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Dave Shishkoff, Editor

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On Wednesday, October 15th I attended the Wildlife Co-Existence Event organized by the Vegan Congress at Emily Carr University in Vancouver. I was flattered to be included (with a vastly more knowledgeable panel) featuring Dan Straker,  Urban Wildlife Coordinator of the Stanley Park Ecology Society, Dr. Sara Dubois, Chief Scientific Officer from the BC SPCA and WildARC, and Marcy Potter from the Association for the Protection of Fur-Bearing Animals. Dan spoke about coyotes in Vancouver (did you know they’re relatively new to the Vancouver area, and there are about 3,000 living in Greater Vancouver? Oh, and none on Vancouver Island!), Sara focused on the problems with feeding wildlife, and offered a great sentiment: feeding wildlife ought to have the same stigma as polluting – it’s harmful, and just not cool or acceptable. Marcy spoke primarily about APFA’s programs on beavers, which I’ve also had the pleasure of helping with. (See post…

Just a quick update for our friends on Facebook, we now have our own page! Be sure to ‘Like’ us, you can already see that news stories, events and more are posted regularly! We’ll still post bigger features here of course, but for smaller updates, join us over there:https://www.facebook.com/TheVictoriaVegan (Our large discussion group is still there as well, see my signature below for the link to join our community!) Dave Shishkoff, Editor www.TheVictoriaVegan.com Facebook: /groups/TheVictoriaVegan

Now that I’m in Vancouver (just for a couple years – yuck, I miss Victoria!), I’m involving myself in some of the local activism. A current urgency is the dealings with the Vancouver Aquarium. They have plans to expand their facility, and opposition has increased significantly since the release of the documentary Blackfish, campaigns and groups like No Whales in Captivity have really picked up steam, including a protest I attended on May 24th that attracted dozens of activists outside the front gate of the Vancouver Aquarium: The Vancouver Parks Board oversees aspects of the Vancouver Aquarium, including their plans for expansion, and on Saturday, June 26th held a public forum for aquarium representatives to present their case to continue, as well as hear from public Delegates, initially given 5 minutes each.   133 people signed up to present, which was unexpected by the Parks Board. We were informed that…

A recent National Geographic Magazine features food, and feeding the predicted 9 billion people that are expected to be on planet Earth for 2050. While lacking in conviction, Jonathan Foley does suggest eating less meat and animal products. Like the majority of writers wishing to remain popular, he doesn’t push for eliminating what is a cruel, unnecessary and inefficient choice for food. It would be helpful for him to remind us that no human needs to consume animal products; and this message would go a long way to helping feed people, reduce greenhouse emissions and ecological destruction, and curb exploitative attitudes. Here is an important and revealing graphic from the article; it’s an impactful revelation of what we’re doing to the planet with livestock: From National Geographic. According to this, 46.5% of the world’s land remains undeveloped – a bit reassuring as I expected a much smaller percentage. This means…

Credit: CHEK News footage. FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASEAccidentRenews Call for Horse Carriage Ban Victoria, BC – May 23,2014 – After confirmed reports of a carriage horse throwing andinjuring its driver and colliding with two cars and a motorcycle thisevening, local activist group Carriage-Free Victoria is renewing their call oncouncil to ban this industry. Victoria-based animal activist DaveShishkoff has been campaigning against Victoria’s horse carriage trade for over8 years. He believes horse drawn carriages are cruel, out-dated and dangerous.“Tonight was extremely unfortunate, but it also was 100% preventable. Withtourist season fast approaching, traffic levels are only going to increase. Citycouncil needs to take immediate action and pass a bylaw to prohibit horse-drawncarriages.” Over the next few weeks, Shishkoff vows to expand hiscampaign to ban the horse drawn carriages in Victoria. “Social media, protestsand filling City Council’s mailboxes with signed postcards from residents urgingcouncil to ban the horses will be priority number one. There are clearly…

Back on April 23rd, I participated in the Open Cinema ‘Connecting The Docs’ feature screening of Canadian documentary The Ghosts in Our Machine, which tracks photographer Jo-Anne McArthur as she investigates a fur farm, livestock farms, and animal laboratories and the animals used in these exploitative industries. The event itself had a big social media tie-in, and our volunteers Mike N and Diana H were representing us (the Victoria Vegan Fest and The Victoria Vegan) on Facebook and Twitter respectively. I was also active on social media during showing, and joined the discussion panel afterwards along with Lesley Fox of the Association for the Protection of Fur-Bearing Animals, and Maneesha Deckha, UVic Associate Professor, Faculty of Law. It was a great experience, lots of people I haven’t met before attended the film and participated in the discussion afterwards, discussing issues from the film as well as Canadian and local animal issues.…

On Thursday, May 1st, I joined Adrian Nelson from the Association for the Protection of Fur-Bearing Animals (APFA) on a trip to a rural Langley residence that was getting visits from beavers. You can see in the photo above this beaver’s been busy! He’d already munched on a few trees before. Instead of trapping the beavers, the homeowner looked into coexistence options, and found APFA. A few weeks earlier, on his initial visit and consultation, Adrian wrapped what was remaining of this tree and set a future date to complete the work on the yard. Returning on this sunny, spring day, there were a few dozen more trees along the stream which we also ‘wrapped’. You may have already read our previous posting on beavers when we joined APFA in building a beaver deceiver on the Sunshine Coast last summer. Flooding wasn’t an issue in this case; Adrian determined this…

A few days ago, the Oak Bay News published a letter from Nils Jensen & the Oak Bay Council on the deer. (Original PDF can be found here, a bit better formatting, from the City of Oak Bay website.) It’s great they’re increasing feeding fines and allowing taller fences (there was a 6′ height restriction, which is insufficient from keeping our bounding buddies out.) And they’re mirroring our efforts by sending out two new CRD deer leaflets (which we link to on our Greater Victoria Deer Advocates site) in this week’s Oak Bay News. Education is key to this issue. An excerpt from our Living With Deer booklet. In the letter, Mayor Jensen writes “[in] the absence of any natural predation, the deer population has increased dramatically, and as a consequence, so are the incidents of deer/human conflict on the rise.” While we know there is a raise in conflict, it’s…

Saturday, April 26th was the 5th year we’ve participated in the World Wide Vegan Bake Sale Day event, which is a grass roots international initiative encouraging vegan bake sales around the world to raise funds for vegan and animal activism. The Victoria Vegan Fest was our fundraiser target once again, and if you’re not familiar it’s a big celebration and promotion of the vegan lifestyle coming up on Canada Day (July 1st) in Market Square (downtown Victoria)! This year’s venue was Green Cuisine once again, and we’re very fortunate and grateful to have their support. We had many contributors donate over 20 different sweets; a wide variety of goodies for just about any taste! We had the standards like cupcakes and brownies, a wide selection of cookies and other goodies, and some surprises like toffees, caramels, and vanilla rooibos fig newtons (which were quite possibly the author’s top choice!) All were…

Hello readers! Earlier today I spotted this tweet from Lori, an article on Bryan Adams, who’s sometimes described as vegan, playing at the Calgary Stampede. #calgarystampede #AnimalCruelty @bryanadams so disappointed 🙁 #notvegan— Lori Wheeler (@lorijwheeler) April 25, 2014     Disappointing to say the least, the rodeo is a monstrous event, torturing hundreds of animals for the entertainment of others. Not only is this a rodeo, but it’s some kind of burger event. Oddly, Adams is also in the news about his upcoming show in Newfoundland, who are calling him a hypocrite for playing there while they’re out on the ice slaughtering seals. (Although it’d be fine if it was another time of the year?) To this, Adams is quoted as saying: Last time I checked, it was OK in this country to have an opinion on what goes on in the world. Either way, I’m coming to Newfoundland for…