Jo anne mcarthur biography of alberta
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A history of the Calgary Stampede&#;s controversial animal events
Photo: Jo-Anne McArthur \ We Animals Media
The Calgary Stampede is underway July , and with it comes inhumane rodeo events and the deadly chuckwagon races that result in animal fatalities nearly every year.
Let’s take a look at the controversial history of the Calgary Stampede rodeo and chuckwagon races.
The Vancouver Humane Society has been tracking Stampede rodeo and chuckwagon racing fatalities since Since then, animals have died in the Stampede&#;s events. 78 of those deaths have been horses used in the chuckwagon races. The true toll of animal deaths may be much higher due to the number of animals that are practiced on and injured behind the scenes.
Why are there so many fatalities in the chuckwagon races?
The chuckwagon races are the deadliest event at the Calgary Stampede. Almost every year, horses die during this event, which is known as the “half-mile of hell”.
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In mid-September, photographer Jo-Anne McArthur drove to a turkey farm, six hours from her home in Toronto, to take some pictures. The farm comprised a half-dozen barns, each long and clean and new and bordered by well-tended flower gardens. Even arriving in the dead of night, as she did, McArthur could see that it was the kind of place, she told me later, “that a turkey farmer would be proud of.”
Inside the barns, which she entered through the windows, was a different story. Each barn was crowded with what she estimates must have been thousands of turkeys, each of them selectively bred to be as large as possible. In one barn, they were so enormous, and there were so many of them, that they could barely walk, let alone fly as their counterparts in the wild can. McArthur spent the next four hours in two of the barns. They were dim and airless and unbearably hot, and the turkeys mingled maniacally on the dusty floor. The heat made them pant. Turkeys are communicative birds, even in s
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Jo-Anne McArthur Speaks Out Against Canada&#;s New Ag-Gag Laws
In April, Manitoba became the fourth province in Canada to resehandling ag-gag laws. The new law fryst vatten part of a growing trend in the djur agriculture industry to silence its critics and skydda big meat and dairy companies and their interests at all costs. Shielding agribusiness from the public eye, ag-gag laws allow farmers to operate in virtual secrecy, leaving journalists and activists to seek out more creatives ways to expose the truth about what goes on inside factory farms.
Canada has a long history of ag-gag legislation, with similar laws on the books in Alberta, Ontario, and Prince Edward Island. We spoke with Jo-Anne McArthur, an award-winning photojournalist who covers factory farming and djur exploitation in Canada and around the world, about how the new laws are impacting her work.
Matthew Zampa: If the new ag-gag law in Manitoba tells us one thing, it&#;s that the relationship between Big Ag and the federal