Canada's Heinous Seal Slaughter Put Into Perspective

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Canada's Heinous Seal Slaughter Put Into Perspective

 

 

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http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/issuesideas/story.html?id=a37b5349-b145-\

43aa-ada6-a892dfeb1d08

 

 

Matthew Scully, National Post

Published: Monday, February 13, 2006

 

Forming right now inside their mothers, seal pups will

soon fill the ice floes off Newfoundland and Labrador.

Then comes one of their very first sights on this

Earth -- the swarms of men bearing clubs, hooks, guns,

and knives. Welcome to the world.

 

Nature has its own ruthless ways, as those men like to

remind us, and makes no special allowance for the

young and helpless. But this annual killing binge is

not of nature's design, and there has always been

something uniquely abhorrent in the spectacle.

 

If we could understand what possesses people to do

such things, and do it all with such smug

self-assurance, the insight would have relevance far

beyond Atlantic Canada. Their professed reasons - the

marginal economic benefits of the hunt, the protection

of an ancient " way of life, " etc. - have never really

explained it. When you've dispensed with all their

excuse-making, it becomes clear we are dealing here

with some deep and implacable force.

 

Cruelty is the endpoint of greed and other vices, and

rarely done for its own sake. Yet in every age and

every place, there is a certain type of man who

glories in violence -- only more when the victims are

helpless and innocent. There is " a cruelty that is

fed, not weakened, by tears, " as a long-ago

philosopher observed. Whether this malevolence directs

itself at humans or at animals, it all comes from the

same rot, the same dark and unreachable place in the

human heart.

 

I was struck last year by a letter to this paper from

one seal-pup slaughterer who took offense at my use of

" innocence. " The word springs naturally enough to mind

when one is attempting to describe newborn mammals

left defenseless on the ice floes that are their

nursery, creatures so new to the world they cannot

swim and can barely crawl. But you can understand why

someone who clubs, shoots, or skins alive hundreds of

such creatures in an afternoon would find the term

uncomfortable.

 

Twenty or so centuries' worth of Western literature

and religious allusion has looked to young animals as

the very embodiments of vulnerability and innocence,

as in the Lamb who suffered for the sins of the world.

And there is no reason to shy from plain moral

language here as well. That same tradition left us

with an abundance of other ideas such as humility

before Creation, the moral restraint of the strong

toward the weak, and the spirit of mercy that extends

even to humble animals - ideas readily grasped by all

except the perverse hard of heart.

 

There is a passage in The Heart of Darkness that has a

familiar ring. If you substitute " sealskin " for

" ivory, " Joseph Conrad could be reporting directly

from the ice floes: " The word ivory rang in the air,

was whispered and sighed. A taint of imbecile rapacity

blew threw it all, like a whiff from some corpse ...

and outside, the silent wilderness surrounding this

cleared speck of the earth struck me as something

great and invisible, like evil or truth, waiting

patiently for the passing away of this fantastic

invasion. "

 

A harsh but truthful portrait of the type -- of men

who think that every last thing on Earth is there for

the taking, and traipse about as if their only

business in this world is to allocate death.

 

 

More than anything else, what really amazes me about

the seal-pup slaughter is the stubborn pridefulness of

it: Let all the world think they are callous fools.

Let nation after nation slam the doors on their stolen

products, as Greenland, Denmark, and Italy have done

in recent days. Let a worldwide boycott of Canadian

fishery products destroy the markets and jobs of other

people. For these folks, all of this is only more

reason to set course toward the seal nurseries.

 

They talk a lot about traditional values and the like,

as opposed to modern, " urban " values, and you wonder

how many of these characters still like to think of

themselves as good Christian men. Maybe by now, as I

am told by witnesses to the mayhem, the pretenses have

all pretty well fallen away. We can be certain, in any

case, that even when the cameras are barred and the

protesters kept away, no cruelty goes unrecorded, and

no forsaken creature's whimper is beyond His hearing.

If the Good Shepherd does indeed watch over those

scenes, I would not want to be wearing their bloody

boots.

 

Recall, too, that all of this cruelty is subsidized,

propped up by millions of dollars a year from Canada's

taxpayers. Yet all arguments were lost last time

around on Prime Minister Paul Martin. Even to the very

end, he could be heard pandering in Atlantic Canada

during last month's election with pledges to " save the

seal hunt. "

 

So let it be a Conservative government that finally

brings the wretched business to an end. It would be a

fitting start for Prime Minister Stephen Harper, a

courageous and merciful exercise of his new powers.

 

And to a watching world, no decision of his could more

dramatically demonstrate that corrupt old ways will no

longer be tolerated, and a new day has truly arrived

in Ottawa.

© National Post 2006