Swinging Canadian elections keeps the sealers swinging clubs
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2008:
Swinging Canadian elections keeps the sealers swinging clubs
Commentary by Merritt Clifton
Thirty years ago, when I first wrote
about the Atlantic Canadian seal hunt as a rural
Quebec newspaper reporter, both the hunt and
protests against it already seemed to have gone
on forever–but I had hopes that the efforts of
Brigitte Bardot and Paul Watson would soon end
it. Bardot brought global celebrity status to
the campaign; Watson had just introduced the
then new tactic of actually confronting the
sealers on the ice, as cameras rolled.
I had known about the hunt and the
protests for close to 10 years, first hearing
of it soon after Brian Davies moved his Save The
Seals Fund to the U.S. from New Brunswick and
retitled it the International Fund for Animal
Welfare.
When the U.S. Postal Service introduced
nonprofit bulk mail discounts in 1969, the seal
hunt was among the topics that built IFAW, the
Animal Protection Institute, Greenpeace, and
the Fund for Animals. The seal hunt was already
a cause celebré before Bardot gave up acting to
start the Brigitte Bardot Foundation, before
Watson formed the Sea Shepherd Conservation
Society while Greenpeace retreated from the
sealing issue.