I'm alarmed that Canadians heard only one side of the seal hunt story while the rest of the world was exposed to a disparate perspective. One example is a recent MacLean's magazine article entitled "The Good Hunt," which was a defence of this highly controversial annual event. Positioned simply as "a way to make a living," there were transparent excuses and glib jokes that glossed over all the reasons why there are two sides to this story.
If you look outside mainstream Canadian news media you discover that much of the rest of the world sees the seal hunt as a wasteful, unnecessary, and brutal slaughter. Clubbing defenceless seal babies who can barely crawl, let alone swim, is akin to shooting fish in a barrel. But the Canadian government defends and subsidizes this tradition on the basis that it provides jobs in rural Atlantic Canada. Sealing is only a small part of the East Coast fishery, but fur sales to European and Asian garment manufacturers make it a multi-million dollar industry. Both sides agree that the hunt is a lucrative business.
But this is where the versions depart: For over 30 years, animal rights activists have risked fines and spending time in jail to tell the "truth" as they see it. They claim that the hunt is cruel. Contrary to the government's independent studies that show the hunt is humane, organizations like the American Humane Society cite other independent veterinary sources that suggest more than 40 percent of the seals may have been conscious when skinned. And despite a sealer's adamant assertions in MacLean's that, "We're not hurting them. They're not suffering or nothing like that. When we kill 'em, it's quick and fast," anti-hunt groups have witnessed countless baby seals slowly choking to death on their own blood on the ice. Photos and videos documenting hunters running frantically clubbing seal after seal have been published --but not in the Canadian news media since the government outlawed photographing, filming, or even witnessing the hunt.
This has had the effect of making us forget the hunt. When polled, the general consensus among Canadians is that the hunt should be abolished. Whether the method is cruel or not, we view killing animals for their fur as unnecessary. But here's the crux; when the media showed high-profile celebrities like Paul and Heather McCartney posing in seal nurseries and pleading with our government to cancel this year's hunt, Canadians were taken by surprise. We didn't think that baby seals had been hunted for their fur in 20 years, when in reality the government merely outlawed the hunting of cute, newborn "whitecoat" seals. This concession to public opinion merely forces hunters to wait until these unweaned seal pups are three or four weeks old and their fur has become a darker colour. But the pups are still completely helpless.
There is a worldwide outcry against our seal hunt, because of the unnecessary brutality that the stories and images published outside Canada show. The British government is one of several countries who have banned the import of seal fur from Canada, and who are boycotting Canadian fishery products to send the strong message to our government that they are disgusted by the inhumanity of the seal hunt. Why are Canadians not speaking up against the hunt if they also share that view?
Our media is oddly either silent or biased about the hunt. MacLean's claimed that the McCartneys were sadly misinformed and that the whitecoat seals in the photographs are not being hunted. But they failed to mention that the pups would be hunt-worthy in a few more weeks. MacLean's further skirted around protesters' arguments by glossing over claims that the killing is inhumane, or that the industry is wasteful. A sealer's grandmother is shown cooking and preserving seal meat into mason jars. Were we supposed to believe that the hunt is for food? The government strongly asserts that maintaining the hunt preserves Aboriginal subsistence hunting traditions. Yet not one Inuit was employed in this year's hunt.
This is not about Aboriginal rights, and it goes beyond the question of cruelty, or even the need to preserve bio-diversity. It even goes beyond an arrogant assumption that animals were put on this earth for our sole use. Whether we agree or not with the seal hunt, Canadians should be alarmed by the biased, one-dimensional perspective on this in our media. We need to be asking why we aren't hearing the other side of the story.
Robyn Lee is a writer, painter, avid gardener, and Cultural Studies graduate. Her interview with environmental activist Trevor Van Der Gulik appeared in the April 2006 issue of The Social Edge.
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