Editor:
Re: Taking a lead on leg-hold traps, March 14 column.
After reading Andrew Holota’s recent column about an Abbotsford coyote caught in a leg-hold trap – left to suffer for possibly five days while attempting to free itself by chewing off half of its leg, which trapped animals tend to do – the decision not to publish a photograph of this atrocity because it might be offensive to your readers is ludicrous.
Wake up people!
How many of us thought nothing of the war in Vietnam until we saw the now-famous photograph of a young girl running nude on fire, or the student standing in front of the tanks in Tiananmen Square, or the oil-soaked wildlife after the Exxon Valdez spilled its guts?
Those pictures changed the world. They brought home the atrocities, and we were touched enough to speak out and demand change.
Today there is a gun war being fought just south of our borders. More than a million people have been shot and killed in this seemingly civilized country since the death of John Lennon, and one father from Sandy Hook is willing to have his son’s photo published if it will stop the selling of the automatic weapons that took the life of his six-year-old.
Every day, animals are abused and the perpetrators who walk among us walk free. Perhaps if the horrific cruelty was shown to the public, those pictures would do more than speak a thousand words.
They would speak volumes, and we would demand change.
Dee Walmsley, Surrey