Pessimist give the world's tigers 5 years. Realists, 10.
They're the kind of numbers that make you want to quietly despair, to
give up, to flip the channel and think about something more pleasant.
Melrose Place maybe, or Roseanne. Anthony Marr, however, whether from a
sense of conceit, ignorance, or a staggering sense of confidence, saw
nothing impossible in the task of bringing the tiger back from the
brink...
... To highlight the extent of Vancouver's tiger trade, Marr kicked off
a media blitz in January 1996. Local journalists were invited on an
endangered species tour through Chinatown's apothecaries. The tour began
in the low-ceilinged warren that serves as Western Canada Wilderness
Committee's headquarters. Marr upended his briefcase, spilling out 15-20
boxes of Chinese patent medicines: tiger plasters, tiger pills,
tiger-based medicaments for rheumatism, tired blood, soft bones, and
sexual impotence, all of them purchased in shops in Vancouver's Chinatown.
Pointing to the ingredients lists on the diverse packages, Marr picked out
the symbols, words, and phrases that in Latin, English and Chinese spelled
out �tiger bone�.
The next part of the tour was a trip along Pender, Main and Keefer
Streets, with Marr indicating here and there the shops and apothecaries
dealing in tiger medicinals and inviting journalists to go in and check
the shelves for themselves. Six shops out of 10 stocked a variety of
boxes, cartons and bottles labeled with some variation of the word Os
Tigris - tiger bone.
The media loved it. Marr made it on to TV news both locally and
nationally, and stories appeared in city magazines and community papers.
He used his pulpit to heap scorn upon Canadian wildlife regulations.
�Canada's wildlife laws could use an aphrodisiac,' Marr said, �because
right now, they're totally impotent.� He was equally hard-hitting in his
presentations to Chinese community groups and at Eastside Vancouver high
schools. Traditional Chinese medicine's use of parts of animals like
tigers and rhinos, Marr said, and the cutting of many urban trees for that
matter, were based on nothing but pure superstition. That superstition was
destroying a magnificent species. The fact that the practice was tolerated
by the Chinese-Canadian community only blackened their reputation in
mainstream Canadian society.
Environmentalists heaved a sigh of relief. Here was someone tackling a
problem they had long known about but dared not touch. �It's great that
it's a Chinese person doing the work he's doing.� said Nathalie Chalifour,
World Wildlife Fund Canada's tiger expert, �because when it's a person
like me doing it, well, I'm white; I'm more likely to be accused to being
racist, which is really unfortunate, but it does happen.�
Vancouver's Chinese media were as quick to jump on the story as their
English counterparts. Marr's campaign was covered by both the Ming Pao and
the Sing Tao newspapers, and he appeared on several Chinese language radio
programs. According to Ming Pao columnist and CJVB radio host Gabriel Yiu,
the Chinese community's reaction to Marr's campaign was mixed. His
straight talk on superstition did offend some, but there was also those
who took pride in the fact that a Chinese Canadian was working on
environmental concerns. �For a long period of time when people are talking
about monster homes, tree cutting, killing wild animals for some of their
body parts,� Yiu said, �people do have the impression that the Chinese
community is the cause of that. I think the work Anthony did set a very
good example that we do have people in the Chinese community who are
concerned about these issues.�...
According to Vancouver city councilor Don Lee, Marr's effectiveness was
limited... �I don't know Anthony Marr that well. The Chinese Community
doesn't know him well at all,� Lee said. �We don't know where he comes
from. We don't know why he's doing all this.� As it turns out, those are
two of the most interesting questions that could be asked about Anthony
Marr.
Born in February 1944, in southern China, Anthony Seeu-Sung Marr fled
to Hong Kong along with the rest of his family shortly after the Communist
revolution. Family legend has Marr's father burning the deeds of the
family's extensive land-holdings for a moment's warmth during the first
refugee winter...
(In 1965), Marr came to Canada to study science at the University of
Manitoba... At the same time, his relationship with a Hong Kong girl fell
to bits when she dropped him on orders from her parents. Marr has never
forgiven Chinese culture for the snub. �As a result of that incident, I
have never dated a Chinese girl again,� Marr said. It's a decision that
isolated him somewhat from the Chinese community, but, according to Marr,
it also allowed him to integrate more fully into Canadian society than
other Chinese immigrants of his generation.
In 1966, Marr switched over to the physics department of the University
of British Columbia. His summers he spent in the bush in northern Manitoba
and British Columbia, working as a geologist's assistant. It was work that
can only be idealized by someone who has never done it. Marr said, �The
student is the geologist's personal servant - more like slave, considering
the pay, which was only $280 per month. I made and carried his lunch, and
every few feet, the geologist would pick up a rock sample about twice the
size of my fist and drop it into my knapsack. I had to carry that
ever-heavier thing all day, wading into swamps that would sometimes come
up to my chest or higher. Your shirt would be black with flies and
mosquitoes. There could be a bear behind every tree. It was brutal, but
also absolutely beautiful. And this was how I bonded with nature.�
After he graduated with a B.Sc. in 1970, Marr took a job as a live-in
house-father for emotionally disturbed kids, then a career in real estate.
He said he had a heavy student loan to pay off. One senses he also had a
need to gain acceptance among the Vancouver business community. �I made
rookie of the year, then Gold Club, Diamond Club, all that,� Marr said. �I
bought a couple of horses - hunters-jumpers - and got involved with the
high social elite you see down in Southlands.� Snap shots from the time
show a short-haired Marr in boots and riding breeches, sitting atop a bay
Thoroughbred gelding.
The real estate phased continued for several years. Marr bought a small
acreage in the suburbs. He dated but never married. �The work first became
routine, then boring, then irksome, then unbearable. I was still good at
it, but the initial challenge was gone,� he said.
About this time, things took a strange turn. Whether from boredom, a
need to be alone, or perhaps simple a desire to see the sights, he left
his job and set off on a solo journey in East Africa, primarily in the
Kilimanjaro, Serengeti, Ngorongoro Crater and Olduvai Gorge region of
Tanzania. At some point during that three month sojourn, something
happened that changed the whole focus of Marr's life. �If you want to be
dramatic, you could say it came to me all at once in a blinding flash
while I was camping on the savannah, but really, it developed very
gradually.� What Marr was catching sight of was a completely new
philosophical system, one that in Marr's view is comprehensive enough to
explain the organization and development of life, society and the Cosmos
itself.
The full tenet of this system came to him in dribs and drabs over a
period of many months during and after his return. Marr collected each of
these thoughts on a file card - more than 1,000 of them by the end - and
worked at ordering, arranging, and reordering them, trying to assemble his
thoughts into a coherent whole. The process took years. Marr's live-in
girlfriend walked out. �I really shouldn't be living with someone at that
point," Marr said. �I had to have my own room. I had to have a �DO NOT
DISTURB� sign on the door, and if anybody as much as knocked, my tenuous
mental construct would fall down like a house of cards.� The net result of
his shuffling and reshuffling, typing and retyping, was a manuscript more
than 800 pages in length, describing a new and comprehensive philosophical
and phenomenological system. Marr christened it OMNI-SCIENCE....
At first glance, OMNI-SCIENCE bears some resemblance to the ideas of
the Jesuit philosopher-scientist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. Both suggest
that the development of humanity must logically proceed in a converging
upward spiral, which Marr calls Integrative Transcendence, towards
ever-superior levels of organization and unity. Marr, however, is quick to
point out how his system differs from those of other western philosophers.
�No philosophical or religious system I�ve encountered is cosmic enough,�
said Marr. �They're too anthropocentric, too narrowly focused.� Marr's
system purportedly incorporates everything - inorganic and organic -
throughout the Universe, from the Big Bang to whatever end, all
participating in the multi-levelled Integrative Transcendence spiral
towards universal life and consciousness.
Hogwash? Possibly. Even Marr himself had doubts (about the
acceptability of his system in the eyes of high academia). In the late
80s, Marr tossed both manuscript and portable type-writer into his little
green Toyota Celica and set off down the West Coast to test his system
with the best academic minds he could find. One of the stops was the
University of California at Berkeley, and another was Stanford. �This was
when my sales training paid off. When I got to town, the first thing I'd
do was find a course catalog and look up the professors who were teaching
the courses I liked. Back in my hotel room, I'd crank out a dozen or so
letters. �Dear Prof. so and so, I have a matter of philosophical interest
that I'd like to discuss with you. The time required would be about two
hours...� Then I'd go back to campus and put the letters into the
professors� cubbyholes. The next day, I'd call and ask for an appointment.
We'd talk for two hours, and at the end, I'd ask for a letter of
critique.�
The good professors' reactions to this approach can be discerned from
the letter written by William Kimbel, president of the Institute of Human
Origins at Berkeley: �Owing to the large number of half-baked theories on
cosmology currently in circulation, I admit that I faced the prospect of
my meeting with Mr. Marr with some trepidation. From the outset, however,
it was clear that Mr. Marr is no amateur populariser. On the contrary, he
is a dedicated scholar whose theories, I believe, make a profound
contribution to the fundamental definition of humankind in relation to the
broader universe� implications of great depth and breadth for the future
course of human actions� too important to ignore.�
Marr received similarly effusive letters from other professors at
Berkeley, Stanford, and the Universities of Oregon, Washington and British
Columbia...
Heady stuff. Yet, more than a decade later, the manuscript remains
unpublished. Professor Braxton Alfred of Anthropology, UBC, said he even
offered to help find a publisher, but Marr said his manuscript was not yet
ready for publication. He did leave a copy of the then manuscript behind
after his presentation, but due to professional pressures, Alfred didn't
get around to looking at it until recently. Reading it now, Alfred said,
only increases his respect for Marr. It also sheds light on what it was
that set him on his current crusade.
�The presentation he gave me was hard science, very thoroughly
presented. He was right on the numbers with everything in the
presentation. I presumed likewise in these documents,� Alfred said,
referring to the OMNI-SCIENCE manuscript, �but these are quite a different
thing. That man had a revelation in Africa. There's no other way to
characterize it. It's clear that he was experiencing some sort of
emotional trauma, and something touched him, and what these documents
record are the revealed truth of that contact.�
According to the manuscript, Alfred said, Marr had reached a crisis and
was sitting in the snows of Kilimanjaro, pointing a gun at his head.
Then, as stated in Marr's text: �The sun went down, the moon came up,
and more than my hand had begun trembling. It was then that this
mysterious source of wisdom address me for the first time: �I am seeking a
miracle worker, to work a miracle upon this Earth, on my behalf. Since you
seem to have no further use of this body of yours, which seems to be in
prime condition, will you surrender it to me?��
�That's when the entity, or whatever it is, first made contact with him,�
Alfred said, �but, apparently, the contact continues. It seems that there
is no end to it. I would not be surprised if he has conversations with
this entity still.�
Having read the manuscript, Alfred said he is no longer puzzled by
Marr's decision to turn away from the task of perfecting his book to work
on behalf of endangered species. �It was in Africa that this naturism
force first came to the fore...� The manuscript also gives some indication
of the source of Marr's willingness to take on seemingly hopeless causes.
�He clearly came to a crisis point in his life,� Alfred said, �and the
heavens opened up and truth was revealed, and he's been going strong
eversince.�
Wherever his confidence came stems from, when the ��19th-century
scholar' decided to prove himself as an environmental saviour, he
displayed a thoroughly 19th century sense of ambition...
� Although some conservationists predict the tiger will be extinct in five
years, Anthony Marr is convinced he can reverse the prophecy�
� China imported the equivalent of 400 grown tigers and exported 27
million tiger derivative products from 1990 to 1993� About 39,000
individual tiger containing products were seized in BC in 1996, including
everything from medicinals to tiger claws�
A Vancouver branch of Asian Conservation Awareness Program is planning
to begin an ad blitz this June, timed to coincide with the dragon-boat
festival. Ironically, Marr will likely not be invited to participate.
According to ACAP's Vancouver organizer Ling Zheng, Marr's confrontational
style doesn't fit in with ACAP's approach, which hinges on establishing
partnerships with the Chinese community groups and obtaining sponsorship
from prominent corporations. �We're trying to reach out to the Chinese
community, so we try not to use his name,� Zheng said. �If we mention
Anthony Marr, I will probably not get any help from organizations like
SUCCESS or the Chinese Cultural Centre. He can be quite harsh towards
certain Chinese people, and I've even heard that in the Chinese community
he's considered like a traitor.�
Whether that�s true or not, Marr has shifted his efforts from reducing
consumption into preserving tiger habitat. With the aid of a $75,000 grant
from the Canadian International Development Agency, Marr has gone to India
to work towards protecting two Indian tiger reserves from encroachment and
poaching by local villagers. The plan is to take a traveling multi-media
show to villages around the tiger reserves and convince the villagers that
the tiger is worth more to them alive than dead.
�Do you think these women enjoy walking five miles every day into the
bush to collect a bunch of twigs and carry it back to the village on top
of their heads? They do it because they have no choice,� Marr said. �If we
give them a choice and say, Look, we�re going to develop ecotourism, we�re
going to organize tourist groups to come to your village, and maybe you
can develop some native products to sell to them� Wouldn�t you rather stay
at home and weave baskets with your kids than walk five miles to haul
water?� Other conservationists from other groups have made these arguments
before, often with little success, but with characteristic confidence,
Marr is convinced he will succeed.