Over the decades Canada has received grief internationally because of Canadian participation in the seal hunt. But on this day in 1978, during one of his famous radio broadcasts, past Governor of California (and future President) Ronald Reagan came to Canada’s defence.
“Now for the record, I couldn’t hit one of those seals with a club; I couldn’t hit a hog with a club and I squirm when I think about lobsters being chucked into that boiling pot while they are still alive,” the actor turned politician told his listeners. “Still, I enjoy eating lobster and I love a good steak but I wouldn’t want to work in the packing plant.”
Reagan’s full address is below.
Ronald Reagan: It sometimes seems that we can become more emotionally involved and aroused over mistreatment of animals than we can if the victims are human … A few weeks ago, a writer in the Los Angeles Times, Parker Barss Donham, did an article on the 1978 Canadian baby seal hunt. One line in his article was very thought provoking: “If seal pups were as ugly as lobsters, their harvest would go unnoticed.”
Accompanying his article was a photo that proved his point. It was a snow-white baby seal with its black nose and round dark eyes looking like something you’d put in the nursery for the children to cuddle. Add to this, horrifying accounts of men clubbing these cuddly creatures to death in a mass slaughter with the inference that death comes slowly and agonizingly and it’s easy to understand the protests and demonstrations every year.
Now for the record, I couldn’t hit one of those seals with a club; I couldn’t hit a hog with a club and I squirm when I think about lobsters being chucked into that boiling pot while they are still alive. Still, I enjoy eating lobster and I love a good steak but I wouldn’t want to work in the packing plant.
Now, let me go on with what Mr. Dunham had to say about the annual harvest of seal pups. How many of us know how sophisticated the protesters are in the annual crusade against the Newfoundlanders who carry on the hunt? There is an international organization that stays in business year-round primarily to raise money to protect against the seal harvest. A $40,000-a-year executive rides around in the organization’s helicopter. All of that would stop if they ever succeeded in halting the seal harvest.
It does give you something to think about—particularly if you are one of the contributors to the organization. Time won’t permit all the facts disclosed by Mr. Donham, but here are some that shed light on what has been portrayed as bloodthirsty brutality.
In the first place, use of the word harvest is appropriate. The Canadian government sets the quota of how many seal pups can be taken. The harp seal is not in danger of extinction. It is one of the most abundant seal species in the world, and the herd is growing, not shrinking. Elimination of the seal pup harvest would have a disastrous effect on the already-depleted Atlantic fishing grounds. The seals consume each year one half million tons of small fish that are a vital link in the food chain for cod, sea birds and whales
So much for that—now for the charge that the seal pups suffer a painful and lingering death. Careful research has been done by the Canadian Federation of Humane Societies, the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, the Ontario Humane Society and the Canadian Audubon Society. They have studied best means of killing seals: use of guns, drugs, gas and others. Their final conclusion is that clubbing with a hardwood bat or the Norwegian hokapik is the most humane method and brings on instant death or deep irreversible unconsciousness. According to these researchers the seal hunt, in terms of humaneness, compares favourably with the method of dispatching domesticated animals that provide us with our daily food supply.
I’m sure Mr. Donham knew he was bucking an emotional tide when he wrote his scholarly article. It took courage but he performed a useful service. This is Ronald Reagan. Thanks for listening.Arthur Milnes is an accomplished public historian and award-winning journalist. He was research assistant on The Rt. Hon. Brian Mulroney’s best-selling Memoirs and also served as a speechwriter to then-Prime Minister Stephen Harper and as a Fellow of the Queen’s Centre for the Study of Democracy under the leadership of Tom Axworthy. A resident of Kingston, Ontario, Milnes serves as the in-house historian at the 175 year-old Frontenac Club Hotel.