I heard a quote from Mike Smyth that is looping as an add on the radio for CKNW. In essence, he compares an accidental injury followed by euthanization of a rodeo animal at the Cloverdale Rodeo recently to having to permanently shut down the highways because of fender bender. Saying - “Isn’t it the same thing?”
More specifically, the analogy was something like - “you wanna stop the rodeo just because of one mistake? That’s like suggesting we should permanently close the highway system just because of one accident” - at least that is the thrust of his argument. It’s one thing to euthanize an animal humanely for food purposes, but I’m not sold on using these animals for human entertainment where it damages the animal.
To me a better analogy would be comparing a rodeo to Roman Gladiators where the conclusion is forgone. Maybe we can feed some low income people from the downtown east side (who already have presumably a tragic life) in exchange for putting them in the ring with some expert fighters to see how long they last. It’ll be fun and entertaining and heck, because we are so advanced, we’ll even stop them before someone actually gets killed. Injuries will be ok though, cause they can still heal up good to fight another day! Hopefully everyone who reads this can agree with how ludicrous an idea it is.
I’m glad that Surrey has finally stopped some of the rodeo events, but they need to consider why our society gave up on pushing unwilling Gladiators into the ring as a public event. Just because we used to rope cattle (or other event) in the past in order to survive, it doesn’t automatically follow that we should keep doing it for sport. I’d like to think our society has moved beyond that. I believe a measure of how advanced our society is can be seen by how we treat our animals. It’s not the death of an animal that concerns me most, it’s the suffering prior to.
Ya gotta love this quote:
“Accidents do happen and cattle die. If you cut to the chase, a cow is born to die, and the cowboy’s whole purpose in life is to have them do it at our convenience.” — Cowboy Mike Puhallo
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