part, dead or alive, and there they were – tiger bone, bear gall and rhino horn medicines galore, in all the 37 apothecaries that I eventually investigated under my own steam as a concerned Canadian citizen. I discovered then that although Canada abided by international law and banned the importation of these products, there was no law to ban their sale. In other words, Canada was saying to the rest of the world, “We do not allow you to import endangered species products into our country, but if you are smart enough to smuggle them in, we’ll let you sell them openly.” It was then that I decided to wage a campaign to cleanup the Chinatowns of Canada, and subsequently the Chinatowns of the United States.
The question was – How? I had basically two options. One was to go directly to the Chinese community to try to convince the merchants to voluntarily discontinue the practice, or to go to the Canadian government to lobby for a new law to ban the sale of these products, so that the merchants had no choice but to discontinue the practice. As it turned out, they were both dead-ends. This forced me to create a third option, which was to bring media into Chinatown to document my open purchase of dozens of different brands of these products, in newspapers and on TV. It almost instantly became a hot news topic throughout Canada, and even in the United States, which raised loud and vehement outcries from the general public. The media blitz was performed about a dozen times in the Chinatowns of Vancouver, Victoria, Toronto and Ottawa in late 1995, and in April 1996, a new law, known as WAPPRITTA, was put into effect by the federal government, which banned the sale of these products.
During the height of the campaign, the hitherto unresponsive Chinese community came to a boil, denouncing me as a “traitor”. During a Chinese radio talk show, a caller asked me why I was trying so hard to ruin the Chinese reputation. My answer was that I was doing it for the Chinese reputation, because, if things proceeded unimpeded, the tiger and rhino and bear species would inevitably be driven to extinction, and the Chinese reputation would be forever mud. I am happy to report that the Chinatowns have upgraded themselves on to a new endangered-species-free equilibrium, and I have since been reaccepted into the Chinese community.
This campaign taught me several things, one being that sometimes, the best place to solve a problem of one community is outside of it.
In May 2005, after receiving zero meaningful response from the Martin government, I undertook a 3-month road tour throughout the United States (my third since 2003). My car was decorated with photographic posters of burley Canadian men bashing helpless seal pups with clubs, On my car windows were heavy white lettering spelling “I AM CANADIAN. BOYCOTT MY COUNTRY!” Of course I was again called a “traitor” by some. This was with reference to the Boycott-Canadian-Seafood campaign led by the Humane Society of the United States.
I derived little pleasure from driving city to city, state to state, urging Americans to boycott my country. But after I had begun to lose count of the number of honks from passing cars and thumb-up signs from passersby, I began to drive on with true Canadian pride. I even proceeded to lead intercity Funeral Motorcades for the Seals, one, for example, from Houston to Dallas, which are about 350 km apart. 350 km is about the distance from Vancouver to Kelowna (the riding of the Hon. Stockwell Day, who seemed a compassionate soul), and almost the distance from Toronto to Montreal. 350 km because that would be the length of a single file of the 350,000 dead seals massacred in Canada last year, and the year before that. American media loved it, and the Canadian Seal Hunt became the talk of the Texans.
And I intend to make it the talk of the world. In expectation of yet another seal hunt this year, I am now organizing another “BOYCOTT CANADA” continental tour, and I am willing to do so year after year, until this barbarous hunt is history. In the mean time, I will walk and drive amongst Americans, in half pride, half shame. And the only way that this shame can be eradicated is when my country terminates this unspeakable practice once and for all.
Another thing that Ex-PM Martin fell short in was his being duped by his own Department of Fisheries and Oceans, into condoning the seal hunt based on a scientific fallacy. Basically, the DFO presented Mr. Martin with an ecological model that is false – by scapegoat the seals for the decline of the cod fishery which was damaged, in fact, by DFO’s own mismanagement, which caused over fishing, which led to the fishery collapse, plus its pushing the seal hunt, thus decimating the predator of the predators of cod. Their oversimplified model – fit for a moron, not for a prime minister – is that seals eat cod, and therefore, fewer seals = more cod. It treats the North Atlantic Ocean as if it were inhabited by only two species – seal and cod, when in fact there are at least 20 major species of fish, most predatory upon cod and predated upon by the seals. The true equation is – more seals = fewer cod-predators = more cod. A parallel situation occurred on the west coast. From 1939 through 1969, there was indeed a seal hunt – a commercial hunt and bounty hunt combined. Same moronic formula – “more seals fewer salmon, fewer seals more salmon”. The hunt was a disaster. By the 1960s, when the seal population had been decimated, the salmon runs collapsed – in river after river throughout the BC coast. In 1970, finally, the hunt was banned. By the 1990s, the seal population had recovered, and likewise the salmon runs.
The Martin government was at least in this case one of ignorance and/or deceit, in which truth was sacrificed for votes and profit. Speaking of votes, he had lots of East Coast support, but see what good it did for him. I hope that your new government will be more honest, enlightened, inspired, and courageous. I would much rather work with the government than against it, with respect than in disdain, any time.
As we speak, numerous major seafood chains in the United States have signed on to the boycott. Whereas the seal hunt brings in some $12 million a year into the Canadian economy, the economic boycott against the Canadian seafood and other industries promise to be more than ten-fold this amount in negative impact. There are already reported losses in excess of $100 million from the Canadian seafood industry. One might argue about the exact cause of the loss, but there is no arguing about the official policy of the United States, which is that importation of Canadian seal products is blanket-banned. Are we Canadian less civilized than the Americans? Further, not only is the boycott spreading sociologically, it is spreading geographically, in Europe, including Britain and Italy.
Are Canadians proud of a country known for being number one in the pillaging of nature, in conducting the largest marine mammal slaughter in the world bar none, of all time, by far? Speaking as a Canadian myself, I am not. And I intend to change it. And I do not believe that I am alone.
The banning of the seal hunt will be a major quantum leap in Canadian culture. Its downfall is inevitable. It’s just a matter of time. The name of the party with the courage to seize the moment and decisively terminate this medieval tradition will long be remembered and honored by our future generations. There will only the two alternative outcomes – the heroic, where the government acts with respect for life and dignity in action, or the cowardly, when the government is forced by the sheer economic weight of the boycott to capitulate.
Dear Prime Minister Harper, I wish you a wise administration and decisive action, and a place of dignity in future Canadian history.
Sincerely,
Anthony Marr, founder
Heal Our Planet Earth (HOPE)
www.HOPE-CARE.org
350,000 Seals Will Die…
2006-03
Found on E-Bay
350,000 Seals Will Die…
Three Hundred & Fifty Thousand!!!
(The Canadian government has added about 10,000+ more to the count to make sure they get the quota they need to make their inhumane profit, not to mention the seals they kill & slip into the ocean before they can get their fur).
Can you even begin to imagine how many that is? Anthony Marr, a Canadian Wildlife Preservationist and Anti-Hunting activist, had a very unique way to explain just how many seals 375,000 really is. If you lined these seals up nose to tail, estimating each seal to be about 1 meter in length, 375,000 seals would form a single line stretching 375 kilometers or 235 miles. This is about the distance between Washington DC & New York City!!!
West coast seal hunt on the horizon?
From: Anthony Marr
Date: Thu Mar 16, 2006 10:18 am
Subject: West coast seal hunt on the horizon?
There is a ominous dark band sitting on the western horizon. It has been brewing there for several years. Yesterday, one of the dark clouds rolled over, and cast a shadow upon us.
During the anti-seal-hunt demo in Vancouver (in which over 80 people participated), a native person in a native straw hat approached me and handed me a pamphlet. I thought he looked vaguely familiar. Being the polite person that I am, I thanked him for coming without looking at the pamphlet first. Next minute, I realized that the pamphlet was in praise of the health benefits of seal oil. Then, it dawned on me that he was none other than Roy Jones, one of the hereditary chiefs of the Haida Nation in the Queen Charlottes Islands.
Back in about 2000, I received a call from Rafe Mair, then the leading talkshow host on CKNW, inviting me to go on his program to debate Roy Jones for a full hour on his proposed West Coast Seal Hunt. The Harbour seal population on the entire west coast number only about 110,000, and Jones proposed to “harvest” 50,000 annually, and “bring $7 million into the Canadian economy”. He was blatant about making it a commercial seal hunt, but of course he used the justification of protecting salmon from seal predation. Thankfully, I had done my homework beforehand, and presented to the listening audience irrefutable evidence, extracted from government documents themselves, that the populations of seals and salmon are in direct proportion, i.e., more seals, more salmon; fewer seals, fewer salmon.
This was demonstrated beyond doubt in river after river, from the 1930s to the 1990s. Between 1939 and 1969, there was indeed a west coast seal hunt. By the 1960s, the seal population had become decimated, and so did the salmon runs in the rivers. The hunt was ended in 1970, and by the 1990s, the seal population had recovered, and so did the salmon runs. I presented hard figures river by river, until Mair halted me and said that he himself was convinced.
In our 2005 Vancouver anti-sealing demo, Jones took advantaged of our labour of love, placed himself in front of the CBC-TV camera during the demo yesterday, and, as it worked out, he got more air time on the CBC-TV coverage of the demo than we did. He was still saying the same things as he did on the Mair debate five years ago, only that he seemed more determined than even to get the hunt started.
We ignore him at our peril, and the seals’.
Anthony Marr
Leslie Fox, Vancouver Humane Society
Demand-side of global anti-seal-massacre campaign
From: Anthony Marr
To: Animals Asia
Date: Sat Apr 15, 2006 9:43 am
Re: The globe and Mail article titled It’s ‘not pretty’, but seal business thrives
Subject: Demand-side of global anti-seal-massacre campaign
As you may know, the Canadian Seal Massacre is top campaign in North America bar none at this time of the year, and I have been right in the mix of it. I’m writing to seek you advice and perhaps also your help in terminating this barbaric “tradition”. You will find the following article very informative and quite balanced on the state of the movement. A certain emphasis is placed on the Paul McCartney visit. Of special note is the line “Outside Atlantic Canada, Canadians are divided about the seal hunt. While local animal-rights activists are against the hunt, the incursion of wealthy international stars making pronouncements about Canadian policy has turned off many Canadians.”
My feeling is that it is actually not good inside Canadia in actually raising support for the massacre, but good outside of Canada in bringing the atrocity to global attention. If this observation is correct, it should be taken very seriously when planning our future strategy. The more important point in this article, however, is this: “Today, a seal pelt fetches about $70, compared with $15 in the mid-1990s. The Barry Group processes 120,000 to 150,000 pelts a year. Once treated and dyed, about 90 per cent of the pelts go to brokers in Russia and China. Russia is the No. 1 customer, with China coming on with insatiable demand.” I see China as being an even greater threat than Russia, because its market will likely surpass that of Russia within years. As you know, when it comes to trade in animal parts, which seal pelts are, there are always the supply-side (in this case Canada), and the demand side (China and Russia), and both need to be plugged before the campaign can be fully effective.
I have two questions:
1. Given your experience working in China, how do you think best to have China ban the importation of seal products from Canada?
2. Obviously, Animals Asia is ideally positioned to tackle this problem, partly because of the organizational infrastructure you have already built, would you be willing to participate in this global campaign?
I will of course do whatever I can to work with you from over here.
Looking forward to seeing your reply, one way or the other.
For the animals,
Anthony Marr, founder
Heal Our Planet Earth (HOPE)
Steve Thompson
Walk for the seals event a success!!
From Bruce Foerster, Victoria, BC, Canada
May 8, 2006
Dear fellow animal lover,
I am so very pleased to announce that the 1st annual `Walk for the Seals’ event was a BIG success! Despite the dire weather outlook in the morning, it turned into a beautiful sunny day just in time for the Seal Walk! ( the Gods were with us after all ; > ) We had approx. 50 people meet in Centennial Square for the 1 mile walk to the Legislature where we were joined by a contingent of supporters from Vancouver and a few more locals giving us a grand total of approx. 80 people!! It was so nice for everyone to be able to relax on the grass and look up at the magnificent Legislature buildings while learning more about this issue from our various speakers!
I led the group down Government St. reciting into a bull horn the statistical facts which characterize this senseless and barbaric `hunt’. We were quite a sight coming through town I can tell you that and attracted a lot of attention from locals and tourists alike!
Anthony Marr was our first speaker and inspired us with the many animal rights projects he has instituted in the past as well as his background knowledge of the commercial seal hunt which was gathered over many years of studying this perplexing issue. Anthony played a `requiem for the seals’ on his keyboard which was a beautiful, yet sad piece of music, but gave us all time to reflect upon the horrible fate of these innocent and defenseless baby animals who we are so determined to save and protect.
Next to speak was Steve Thompson, a long time Sea Shepherd supporter from Vancouver about his trials and tribulations trying to convince Costco to stop selling seal oil capsules. Quite the story! Bottom line is a boycott of Costco until they agree to stop participating and profiting from this cruel industry!
Nadine Saunders gave us her thoughts of the seal hunt from the perspective of a native Newfoundlander which was very interesting. As Nadine explained, Newfoundlanders are very set in their ways but her family could never accept sealing as anything more, or less than the sadistic, senseless and bloody thing that it is!
I then took the liberty of sharing with the group my opinion of the Canadian commercial seal hunt and attempted to convey how much I despise it and why l work tirelessly to end it! Any assistance you can lend the various initiatives that I, and others take to end this crime against nature is certainly appreciated and vital if we are going to influence government policy which we must do at the very highest levels in order to stop this senseless slaughter!
Thank you to those of you who took the time out of your busy lives to join us in opposing this cruel and barbaric hunt! I know that many of you wished you could have been there but just could not. I know you were there with us in spirit and your spirit burned brightly yesterday along with the spirits of some 80 other compassionate souls! The success of this rally means more rallies in the future! I will keep in touch and let you know when our next initiative will be and hope that you will be able to participate and help us to end this atrocity against nature forever!
Sincerely,
Bruce Foerster
Save the Seals Coalition
216-9610
p.s. – Congratulations to Bill Chemko from Nanaimo who won the draw for the vacation to Belize!! Bill is working hard to end the seal hunt so no one is more deserving! : >
Victoria to Campbell River and back Funeral Motorcade for the Seals
2006-06-07
Media Release
Victoria to Campbell River and back Funeral Motorcade for the Seals
340 km return = line of 340,000 dead seals (@ 1 m/seal) the 340,000 seals massacred in Canada every year
On the day after Canada Day, not on Canada Day itself, a group of aggrieved and ashamed Canadians, and compassionate Americans, will perform the Funeral Motorcade for the Seals from Victoria to Campbell River and back. As the procession goes through Duncan, Ladysmith, Nanaimo, Parksville, Qualicum, Comox and Courtenay, they will be joined by local activists and their vehicles, culminating in the “Grand Arrival” back in Victoria in the afternoon.
“340,000 is a large number, sure, but people take a glance at it, raise their eye-brow a little, shelve the number somewhere in the left brain, and go about their business. I want to show them what 340,000 seals actually look like., lined up on both sides of the highway,” says Anthony Marr, founder of Heal Our Planet Earth (HOPE), long time anti-hunting-activist. “Still no reaction? How about dogs? 340,000 dead and skinned dogs along the highway. Would we let it happen?”
This will be the very first of such events on Anthony Marr’s 35-states-and-6-provinces-in-5-months Compassion for Animals Road Expedition #4 (CARE-4 – see www.HOPE-CARE.org). The second Funeral Motorcade for the Seals on this tour will be between Calgary and Edmonton, Alberta, on July 16, Sunday, organized by Sea Shepherd Calgary Chapter.
Victoria anti-sealing activist and event organizer Bruce Foerster says, “The Canadian commercial seal hunt is the largest slaughter of marine mammals on earth and continues unabated despite there not being any economic justification for the slaughter. This is a horrendous crime against nature which is putting into serious question Canada’s claim of being a civilized, compassionate and progressive society. This ‘hunt’ must be exposed for the fraud which it is and stopped immediately if we are ever going to take our place along other civilized nations who would never tolerate such a barbaric and sadistic act being committed on their soil.”
Details will be forthcoming in due course.
Contact:
Vancouver | Anthony Marr, Anthony-Marr@HOPE-CARE.org
Victoria | Bruce Foerster
Principal Buyer of Canadian Seal Skins Subsidized by Government to Burn Pelts
June 7, 2006
WASHINGTON – The Humane Society of the United States today reacted to news that a Norwegian company has destroyed 10,000 harp seal skins, commenting that the revelation contradicts claims of strong markets for seal products.
Norwegian media outlets reported last week that the top buyer of Canadian seal pelts, Norwegian based GC Rieber, was paid by the Norwegian government to destroy 10,000 harp seal skins. GC Rieber is considered the economic backbone of the Canadian sealing industry, each year buying 50 to 80 percent of the skins from seals killed during the annual seal hunt in Canada. Slain Canadian seals account for more than 90 percent of Rieber’s seal skin business.
“For years we’ve suspected some form of price rigging through hidden government subsidies – now we have proof,” said Rebecca Aldworth, director of Canadian wildlife issues for The Humane Society of the United States. “These revelations demonstrate that the Canadian seal hunt, in addition to being cruel and inhumane, is also economically unjustified.”
GC Rieber purchases sealskins through its Newfoundland subsidiary, Carino, and has repeatedly claimed that the demand for seal products is so strong they cannot match supply. However, a recent media report revealed that the Norwegian government has paid Rieber 2 million Norwegian kroner (about $370,000 CAD/ $330,000 USD) to burn 10,000 excess Norwegian harp seal skins.
The Norwegian harp seal skins were obtained from sealers, who had also received major government subsidies (2.5 million Norwegian kroner) to kill the seals. The Norwegian government justified the burning of the skins, indicating it was impossible to find markets for the harp seal pelts.
Animal protection groups and trade specialists have questioned the repeated claims of strong sealskin markets made by Rieber in recent years.
“In 2000, the markets were so weak that Carino stopped buying seal skins halfway through the season, and sealers returning from the hunt dumped their seal skins into the ocean because they were worthless,” said Aldworth. “Just a few years later, Carino is claiming their sales are the strongest they’ve ever been – even as major European markets are closing.”
Letter to the Green Party of Canada – regarding the seal massacre
4 October 2006
To: Ms. Elizabeth May, leader of the Green Party of Canada
Dear Ms. May:
It is with dismay that I read the article below regarding the federal Green Party’s plan to soften its opposition to the Canadian commercial seal massacre.
While I’m writing this, I am conducting my 4th Compassion for Animals Road Expedition (CARE-4) through 35 American states in 5 months – as a Canadian. This politically expedient but morally regressive move on the part of the Canadian Green Party has caused me to hang my head even lower in apology on your behalf, as I walk amongst and speak to American animal advocates from coast to coast. And they too, are slumping in their seats in darkened and deepened despair.
Back in 1996, I was the campaign director of Western Canada Wilderness Committee leading the Ban-Bear-Hunting-in-BC Referendum Initiative.
Resulting partly from my 50-cities-in-8-weeks road tour throughout the BC interior, we generated a province-wide volunteer force of 1,800. This may look like a huge task-force on the scale of the movement, but on the scale of the project, we needed some 4,000.
Thus, we asked the BC Green Party to endorse the campaign and to offer local help from city to city. The BC Green Party refused, citing possible damage to party support in the pro-hunting districts.
The result is a failed campaign, and still zero votes for the BC Green Party. If not for the tragic, lose-lose nature of the situation, I would have laughed out loud upon receipt of the refusal. I did my level best to refrain from using the word “cowardice”. About the most diplomatic statement I could make back to the BC Greens was, “What do you have to lose?”
To me, and to millions of others, the Green Party is not as much a political party than an icon of compassion, courage, conscience, ethics, enlightenment and progressive thinking in the political arena. Your political move will not benefit you politically, but it will tarnish you if not destroy you morally and ethically.
What is the Green Party’s highest political aspiration in this regard? That it will gain a seat in Newfoundland? The Polar Ice Cap will stop melting first. In Canada, the Green Party will always lose politically, but it could always shine as a guiding light for the entire Canadian civilization as long as its leaders do not dim their own brilliance.
The forces of compassion around the world have rallied to stop this most barbaric and largest marine mammal slaughter in world history, thus cleaning the name of Canada for us ashamed Canadians. Your self-defeating move will set back the movement by years, and alienate international support for your party for decades.
I hope that you will reconsider this matter with your utmost seriousness and wisdom, bearing the big picture very much in mind. There may be “other issues” within Canada, but in the international arena, there is none more prominent than the hugely despised Candian commercial seal massacre.
Sincerely,
Anthony Marr, founder
Heal Our Planet Earth (HOPE)
Ignore Loyola Hearn. Go for Europe and Asia.
Fellow activists:
Now that the seal massacre season is again upon us, and many people will be writing letters, I venture to make an observation, to which I myself abide.
After over a decade of involvement in the anti-sealing movement, especially after receiving a form letter back from the DFO which matched word for word the form letter received by Steve Thompson three years before, I have come to the conclusion that writing letters to Loyola Hearn et al is a total and complete waste of time.
If a person is to write only one letter, which I believe is fairly close to the average (considering the number of people who don’t write any letter at all), then write it to the government of a chosen country in Europe or Asia (incl. esp. China and Russia) to urge that country to ban Canadian seal products. Simplest would be to just send the letter to the embassy of that country.
Oh, and by the way, please do by all means coolly CC a copy to Mr. Hearn without stooping to address him directly. Even if insult is the impulse, it is a greater insult to ignore someone where it matters than to scream in his face. But the more important point is that you are writing a letter to people who will listen, than to those who won’t. Your letter may make it all the way up to the EU Parliament, instead of the waste paper basket of Mr. Hearn.
Below is a sample letter to the German embassador in Ottawa, to serve as an example. It was indeed CCed to Hearn. Now that he sees Germany moving to ban Canadian seal products (whether or not it has anything to do with the letter), every letter to a foreign government CCed to him will cause a frown, instead of the sneer that the usual “Dear. Hon. Hearn, you axxhole…” type of letter would bring.
Even without considering Loyola Hearn, these letters to Europe and Asia need be written anyway, so why not take this annual flash in the pan as an opportunity to do it, and do it on a massive scale?
I believe that the first letter is always the most impactful. Subsequent letters would be considered PSs. Especially those who have already written to Hearn, writing him five more times will make no difference, but writing five letters to five foreign givernments could make all the difference in the world.
Anthony Marr, founder
Heal Our Planet Earth (HOPE)
September 4, 2006
To: The Federal Republic of Germany
Dear Ambassador of the Federal Republic of Germany:
As a Canadian citizen and a wildlife preservationist, I am writing to ask your government to please ban the importation of all Canadian seal products, as several countries are already doing, and some other countries, including Belgium, are giving it their serious consideration.
The Canadian commercial seal hunt is by far the largest, most cruel, most brutal and least justifiable slaughter of marine mammals in history. At one metre per seal, the 325,000 baby seals killed in Canada every year would form a single file 325 km in length along a highway. When presented with reports about 10% to 40% of the seals being killed inhumanely, the Canadian government answered by saying that “only” 2% were killed inhumanely. Even 2% of 325,000 is 6,500. In many cases, being killed “inhumanely” means being skinned alive. And all for what? Fur coats for Russia and China, and Germany?
Please find below a letter I sent to the Embassy of Belgium in Ottawa, Canada, which you will find self-explanatory. I hope that Germany will join the increasing number of civilized nations in the world in opposing this barbaric industry which has no place in the 21st Century.
Sincerely,
Anthony Marr, founder
Heal Our Planet Earth (HOPE)
Dear Ambassador and Citizens of Belgium:
As a Canadian, and a wildlife preservationist, I am deeply grateful to your country for seriously considering the importation ban of Canadian seal products.
In fact, as a Canadian, I am writing to ask your country to further consider banning all products from my country until the heinous commercial seal massacre has been terminated.
Some may consider this an act of treason on the part of a Canadian citizen to make such a request upon a foreign government, but many who have heard my speeches at home and abroad understand that this is a plea from a concerned and informed Canadian for Belgium to help save the reputation of my country worldwide, since our own politicians would not take such a necessary step.
Please pay no attention to the shameful and shameless manipulations of fisheries minister Loyola Hearn, who is broadly reviled by most Canadians outside of his home province of Newfoundland, which I will dissect by the following three points:
1. Mr. Hearn is blaming the seals for the incompetence of his own ministry in the decimation of the Atlantic cod fishery. The seals, in fact are the benefactors of cod, serving as a population control of the twenty or so other species of cod-predators. Were the seals destroyed, these predatory fish would destroy what remains of the cod almost overnight.
2. Mr. Hearn’s assertion that killing baby seals is the sealers’ livelihood is blatantly false. The sealing season lasts for only two weeks per year. Killing seals is nothing more than a part-time job. Many sealers do it because they love to kill, not because they need to. A U.S. citizen, Ms. Cathy Kangas of Connecticut, has offered the sealers U.S. $16 million to stop the hunt, and they have flatly declined, proving that it is not an economic issue.
3. Mr. Hearn’s worst manipulation of all is to try to “guilt trip” Belgium into submission. Historical and universal wisdom has it that when one does another a favor, it is a gift, not a bargain, not a trade. When a gift is given, one should NEVER expect, nor even hope for, a return. Hearn’s mouthing of his very despicable words has dishonored all Canadians, and cheapened the sacrifices of those Canadians who have given their lives to a noble cause.
In closing, I would like to say one thing in which I do agree with Mr. Hearn, and that is to invite EU members to observe the seal massacre, which will prove even more convincing than our video, which, by the way, is less than one year old, not 20 years old as in Mr. Hearn’s deceitful claim, but in such a manner so that Mr. Hearn could not employ his deviousness to stage a picture-book presentation.
Most sincerely yours,
Anthony Marr
Vancouver, BC, Canada
“Hearn invites EU members to observe seal hunt”
Fri. Sep. 1 2006 12:59 PM ET
Canadian Press
ST. JOHN’S, N.L. — Canada’s fisheries minister has chosen a novel way to persuade politicians in Belgium to reconsider a plan to ban imports of Newfoundland seal products.
Loyola Hearn, in Brussels this week to meet with the European Union’s fisheries commissioner to discuss foreign overfishing, said he reminded the Belgians of the many Canadian soldiers who lost their lives in Belgium during the First World War.
The Newfoundland MP said an import ban would amount to “taking the livelihood away from a number of Canadians whose family members left their blood on the fields here in Belgium, Flanders fields and other places.
“That got their attention,” he told St. John’s radio station VOCM. “But the thing is they are looking much more seriously at what we’re saying and have agreed to look for the facts.”
Hearn said he extended an invitation to members of the European Parliament to visit Canada and learn more about the seal hunt.
“I’ve sort of challenged them to look for the truth, for the facts, and to visit Canada to make up their own minds. Don’t base their decisions on … what they heard and seen from lobby groups who are using 20-year-old videos.”
Hearn said he raised the issue of the seal hunt after he learned that members of the Belgian Parliament were in the process of introducing legislation to ban the importation of seal products.
Anthony Marr, founder
Heal Our Planet Earth (HOPE)
Compassion for Animals Road Expeditions (CARE)
Please read the rest of this entry on Anthony Marr’s Blogspot HERE …
Anthony Marr, Founder and President,
Heal Our Planet Earth (HOPE)
Global Anti-Hunting Coalition (GAHC)
- Anthony-Marr@HOPE-CARE.org
- www.HOPE-CARE.org
- www.facebook.com/Anthony.Marr.001
- Facebook Global Anti-Hunting Coalition
- www.myspace.com/AnthonyMarr
- www.youtube.com/AnthonyMarr
- www.HomoSapiensSaveYourEarth.blogspot.com
- www.myspace.com/Anti-Hunting_Coalition
- www.ARConference.org
Also by Anthony Marr …
- Anthony Marr: My Gratitudes | #1: To My Parents
- Anthony Marr: My Gratitudes | #2: To 30 Scholars of 5 Universities
- Anthony Marr: My Gratitudes | #3: to the Wilderness Committee
- Anthony Marr: My Gratitudes | #4 – to the 1800 volunteers of the Bear Referendum campaign
- Anthony Marr: My Gratitudes | #5 – To My Friends, Colleagues and Volunteers in India
- The Optimal Way of Man
- Our Collective Destiny?
Our Compass 
The information in this presentation is becoming quite dated. More current details and statistics can be found here: http://www.dfo-mpo.gc.ca/fm-gp/seal-phoque/myth-eng.htm
Anthony Marr is a brilliant man who’s considerable talents could and hopefully will make great strides toward improving our world for the betterment of humanity. With such desperate issues as child hunger, abuse, and neglect of our elderly, affordable health care, economic instability, and devastatingly bad planning by governing officials in the Bureau’s of Land Management across North America I hope he will turn his goals toward solving some of these critical issues. We need someone of his caliber in public office.
As one final act of animal preservation it would be a tremendous victory if Anthony could use his influence and connections to help us put an end to the bear bile farming industry in China which is a significantly more inhumane, albeit unseen, practice than the seal hunt in Canada. Destroying the market for bear bile will be easier now it has been proven to contain lethal toxins and has been the cause of death for many who have used it.
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These valuable efforts and information by Anthony and all the great Canadian Activists must surely have paved the way and informed the public to the point of being on the verge of reforming the Canadian’s Governments excuse’s on this barbaric holocaust for the Seals. Good job putting all this info into one blog. Thank you Anthony.
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