August 12, 2019 · 4:10 pm

Jane Goodall – Why hasn’t Canada banned the elephant ivory trade?

Thanks to the amazing Jane Goodall for her op-ed in today’s Globe and Mail in honour of World Elephant Day. Please sign our petition or write your MP to end the legal trade of ivory in Canada today.

OPINION

Why hasn’t Canada banned the elephant ivory trade?

by Jane Goodall – The Globe and Mail

My fascination with and love for elephants began when I first encountered a herd. I was on foot in the forests on the rim of Ngorongoro Crater, and I was able to spend time with these magnificent beings in Tanzania’s Ruaha National Park. I was there with my late husband, Derek Bryceson, who was the director of Tanzania National Parks at the time. We had arranged training workshops for park rangers who would follow individuals and record their activities using techniques similar to those we developed in Gombe to monitor chimpanzee behaviour.

Although I could not be there often, I got to know a number of elephants individually. There was Fred, a juvenile male. He was a real show-off and would chase almost anything – antelopes, warthogs, cattle egrets – trumpeting fiercely, ears spread. I even saw him charge a butterfly.

One individual I especially loved was a very old male, Ahmed. His ears drooped and his skin was loose, hanging in folds around his ankles. He moved slowly and deliberately and often stood in the shade by himself, his trunk draped over one of his tusks.

Elephants are highly intelligent. During dry periods, the older members of the herd remember the locations of water holes they visited years before. They form strong social bonds and have emotions similar to our own. If danger threatens, the adults will circle the mothers and calves protectively and are ready to charge. They care for adults of the herd as well: One researcher observed three male elephants attempt to revive a dying matriarch, lifting her body with their tusks as they tried in vain to get her back on her feet.

On World Elephant Day, we pay tribute to these wise, gentle giants who so perfectly represent the natural wonders of the world.

But today is not a time for celebration. This magnificent species, which once roamed across Africa in great herds, has been pushed toward extinction. In 1930, as many as 10 million elephants inhabited the continent. Today, there are only some 400,000 left. This decrease is almost entirely the ugly result of poaching, which is backed by criminal cartels to satisfy the demand for ivory. How shameful that human greed threatens these majestic, intelligent beings, slaughtering them for their tusks.

If we are to save this species, the demand for ivory – and other elephant parts – must end. In 2016, at the most recent conference hosted by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, the African Elephant Coalition (which comprises 29 countries representing the overwhelming majority of range states in which African elephants are found) called on countries around the world to close their markets for commercial trade in raw and worked ivory. The proposal was supported through a unanimous resolution.

Canada – along with Japan, Namibia and South Africa – has refused to do so. Unlike China, once the largest single market for the buying and selling of legal and illegal ivory, Canada continues to sanction a domestic marketplace for elephant ivory.

As a policy, Ottawa has banned sales of ivory from elephants killed post-1990. But because ivory is extremely difficult to date, illegally harvested supplies enter the Canadian market with little or no difficulty. (Canada has also expressed concern that banning elephant ivory could affect the well-regulated Inuit trade in worked narwhal and walrus ivory, although no evidence has been cited to support this claim.)

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Canada also permits the importation of elephant trophies. Between 2007 and 2016, Canada allowed the legal importation of more than 400 elephant skulls and 260 elephant feet, according to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, which tracks the movement of animals and animal parts.

Hunting causes terrible suffering to thousands of individual elephants. Moreover, profits from poaching fund criminal cartels, destabilize communities and feed corruption. Park rangers, on the front lines of protecting all wildlife, also pay a high price: In 2018, at least 63 African game rangers died in the line of duty, often leaving their families without support. And a number of people working to bring the ivory barons to justice have been brutally murdered.

On World Elephant Day, the Ivory-Free Canada coalition, of which the Jane Goodall Institute of Canada is a member, is calling on Canada to ban the trade in elephant ivory. With its partners, – Elephanatics, Humane Society International-Canada, World Elephant Day and Global March for Elephants and Rhinos-Toronto – the coalition is asking Canada to join other responsible countries in the fight to save these iconic animals from extinction.

When I see elephant tusks or elephant ivory trinkets, I see the suffering and brutal death of the individual to whom they once belonged and the terror and heartache of the others in the herd.

But together we can change this. I choose elephants, not ivory. I choose an Ivory-Free Canada.

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July 23, 2019 · 11:27 pm

Ivory Free Canada

More than 400,000 have signed the petition asking for end to the legal trade in elephant ivory.
Help us get to 500,000 by World Elephant Day on August 12!
www.change.org/IvoryFreeCanada

The ongoing slaughter of African elephants for their tusks has decimated elephant populations. Today, this magnificent animal is highly endangered and on the brink of extinction. Since 1980, the number of elephants in Africa has fallen from 1.3 million to just over 400,000. Currently an estimated 20,000 elephants are killed every year for their ivory. At this rate, they will be erased from the wild in our lifetime.

Countries that have banned the domestic sale of elephant ivory within their borders, or are in the process of doing so, include China, the UK, France, the Netherlands, Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, Belgium, Luxembourg, the European Union and nearly every state in the United States.

To date, the Canadian government refuses to do the same and also ban the ivory trade. Shockingly, Canada is directly contributing to the destruction of one of the one of the planet’s most iconic species by keeping its elephant ivory market open for business.

Canada also legally permits elephant trophies to be imported. Between 2007 and 2016, Canada allowed the importation of 83 trophy elephants, 434 elephant skulls and 260 elephant feet.

Please join the Ivory-Free Canada campaign #IvoryFreeCanada and tell our government to end the legal domestic trade of elephant ivory.

Here’s how you can help save elephants:

1. Sign and share our petition! More than 400,000 have signed already – thank you! If you haven’t added your name yet, please help us get to 500,000 signatures by World Elephant Day on August 12.

2. Trumpet the issue on social media! Watch for us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram and share using #IvoryFreeCanada.

Our coalition is led by Elephanatics with supporting partners Humane Society International-Canada, the Jane Goodall Institute of Canada, World Elephant Day and Global March for Elephants – Toronto.

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July 1, 2019 · 6:35 pm

Poem of the Week: Voyage by Tony Hoagland via Poetry Mistress Alison

Voyage, by Tony Hoagland

I feel as if we opened a book about great ocean voyages
and found ourselves on a great ocean voyage:
sailing through December, around the horn of Christmas
and into the January Sea, and sailing on and on

in a novel without a moral but one in which
all the characters who died in the middle chapters
make the sunsets near the book’s end more beautiful.

And someone is spreading a map upon a table,
and someone is hanging a lantern from the stern,
and someone else says, “I’m only sorry
that I forgot my blue parka; It’s turning cold.”

Sunset like a burning wagon train
Sunrise like a dish of cantaloupe
Clouds like two armies clashing in the sky;
Icebergs and tropical storms,
That’s the kind of thing that happens on our ocean voyage —

And in one of the chapters I was blinded by love
And in another, anger made us sick like swallowed glass
& I lay in my bunk and slept for so long,
I forgot about the ocean,
Which all the time was going by, right there, outside my cabin window.

And the sides of the ship were green as money,
and the water made a sound like memory when we sailed.

Then it was summer. Under the constellation of the swan,
under the constellation of the horse.

At night we consoled ourselves
By discussing the meaning of homesickness.
But there was no home to go home to.
There was no getting around the ocean.
We had to go on finding out the story
by pushing into it —
The sea was no longer a metaphor.
The book was no longer a book.
That was the plot.
That was our marvelous punishment.

For more information about Tony Hoagland, please read his obituary.

Thanks to Alison McGhee for sharing these beautiful poems. WebsiteBlogFacebook page@alisonmcghee

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June 30, 2019 · 12:54 am

Books: The Round House by Louise Erdrich

The Round House by Louise Erdrich is a treasure of a read. I grew up in Ontario but have lived most of my adult life in British Columbia. We were never taught indigenous, First Nation or Inuit history in lower and high school and although I went on to study history, I focused on Middle Eastern and American studies. Today, of course, I am much more aware of the sad history of my country and its first people and the more I learn the more horrified I am at the continued injustices that permeate our governance structure.

The Round House is a coming of age story that is told from the perspective of 13 year Joe Coutts, who grows up on an Ojibwe reservation in North Dakota. Set in 1988, the novel offers a glimpse of a young boy on the cusp of manhood, who over the course of a few months, avenges the horrifying rape of his mother. The tragedy drives the action in the novel but in many ways is a backdrop to the delightful cast of characters who live on the reserve with Joe including his close circle of friends Cappy, Zack and Angus. Joe’s father, Bazil is a judge and after the assault begins to share details of other criminal cases with his son. Joe and his friends become embroiled in solving the crime and in so doing, come to an understanding that the complex legal system and land issues could let the perpetrator go free.

While the story is dark, it is a beautiful evocation of the  complexities that have resulted from stealing indigenous land and creating reserves. It’s a coming of age story that is oddly funny, incredibly tragic with writing that captures the beauty of people at one with the natural world and the characters that fuel generational mythology. So happy I found this book and want to thank my book fairy Cynthia for pressing this into my hands and saying “Read it. Read it.”

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June 21, 2019 · 3:24 am

Poem of the Week: by Margaret Hasse via Alison McGhee

High School Boyfriend, by Margaret Hasse

You are hometown.
You are all my favorite places
the last summer I grew up.
Every once in a while
I write you
in my head
to ask how Vietnam
and a big name college
came between us.
We tried to stay in touch
through the long distance,
the hum and fleck of phone calls.

It was inevitable
that I should return
to the small prairie town
and find you
pumping gas, driving a truck, measuring lumber,
and we’d exchange
weather talk,
never able to break through words
and time to say simply:
“Are you as happy
as I wanted you to be?”

And still I am stirred
by musky cigarette smoke
on a man’s brown suede jacket.
Never having admitted the tenderness
of your hands, I feel them now
through my skin.
Parking on breezy nights,
in cars, floating passageways,
we are tongue and tongue like warm cucumbers.
I would walk backwards
along far country roads
through late evenings cool as moving water,
heavy as red beer,
to climb into that August.

In the dark lovers’ lanes
you touched my face
and found me here.

For more information on Margaret Hasse, please click here.

Website

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@alisonmcghee

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April 16, 2019 · 1:02 am

Books: We Need to Talk About Kevin

We Need to Talk about Kevin by Lionel Shriver freaked me out from beginning to end. Every word, sentence, and page draws you into the head of Eva Katchadourian as she writes to her estranged husband about the story of their family and their son who goes on a murderous rampage.

Eva is a successful travel book publisher and entrepreneur, and her husband is an equally successful location scout. Pre-children they are the NYC couple you’re jealous of. They own a loft, she travels extensively to exotic locales, she runs her company and when she’s not doing that she and Franklin enjoy drunken soirees with their equally successful New York hipster friends. But the time arrives when the meaninglessness of their existence tugs at them and they decide to have a child.

Eva entertains motherhood reluctantly while Franklin turns into Daddy monster, a man who now only thinks about the needs of the baby. Eva from the beginning is diminished by her husband’s pivot to fatherhood and when Kevin is born she slides further into existential crisis when she fails to bond with her child.

Kevin, she believes, has it in for her, and as a child he poses a threat to her, her lifestyle and her marriage. His refusal to speak, until he delivers full and complete thoughts and sentences demonstrates to her the deviousness of his mind. He bides his time to agonize and frustrate his mother. At six she is still changing his diapers, awkwardly cleaning the poop of the too large boy who refuses to potty train….until one day he simply decides to do it. She thinks that all along he knows precisely what he needs to do but simply chooses not to in order to frustrate his reluctant and increasingly bitter mother. Kevin is smart and she knows it.

Meanwhile Franklin does everything he can to support and love the boy, driving a wedge between the once happy and in-love couple. Eva never loses the sense that Kevin is not what he seems, that he is one thing to his mother and another to his father. There is no one true Kevin. Kevin is a master manipulator incapable of being true to anything or anyone. And he is unkind,

By the time Kevin commits the ultimate horrifying crime you don’t know who to believe. Is Franklin right? Is Eva a monster who has nurtured her son’s cold animosity through her own dislike of the boy? And there’s Franklin who to me, never feels real or genuine. His “Hey Son let’s play” hits a false note every time. Does he counter his son’s oddness by overcompensating and creating his own version of Leave it to Beaver? And then there’s Eva….who’s distrust of her own child starts with her pregnancy and never abates. It’s hard to know who the real monster really is. Admittedly, I didn’t sleep much when I was reading this book. The question of who we really are and how monsters are created is at the heart of this book. I loved it and hated it at the same time. But I still think about the book and the fictitious Khatchadourian family, which makes it a provocative read.

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April 9, 2019 · 4:22 am

Books: Bill Browder, Red Notice: A True Story of High Finance, Murder, and One Man’s Fight for Justice

Bill Browder

The non-fiction I’m reading lately is proving to me that real life is weirder than fiction. The world really is a dangerous place!

Bill Browder, the author of Red Notice: A True Story of High Finance, Murder and One Man’s Fight for Justice, discovers that his days of being a lucrative investment broker in Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union is about to come to an abrupt end when he’s forbidden re-entry into the country he calls his home.

Through Hermitage Capital Browder becomes a prominent shareholder in numerous Russian gas companies, but his trail of research brings him in direct conflict with corrupt bureaucrats, law enforcement and Putin himself. His offices are raided, he’s accused of tax evasion and ultimately his lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, is brutally murdered by the Russian state and a warrant is issued for Browder’s arrest.

Of course I’ve condensed hundreds of pages of this crazy story into three paragraphs so I’m not even beginning to do this book justice. Ultimately Browder turns activist in defence of Sergei and his tireless advocacy results in the passing of the Magnisky Act by Barack Obama. The act authorizes the US government to sanction those who it sees as human rights offenders, freezing their assets, and ban them from entering the U.S.

If there is an interesting thing about this book it’s just how nuts the whole story is. Like really? This is how the world of international investment and finance works? I guess so. And Bill Browder, is at the centre of it from the beginning when he saw the opportunity the Russian market offered to investors like himself and his wealthy clients. There is no question, he’s a driven guy. He’s either making crazy amounts of money or avenging his friends death. This man is a risk taker no matter what he does and there is something heroic if not a little crazy about this story.

The other “elephant in the room” is Russia. Russia is just a bit creepy these days with it’s wanting to take over the world by destroying western democracies. What we see is just the tip of the iceberg. I would love to have dinner and few drinks with Rob Mueller (I know, he’d never talk but one can dream). According to Bill Browder, Russia is a thug state. And that’s probably something we should all be just a little worried about. I give this book a thumbs up!

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