The Victoria Vegan
Author

Dave Shishkoff, Editor

Browsing
Vegan

Update on The Victoria Vegan

By

Greetings readers, Just a quick update that I’m no longer with Friends of Animals, and this blog and website are currently an independent project. Hopefully we’ll continue with the projects we’re running, like the Greater Victoria Deer Advocates group and Carriage-Free Victoria. Let us know if you have any inspirations for activism! In the meantime, we’ll still be putting on the Victoria Vegan Fest (and a bake sale this Saturday, Apr 26th) which should have a third amazing year! Eat your veggies, Dave Shishkoff, Editor

Keep Reading
By
Activism

Oak Bay Deer Booklet Distribution!

By

  UPDATE: 2nd distribution session on Saturday, March 1st from 12-4pm – come to our table in front of Oak Bay City Hall to get booklets, and select your neighborhood for dropping booklets in mailboxes – we need bodies to complete this project! NEW FACEBOOK EVENT PAGE: https://www.facebook.com/events/248398695332897/ Photos: from our first session in February, where our volunteers gave out 2,500 booklets to north Oak Bay: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=oa.499395750170047&type=1 Media coverage from first session: Video: Living With Deer (Oak Bay News) Co-existence with deer possible, anti-cull group tells Oak Bay (Times Colonist)   This Saturday & Sunday (Feb 8th & 9th), we’ll be distributing the 5,000 Living With Deer booklets we’ve just had printed! We’ll have maps, and you can pick a neighborhood in Oak Bay, or get assigned one, and help ensure every home has one! It’ll be a fun wander around the streets, bring your family and dogs! This will go…

Keep Reading
By
Activism

Oak Bay: Are Deer the Problem, or is it Speeding?

By

On Thursday, January 30th, an elderly man was struck by a vehicle at a crosswalk on Cadboro Bay Rd in Oak Bay, according to this Times Colonist news story. Friends of Animals has been targeting Cadboro Bay Rd for speeding and dangerous driving, but on behalf of deer. According to the CRD Regional Deer Management Strategy collision map, nearly all Oak Bay accidents with deer occur on Cadboro Bay Rd across from the Uplands golf course. We’ve even held a demonstration on the road, encouraging people to slow down, and speeding was still evident. While this accident occurred a few blocks south of the main ‘Deer Accident’ corridor, it’s still indicative of attitudes on this stretch of road – that speeding is somehow okay. This needs to be addressed, for the safety of people and deer. Furthermore, there needs to be more lighting. Something needs to be done about this…

Keep Reading
By
Activism

Oak Bay: Slow Down for Deer!

By

On Friday, December 20th, from 4-5pm, seven other deer activists joined me on Cadboro Bay Road across from the Uplands Golf Course on a frigid, rainy night holding bright signs to persuade drivers to slow down. Our media release can be read here. This section of road is the #1 site for deer fatalities in Oak Bay, according to the CRD Deer Management Strategy Map (see graphic to the right). It’s no coincidence, given the factors that make up this stretch: it’s the only road in Oak Bay with a 50kph speed limit (and many speed here.) The road is poorly lit, and trees along the west side of the road make it hard to see if there are deer, and they can easily step out on the road and get hit. You can see on the map there are almost no other areas that accidents have occurred. This is why…

Keep Reading
By
Activism

ACTION NEEDED: 25 Deer Sentenced to Death in Oak Bay – Write City Hall Now!

By

A deer spotted on Richardson Street. Oak Bay City Hall has announced that they’re planning to exterminate25 deer over the next year (see Times Colonist article here). Killing animals is a brutal and barbaric decision, and is rarely effectivein reducing their numbers long-term. Nature is resilient, and often even moreanimals return due to the upset of their settlement – “nature abhors a vacuum”.The same elements that are attracting deer now remain, and will only continueto draw in more deer.   Additionally, this thinking only institutes a costly andnever-ending bloodbath. What happens in 2015? Another deer kill at $12,500? Andthe year after – another $12,500? How many years along do we overspend theamount it would take to make happy the few who complain? If the money wereinvested in deer-proofing their yards instead, we could all get along.   There are ways to resolve the problems people have withoutkilling, and we must…

Keep Reading
By
Save-A-Turkey Trot

Save-A-Turkey Trot 2013

By

Last Saturday, October 5th was the 4th Annual Save-A-Turkey Trot! It’s a fun 5k walk/trot/run along the scenic, seaside trails at Clover Point. It was a cool, slightly overcast day, and a record number of Trotters gathered around the Purica tent to sign up and help us celebrate and promote an animal-friendly Thanksgiving. This year we welcomed 60 people, including 25 runners! We have lots of great vegan literature to give out, online you can check out our Thanksgiving: A Celebration For All leaflet. Also at the table was helpful info from some of our our event sponsors: Shortly after 11am, we sent out the walkers and their dogs, and at about 11:20, the runners were off!     The course was marked with chalk, and we once again set out our distance markers, with facts about turkeys: It turned out to be a perfect day! While everyone was out,…

Keep Reading
By
Carriages

Fundraiser for New Anti-Carriage Postcard Campaign

By

We’re excited to launch a new campaign to ban the horse-drawn carriages in Victoria! Our new postcard is targeted at City Hall, and asks Mayor Fortin and City Council to ban the horse-drawn carriages. City bylaws have a ban on all animal acts in Victoria, but there are exemptions for dogs and horses. We’re asking City Council to update this, and remove horses from the exemption. Life in the city is neither decent nor safe for horses, who when released, should reside in sanctuaries. Please help educate City Council – pressing them to end this antiquated commercial industry. We hope to raise $400 with our Fundrazr effort to cover costs for printing postcards, other promotional materials and postage. You can view a PDF of our postcard: http://thevictoriavegan.com/foa/files/foa-hdc-postcard-1.pdf NEW! Our poster, to promote the cards, is here: http://thevictoriavegan.com/foa/files/foa-hdc-postcard-poster.pdf Information on our carriage campaign, including our new FAQ leaflet is available here: http://thevictoriavegan.com/foa/ Your donation is appreciated, even…

Keep Reading
By
Other Places

Saving Beavers on the Sunshine Coast!

By

These last two Wednesdays I had the pleasure to join the Fur Bearer Defenders crew in going to the Sunshine Coast to help build and install a few ‘beaver flow devices’ (see Wikipedia entry and description here.) It’s a pretty neat concept: instead of tearing down the beaver dam, or trapping and killing the resident beavers when a dam becomes an inconvenience for humans, flow devices can be installed which maintain the water levels of their ponds, and barely disrupts the beaver family. There are a number of designs and ways to install these devices. In this instance a culvert had been blocked decades ago by sediment build-up (and a pretty impressive amount, as we discovered! About half a meter deep, and a couple meters out from the end of the culvert!) The device prevents culverts from being re-blocked, so water can continue to drain. It’s a pretty simple solution…

Keep Reading
By
Deer

Action: Letters Needed for Oak Bay Deer

By

Action: Letters Needed for Oak Bay Deer   Monday’s Province features a story covering a collision between a cyclist and a deer (see http://www.theprovince.com/life/Urban+deer+population+causes+Victoria+politicians+animal+rights/8714670/story.html ). Oak Bay Mayor Nils Jensen expects their community deer kill plan to work in deterring other deer from entering Oak Bay. One simply needs to ask if the deer even realize there’s a danger? How can others possibly know when one is trapped and killed with a bolt gun? It’s foolish and short-sighted. Killing deer and other steps like hazing and contraception will ultimately fail to reduce numbers. Deer will simply move to other areas, returning when ‘safe’. Many people are excited and enjoy seeing deer, and this should be considered by decision-makers as well. But if we’re collectively unwilling to adapt our lives to living with deer, then we need to take steps in eliminating what attracts them: the veritable buffet we’re offering with careless…

Keep Reading
By
Events

Event Report: Save Our Seals Sprint

By

It was a grey, cool day, one I’m sure seals could appreciate for the ‘Save Our Seals Sprint’ 5km fun walk/run, co-organized by Friends of Animals and OrganicAthlete Victoria. The event is modeled slightly after a ‘zombie run’, where runners are ‘humans’, and out on the course are ‘zombies’. In this case, our runners are seals, and out on the course we had a couple seal ‘clubbers’, who would chase and harass the seals as they were out for a 5 kilometer ‘swim’ around the scenic paths along Dallas Road to raise awareness about the awful seal slaughter on the East Coast that occurs this time of the year each year. We had 7 walkers (thanks for coming out Steph, Sara, Kelly, Donald, Todd, Dee Dee and Linda), and 10 runners (listed below in the results). There were also at least five dogs out as well! Each participant also received…

Keep Reading
By