It’s no surprise to those who know me that I was not a fan of Stephen Harper’s policies during the nine years he was Prime Minister (PM) of Canada. I popped a cork or two when he went down to defeat on November 4, 2015. He was affable enough, but was anti-science and anti-environment; a right-winger to a degree extreme in our politics, and prone to rid government of employees who dared to challenge him.
But, that is not what this is about.
It was known that Stephen Harper’s wife, Laureen, liked cats. That, alone, made me like her, although we’ve never met and doubtlessly never will. But, in the best (small “c”) conservative tradition of the dutiful housewife, she maintained a low profile, attending a cat film festival and other equally innocuously bland and politically safe events in defense of homeless cats and kittens. There are many outrages against animals in Canada, against which she might have spoken, including antiquated Federal animal protection laws. But, it would be hard to do so and not run afoul of the PM’s policies, and his core supporters.
Until now.
The Harpers live in Alberta, next door to British Columbia, which, as I reported here last week, just brought an abrupt end to hunting grizzly bears by all but First Nations hunters exercising treaty rights. Good. But, mountain lions (AKA cougars or pumas), can still legally be hunted, which is exactly what an apparently high-profile Albertan by the name of Steve Ecklund has done. Ecklund hosts “The Edge,” a TV show devoted to huntin’ and trappin’ and probably fishin’ by baseball-cap-wearing guys in camo… you know the type.
Ol’ Steve bagged himself a mountain lion and then posted a photo of himself online with the beautiful animal reduced to carrion in the interest of whatever joy Ecklund and his ilk derive from killing something so utterly magnificent.
The outcry was loud and immediate. Even as we humans increasingly destroy the natural world all around us, we have decreasing taste for this sort of barbarousness. It was too much for Laureen Harper. “What a creep,” she opined on Facebook. “Chasing cougars with dogs until they are exhausted then shooting a scared, cornered and tired animal. Must be compensating for something…”
Oh oh. Amid a swirl of stories of powerful male celebrities allegedly or actually abusing women, often with remarks crudely or negatively about female anatomy, Mrs. Harper was quite rightly criticized for her own sexist remark. But, I can’t help but sympathize with her grappling to understand why anyone could take pleasure from killing our superb wildlife. It’s not something that normal people want to do, and certainly she gained widespread support for her negative view of Ecklund’s idea of fun on the mountainside. She got the “creep” part correct.
Keep Wildlife in the Wild,
Barry