by Anthony Marr
June 14, 1996, Friday, mostly
sunny
[12:02 @ Annette and Scott
Tanner�s residence in Qualicum]
The night of the dreaded Big
Confrontation in Port Alberni has come to pass, and it lived up to
expectations and more. And it is only one day in the first week of the
province-wide, 8-week, 12,000-km, 45-city Ban-Bear-Hunting-in-BC
Referendum Initiative road tour. Just a few days ago, in the town hall
meeting in Campbell River, a hunter pointed at my nose and said, �I saw
you on TV this morning. The price on your head just went up $10,000.�
Before
leaving the Tanner�s to drive to Port Alberni yesterday afternoon, I asked
(my assistant) Erica one last time if she would much rather stay behind
than come with me. This is an Option 3 situation � an overt meeting in
hostile territory. The meeting is well pre-publicized in the Alberni
Times, and heavy hunter turn-out is more than likely. I did not want to
have to worry about her safety as well as mine. She said a firm �No�
without hesitation, one even firmer than those before. I respect her for
that.
What
transpired in Port Alberni was a horrific free for all, the �all� being
the 65 hunters in an audience of about 70, all crammed into a room meant
for no more than 30, equipped with just that many chairs. Standing room
only, with wall-to-wall hunters. It was thirty degrees Celsius outside,
and ten degrees warmer in the room sweltering with body heat and smelling
of sweat, beginning with mine. The red hot verbal exchange only added fuel
to the fire inside the oven, with both oven doors jammed solid with
hunters We couldn�t escape if we wanted to. Of the five or six supporters,
at least two or three were so intimidated that they slipped away
unnoticed, leaving my local host Maureen Sager and two or three other
women to hold the bag.
The
hunter group included two or three local hunting-guide-outfitters and a
conservation officer who was openly chummy with the hunters. About
two-thirds were men and one-third were women, the latter attired from
T-shirts and jeans to business suits and high heels, but all with hints of
blood lust in their eyes, especially as they unflinchingly stared in my
direction. No doubt, however subconsciously, they were feeling that
trembling excitement as they sighted their quarry through their
rifle-scopes. Was there an extra-kick for them to have all sixty-five
weapons trained on the same prey?
Their
verbal barrage began right in the middle of the first slide in the
slideshow, and right in the middle of my first sentence. There-after, I
estimate, of every ten sentences I attempted in my presentation, I could
finish maybe two without interruption.
Maureen, an active woman in her
60s, did her best to keep order, but was totally ignored, and at times
assaulted by such threats as, �This guy flies in and out, but you have to
live here. So watch what you�re doing, lady!�
Another jeered, �Not only is this guy from out of town, he is from out of
the country, for God�s sake, and he has the gall to barge in here
and tell us what we can and can�t do in our own backyard!�
An
older man bellowed, �All Chinese immigrants should be charged $100,000 for
the damage done to the Canadian culture, starting with this guy right
here, right now�
Yet
another shouted above the din, �Us western hunters have been conserving
wildlife since before you were born, in China!�
About a third through my
slideshow, I found myself turning off the projector and saying, �Fine. If
you want a debate, we�ll have a debate.� Strangely, this somehow pacified
the proceedings a little bit, since the word �debate� invoked in ones mind
the terms �order� and �rules of engagement�, and if then they spoke out of
turn, they�d be interrupting one another instead of me.
Basically, their message to us, obviously predetermined among themselves,
was �Scrap your campaign, or else�. The milder ones were thoughtful enough
to say, �Change your campaign to strictly anti-poaching but pro-hunting,
and we�ll support you, or else.�
If the
men�s assaults were bad, like punching in the gut, some of the women�s
were worse, like pinching your sensitive zones. One woman in her thirties,
seemingly having come to the meeting right after having dragged a dead
bear into town, said with a killer glare, �What you�re trying to do is to
deprive my children of a great heritage that his forefathers created and
God condoned, and his father and his mother now enjoy!�
Another, also in her thirties, deceptively genteel-looking, said with a
sly smirk, �If you don�t play the game, honey, you don�t make the rules.�
Through the first hour, Erica sat on the sideline. Finally, she could
contain herself no longer, and stood to make a point. Before she could
finish her sentence, as was now the norm, another older man shouted,
�Young lady, you are not old enough to teach me anything. Sit down!� I
pointed at the �honey� woman and said, �I�ve been listening to this
young lady for the last hour. It�s about time you listen to this young
lady here for a change. Go ahead, Erica.� Strangely, the man acquiesced,
and stranger still, the smirk of the �honey� woman changed into a sweet
smile, if only for the moment.
In
contrast to the physical heat which I found hard to endure, I found myself
handling them in a surprisingly relaxed state, matching wits with them
point by point without losing my cool, and in fact enjoying certain
moments of this my first major confrontation with a large group of well
organized hunters. They may be good shots through a gun barrel, but
boy, are they lousy shots through their mouths.
A
hunter hollered, �Who gives you the authority to do what you�re doing?�
�What
do you think of the Chinese tradition of using bear gall bladders for
medicine�
I asked him as if he hadn�t spoken.
�I
think that�s obscene.�
�Should it be banned?�
�Damn
right, it should be banned! And it is banned, by the law, and by God, not
by some freelance environmentalist.�
�I
agree with you on this, sir, but I think for a trophy hunter to kill the
most magnificent creature he, or she,� glancing meaningfully at the
�honey� woman, �can find so that he or she can have its head to hang on
his or her wall is equally obscene, and it, too, should be banned, unless,
like you, I have a double standard.�
�Since
you obviously don�t understand this, darling,� rejoined the �honey� woman,
�I�ll tell you that there is nothing as trophy hunting in this province.
We pack out all the meat. We waste nothing.�
�You
pack out the meat because you are required by law to do so. And this law,
in case you�re not aware, was due not to the hunters, but due to your
despised Bear Watch, which dumped a skinned bear carcass they found in the
bush on to the front steps of the legislature. Before this law, the bear
head and hide are all most bear hunters pack out. Just yesterday, I heard
a hunter complain about having to pack out bear meat.�
�I eat
the meat of everything I kill.�
�Then
may I suggest that you leave the head and hide, and the antlers, behind,
since they are of no nutritional value.�
The
man next to her shouted, �How dare you insult our women, right here in our
town?!�
�Only
for as long as they keep on killing our wildlife, right here in our
country.�
At
another point, when one of them was talking about �ethical hunters�, I
responded with, �If there are ethical hunters, there must be unethical
hunters, then?� I couldn�t resist exaggeratedly sweeping the room with my
eyes. Some dropped theirs involuntarily.
After
an awkward moment of silence on their part, I asked them point blank
whether they had never deliberately broken any rule, never taken anything
on the side, never left any kills unreported, never left any meat behind,
never exceeded their bag limits, never wounded any animal that got away.
�If you have never done any of these, raise your hand,� I challenged them.
Every hand came up without exception, but many after an unmistakable
hesitation. Later, Maureen commented that I had very skillfully made the
hunters obey my command. �It wasn�t by design. It just worked out that
way,� I said truthfully. In retrospect, I can see that anything else I ask
a show of hand for would be disrespectfully ignored.
At
another point, another hunter repeated, �We are the original and true
conservationists of wildlife. You guys are just long-haired,
welfare-collecting social parasites, using us to raise funds with.�
�If it
is so easy to raise funds, even using you, the social parasites wouldn�t
need to be on welfare, would they? Back to your first question, I know
that true conservationists conserve wildlife for its own sake and for the
health of the planet, and false conservationists conserve only so that
they will continue to have something beautiful to kill. Which kind of
conservationist are you?�
I saw some fists clenching, and
some blue veins bulging on red necks, but I�ve gone too far to back down.
�This
guy�s front is to attack the Grizzly bear hunt,� said another hunter,
except this time he is addressing his cohorts, �but in fact, it is an
attack on the entire hunting tradition, establishment and fraternity, from
the top down, and from the foundation up. His real agenda is to stop all
hunting, of all species.�
�For once, you might be right,�
I said. �Killing animals for entertainment is barbaric and morally
bankrupt, no matter what you kill.�
�Are
you calling us �barbarians�? You Chinese people are very good with that, I
hear.�
�My
apologies on behalf of the Chinese people. But no, I did not call you a
�barbarian�, although I do call your so called �sport� �barbaric�, and I
mean it.�
A
woman spoke up, �We don�t kill for entertainment. Hunting is a noble
sport. It is not killing. It is communing with nature.�
�Hunting is not killing? Tell
it to the bear, and the deer, and the moose. Well, they might consider you
not a hunter, but a terrorist, if that makes you feel better. As for
entertainment or not entertainment, may be you should take a look at your
hunting regs, ma�am. The term for your communing with nature is
�Recreational Hunting�. So, fine, you don�t kill for entertainment, but
you kill for recreation. Big difference.�
Take it easy, Anthony. Don�t piss them off too much.
It has became clear to me that
it would be futile for us to try to convert even one of them. Our job here
is to rally the already converted into a coherent fighting force. But in
terms of this evening�s meeting being a work session, it was unproductive
and even counter-productive. The few supporters who showed up either
disappeared or were too intimidated to sign up, at least in the presence
of the hunters.
But
not all is lost. The important thing is that a reporter from the Alberni
Times was present, and from the readers of his article may emerge a
certain number of volunteers who did not attend the meeting, although I
would think that those few who did attend would be the most gung-ho of
them all. And yet, two or three of them, under hunter intimidation, did
slink away part way through the �meeting�. Partly because of the presence
of the journalist, the hunters at least maintained a sense of restraint,
but only in terms of physical violence, at least for as long as the
reporter was around. They seemed determined to give him something dramatic
to report about their nature without resorting to fists or worse, and I
think they did an admirable job in that.
The
meeting did not end until the hunters have spent their fury. Still, they
left the room in a huff, with lethal parting-glares aplenty. Unexpectedly,
the �honey woman� came to me and said quietly, �You have guts. I�ll give
you that much.�
While
packing and cleaning up with our hosts, one of the few women echoed �honey
woman� unknowingly, except that her word was �brave�. Maureen said in
front of the others, �Anthony, now I have full confidence that you can
talk your way out of any situation.�
Well,
debating is one thing. Putting the pedal to the metal is another. While
loading my car, I noticed a truck parked in the shadows on the same side
of the street about half a block back, engine and lights off, but with two
people inside. It was too dark to tell its colour, maybe brown. I didn�t
lead Erica�s attention to it. As I drove off, it did the same. I made one
or two random turns and the truck followed suit, staying about half a
block behind. I looked for a police car but couldn�t find any. I looked
for the police station and had no idea where it was. I reminded myself
that when several Bear Watch women were surrounded and harassed by hunters
in Campbell River, the police supposedly did not respond to their call for
help. Finally, I took the plunge and got on to the highway due east
towards Qualicum, as we had intended to. The truck did too. I could
identify it because its right headlight was brighter than its left, and
its right parking light was out. I stayed within 10 km/h of the speed
limit, and the truck observed the two-second rule, for the time being.
Still too close to town; give it ten k or so, I thought.
Erica
and I talked for a bit, and she surprised me by saying that she could
sympathize with the hunters� viewpoint, and that maybe we should
re-examine our anti-hunting stance. I thought I heard bits and pieces of
this talk yesterday at the Tanners� when she was talking to the reporter.
She admitted that she had been thinking along those lines since almost Day
1. She said that if we dropped anti-hunting and just went for
anti-poaching, namely to press for a ten-fold increase in penalties, we
would get the support of environmentalists and hunters alike, and that we
would certainly succeed. She even went as far as to say that she might
start her own anti-poaching referendum if WCWC rejected her idea. She
acquitted herself by saying that her first concern was the bears, and that
if we won the anti-poaching referendum, lots of bears would be saved,
whereas if we stayed our course against legal hunting as well as poaching,
we would set up the hunters against us and would surely fail and end up
with nothing, and that even if we could succeed, we would force many legal
hunters to become poacher. So, she�s lost it, at least the original and
central principle of the campaign. There suddenly seemed a wall between
the driver�s and passenger�s seats.
I
listened to her with one ear, and kept an eye on the rear view mirror.
Erica reclined her seat and soon fell asleep. The lights in the rear-view
mirror drew closer. I increased my speed. The truck did the same. I slowed
down to see if it would pass. It drew even closer but did not pass. If it
tried, I wouldn�t have let it anyway, not wanting to be blocked; being
able to see its license plate number probably wouldn�t do much good under
those circumstances. I sped up again, and the truck did likewise, and
pulled closer to my bumper the farther we left the town behind. Before
long, it didn�t even bother to keep up a pretense and began tailgating.
Was this just intimidation? Or was it a real attempt to push me off the
highway? I did not test the latter. I�ve been tailgated a thousand times
by highway loonies before, but never quite this tightly, and not by
road-rage hotheads but by a cold-blooded killer.
I
thought again about my options. I had already left the first one behind,
not having used the cell phone while in town to call the police. I tried
the cell phone now, but we were already outside any service area. I
thought about doing a U-turn back to Port Alberni for the police, but the
truck had come too close for me to do that safely. Only one thing left to
do. I had to out-run it. My car, a 1993 Mazda MX6-LS Mystere, is
low-slung, aerodynamic, light and nimble, and, with its sport suspension,
it has a 0.86g lateral-g-force tolerance, whereas that of a truck�s is
less than 0.70g, which means that my car can take a corner much faster
than the truck without losing traction or rolling over. The twisty highway
was an advantage to my car over the truck. So I floored it and took the
curves near the limit. The truck, probably with a big V8, could probably
gain on the straights, but on this highway, its head lights receded,
farther and farther until they finally disappeared behind a curve. Did I
leave them in the dust? Or in the ditch? I smiled at the thought, but kept
the speed up. I tried the cell phone again. Still no service, which
strangely was comforting in that neither could the pursuers call somebody
up ahead to intercept me. Unless some of their buddies called from Port
Alberni, which seemed unlikely. Erica slept through the whole thing. When
she woke up, she complained that I was driving too fast. By then, the glow
of Qualicum was on the horizon. I kept the chase to myself, even from the
Tanners.
Thinking of the chase, which could have turned deadly, and which could
happen again farther down the road, and thinking of those incidences where
environmentalists were actually killed, I pondered the probability of my
survival. Very high, if you could call the 1% non-survival probability low.
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