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in the North Hemisphere may give birth one year and four months later. Slie 

 then nurses her calf for two years. Consider ! Over ten years for one si)erm 

 whale birth ! And this is only when favorable conditions prevail to let a male 

 and female of maturity, meet in the vast seas, in sipite of the mass slaughtering 

 of whales. There must be nine years in which male and female escai)e slaughter 

 if they are to BEGIN the cycle for a single calf -whale to be bom ! This is wliy 

 every killing is a potent threat to the survival of this great mammaiL 



The author of "The Year of the Whale", Victor Schefifer, gave this information 

 in this book. He worked primarily with mammals, and was 31 years a research 

 biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, receiving the Department of 

 Interior's Distinguished Service Award. He has commented in his book : "The 

 problem of "hiunaneness" in the chasing and killing of whales troubles me." It 

 troubles so many of us ! Finally, there is a way that can help ! Please help this 

 Bill to become a law. 



Statement of A. M. Dobell, Chambly, Quebec, Canada 



The Ministry of Fisheries of Canada has appointed a "Committee on Seals & 

 Sealing" in order to enable members of the general public to make their views 

 known on the subject of the annual slaughter. 



Presumably the committee's findings will either cause the Government of 

 this country to stop the annual butchery of newborn seals, or, alternatively allow 

 it to continue due to lack of public demand for its cessation. 



It follows, therefore, that the committee must satisfy itself on the prime 

 question of whether or not this annual organized slaughter of helpless, newborn 

 seals would constitute an unacceptable outrage in the minds of a majority of 

 Canadians, were they all, h5T)othetically placed in the position of on-the-spot 

 observers of the slaughter in all its detail within their own country. 



The second factor which they will presumably consider is whether or not the 

 annual slaughter results in the fulfilment of any essential requirements of 

 Canadians. Obviously, for instance, the consumption of meat and poultry is 

 considered essential, hence the appropriate domestic animals are bred, fed and 

 hopefully, humanely killed, so that a case could not easily be made to outlaw 

 the abatoirs. 



Contemplation of question #1 affords quite an exercise for imagination in 

 the realms of the hypothetical. Imagine some 20 million Canadians assembled 

 in grandstand fashion, somewhere in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, or in the Canadian 

 Arctic, in April ; 



There is a colony of seal families — hundreds of the mother seals ministering 

 to their helpless, fuzzy newborn offspring in a manner su^estive of the similarity 

 with which nature endows most of her more intelligent creatures, including hu- 

 mans, with that protective mother instinct. 



It may be that many in the large audience begin to warm to these pleasant, 

 harmless seals, as they appear to rejoice, as seals do, in their own kind of domes- 

 ticity and freedom. Some, in the grandstands might even sense a sort of sym- 

 pathetic identification with these creatures as having been given life from a 

 source common to their own, and common instinctive emotions, albeit on a lower 

 scale. 



These works of nature, thus manifested might incline others in the audience 

 to a realization that they, being supposedly higher on the scale of nature's heir- 

 archy, might have been intended more to protect and preserve rather than 

 to loot and pillage and mindlessly extinguish. Rarely does the regular artificial 

 urban existence of the majority give rise to such enobled thinking being applied 

 to a herd of seals, but many in the audience might at this point find pleasure in the 

 thought that within their country in its vastness, there are still creatures such as 

 these — free and graceful, and contributing in their own way to nature's balance 

 and thus to the general well-being of all creatures, humans included. 



And while in this enobled state of mind, the sound of an approaching spotter 

 aircraft is hardly welcomed ; even less welocme might be the sight of the sealing 

 ships disgorging men armed with clubs and knives, advancing menacingly to- 

 ward the peaceful seal families — the adult seals showing apprehension and alarm. 



What happens next might be carried out in a hurry, but still not fast enough 

 ever to erase from the memories of the observers the sickening sight of the now 

 frantic adult seals and their helpless newborn in the midst of the savagery of 

 an attack by what are evidently brutish, mindless killers. The mother seals 

 dart this way and that in frenzy ; they are not able to defend their young which 



