murder is not a budget cut: shame on you outdoor adventure whistler

Leading up to the 2010 Olympics Vancouver dealt with a lot of conflicting issues.  The country tends to refer to the Olympics as 2 weeks of golden success, when Canadians came together in a show of national pride.  And for those 2 weeks, it was definitely a party.

While the rest of the world may be happy to put that in their scrapbooks, it really doesn’t paint the full picture of what happens when your city becomes the world’s city.  Before it even began there was years of fighting over how we would ever pay for it.  Construction started en masse, and those of us who commute to work found our routes changes on a weekly basis for about 5 years.  And don’t even get me started on the whole “how do we hide the DTES” mess.

Then February hit, and despite the lack of snow we pulled it off.  For 2 weeks I set aside the politics and cheered for our athletes.  In the end it really was for them, and even a bitterpants like me teared up at the countless “I Believe” montages.  The Olympics left me with a newfound love of hockey, a crush on TSN’s Jay Onrait and the forever image of Norway’s curling pants.

Almost a year later the Olympics has left our daily lives as the Olympic torch fades into the landscape as if it was always there.  Our pre-Olympic fears of a post-Olympicalypse seemed unfounded.  Until today.

Reports today surfaced of 100 sled dogs being killed in Pemberton last April by a company claiming it was due to post-Olympics tourism slump.  We are only finding out about it now because one of the workers started a WorkSafeBC claim for PTSD after killing some of the dogs that he had raised since their birth.  It would have been tragic had these healthy dogs been euthanized in a humane way.  Tragic doesn’t seem strong enough a word for their brutal slaughter and mass grave disposal.

Of all the concerns that were raised surrounding the Olympics I don’t think any of us could have foreseen this.  Canada is known for it’s respect for animals and has been progressive both here and abroad.  Recently a suburb of Vancouver passed a bylaw so that dogs could not be sold in pet stores to try and end puppy mills.  We have fish painted on any storm drain that leads to a known salmon spawning place.  We’re home to David Suzuki!  So how could this have happened and no one knew about it?

The actions taken by Outdoor Adventures Whistler are appalling, and I hope the law holds them accountable.  In fact I hope new laws are written to deal with this kind of soulless behaviour.  As this story has spread across the internet I also hope that there is a definite distinction between the people of BC, and the heinous acts of this company.  

Much as the people of BC should not be associated with this, neither the Olympics nor the recession are to blame.  It is true that this company may have taken on an excess of animals to prepare for a boost in demand.  Murder, however, is not the solution to budget cuts.