Regan did not have to go out that day, Friday, June 19. The government had issued a heat alert for here in southern Ontario – the dangers of heat and humidity augmented by the presence of COVID-19. There is social unrest everywhere. It was safest, for those of us who had the ability to do so, to putter about our homes in air-conditioned comfort. Regan certainly did not have to go out that day, the last day of her life – her final hours spent, to the last moment, doing what she did in opposition to oppression, abuse, and cruelty.
I stayed in my air conditioned home that Friday morning. When I saw on my computer screen that an “animal activist” had been killed, it was only a brief note, few details except that it was in Burlington. Burlington, Vermont, I desperately hoped. Burlington, West Virginia, maybe? But, the source was CTV, a Canadian news outlet, and I suddenly became sickly fearful. I quickly reposted to several animal protection community lists I’m on, doing two things I had never before in the subject line: prefaced it with “TRAGEDY” and retyped the headline, also in upper case. I pushed send and then picked up the phone while starting an internet search. Who was it? Statistical probabilities favored it being no one I knew. Then, the call came. It was a mutual friend who confirmed it: “It was Regan.”
Millions did stay cool, enjoying leisure, that Friday, and many would, that night, dine on ribs, or, chops or ham, it being unthinkable not to. For those people to be able to do that, other creatures must suffer pain, fear, and premature death, even though they also wanted to live and also had the ability to feel fear and pain. Vast numbers of pigs were moved out of horrific, noisy, dirty confines, absent the feel of grass, sun, or rain through their short, severely confined lives, and were shipped, whatever the weather, with assembly-line efficiency, jammed into train cars and trucks, sent to places where they would be lined up and, one by one, killed. More than 45,000 pigs were slaughtered at the one plant that was Regan’s destination when she left home that hot Friday morning.
And, what was Regan going to do? She was trying to relieve the terrible suffering endured by these pigs. She wanted to convince everyone she talked to that a healthy life could be lived without imposing suffering on millions of farmed animals by changing to a plant-based diet.
Regan cared. Regan was doing what she had done before over the last four years; she was going off to again bear witness, to acknowledge at some level that these beings also had interests – could also suffer. And, she sought to ease their suffering, as did a handful of other activists present, with something we all take for granted, even on a blazing hot day, until we don’t have it: water. She was just giving them water. And, in that simple gesture, she showed that we should not be indifferent to suffering. Regan cared.
As I understand, the protocol, agreed upon by the slaughterhouse, was for each truck to stop on public property at the gates to the slaughterhouse, with one activist standing in front of the vehicle, the other giving water to those pigs still alive and well enough to come to the small openings in the truck. Then, the two activists would change places. Signs are carried in hope that a passing motorist or better yet, media, might take notice, but there is no effort to judge those who do not understand or share the values of the demonstrators. The media’s interest, barring an “incident,” is always elsewhere.
I first met Regan about 40 years ago. She was as stunning as a fashion model, which, in fact she was. She was in the process of transitioning to running her own modelling agency. She took pride in her appearance, graced by nature but augmented by an inherent sense of style. Her throaty voice and statuesque looks alone meant that she was a strong presence in any crowd, and all the more so when she spoke, always with gentle wit and sharply honed insight. Her pride was beautifully balanced by her sense of humor, often self-deprecating, and the grace of her movements, her interest in others, and her efficiency. She was well-educated, smart, and hard working. She got things done.
She helped Animal Alliance of Canada in its early days in many ways, perhaps most notably by producing a cruelty-free fashion show fundraiser. She went on to join the staff of the Kindness Club, an elite charity founded by J. Cameron Watson (1921 – 2004), which sent her and her rescued dog into grades from junior kindergarten to grade 8 to teach the kids the principles of kindness, at no charge to school boards. Some boards were at first afraid she would proselytize and make children feel guilty for such common practices as eating meat or wearing fur, but once they saw her approach – non-judgmental, interactive, upbeat, and encouraging – she was welcomed back. She was involved in a sanctuary for donkeys for many years and kept many different rescued animals throughout her life, with full family support and encouragement. She was a strong mentor to others, but never seemed to seek the limelight, never moved in the direction of the recognition she so deserved.
Although she was about 12 years my junior, Regan and I, and so many others, were part of a group from the Greater Toronto Area who were tired of the acceptance of the idea that animals are ours to treat as we will, so long as their suffering was traditional, or in the interest of fun or profit. Only the most egregious cruelty could be punished under law, and then only if fully documented. Animals were, and still are, things, as defined in law.
We met socially, we held meetings, attended conferences, held demonstrations, sought out strategies and techniques and vetted philosophical arguments, poured over scientific literature, shared the jokes and the odd illicit joint, and, so very often, we had fun. Those were days of youth, surety, optimism, exploration, and energy. Regan and I shared secrets and confided in each other, she becoming a needed sisterly presence for me in a life devoid of sisters, a young mentor to me in my own time of psychological need, and a guide into social mores I sometimes grasped only with difficulty. When she moved so far away, we kept in touch by phone. She was a Facebook person who eschewed email while I work with emails, being inept with Facebook. Happily, we had the telephone as common ground and often had long, wonderful talks where we might decide how best to save the world, or parts of it at any rate.
It was some four years ago that Regan sometimes joined demonstrations of what is called the Save movement, specifically Toronto Pig Save. She cared about all animals but she was more involved with the plight of domestic farm animals while I am a naturalist, mostly involved with wildlife. Then, along came the present government, not only as bad as the previous one, but worse. It regurgitated Bill 156, an “ag-gag” bill which not only makes it all the more difficult to shine the light of transparency on how animals may be abused in agriculture, but leads to an egregious degree of punishment against those who try.
It is natural, in writing about a life cut short, to focus on the last pages of the final chapter and what led to the final moments. But, Regan was the sum of a richly fulfilled and joyously lived life of decency, goodness, and productivity, always helping others. As fellow activist, Anita Krajnc, said, “She supported Black Lives Matter, Indigenous rights, and she was an intersectional vegan who understood the importance of equality in terms of racial justice and in terms of animal equality.”
Equality in what? Well, for starters, the ability to suffer stress, pain, and fear. That farmed animals too often suffer has been exposed of late by a series of revealing video footage and other materials often obtained surreptitiously by various groups.
The truth about what happens to farmed animals is now more difficult to expose than before, because of the passage, two days before Regan’s last moments feeling the sun on her skin, of Bill 156 by the Ontario provincial government.
But, all Regan wanted to do was bear witness, a practice learned from the Quakers, to give water to parched, panting animals soon to die, to hold up a sign, to exercise what democracies around the world see as a fundamental right – to advocate, peacefully, on behalf of others. She never hid cameras, or wore a press pass, or broke or entered windowless buildings, or wrote exposés, but even her activity, peaceful, designed to ease suffering, will now be illegal.
Regan did not have to go out on that hot, Friday morning. But, she did, for a reason I believe an anonymous child, a victim of the Terezin Concentration Camp, who wrote in a poem in 1941, would fully understand:
He doesn’t know the world at all
Who stays in his nest and doesn’t go out.
He doesn’t know what birds know best
Nor what I want to sing about,
That the world is full of loveliness.
When dewdrops sparkle in the grass
And earth’s aflood with morning light,
A bird sings upon a bush
To greet the dawning after night.
Then I know how fine it is to live.
Hey, try to open up your heart
To beauty; go to the woods someday
And weave a wreath of memory there.
Then if the tears obscure your way
You’ll know how wonderful it is
To be alive.
There are things we would rather not know, rather not see, but some go out to bear witness, as did my dear, lovely, sadly missed friend, Regan Russell, on a hot morning in June, never to return. May she take earned rest and eternal peace from all that is small-minded, mean-spirited, and cruel.
Keep Wildlife in the Wild,
Barry
