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Group rescues dogs from cull in northern Quebec

Buddy (L), a Black Lab breed mix, and Rosco, a Duck Tolling Retriever mix, sit with a handler at the North Shore Animal League America (NSALA) in Port Washington, New York, July 27, 2010. She is one of seven out of 36 dogs that were rescued from a "dog shoot" in Northern Quebec that was scheduled to control the dog population.


An animal welfare group says it helped rescue three dozen animals from a summer “dog shoot” in northern Quebec, as it tries to help the Inuit find a new way of dealing with unwanted dogs.

“It was an organized roundup of unwanted dogs,” said Jan Hannah, the Canadian project manager for International Fund for Animal Welfare. The dogs are being transported to shelters in Ontario and New York state, where they could find new homes within weeks.

So-called dog shoots, dog kill days or dog cleanup days are common in Canada’s remote northern communities, where veterinarians are scarce and canines reproduce at will. Typically, the dogs are picked up, thrown in a truck and driven to a dump, where they are shot in the head with a hunting rifle.

Pierre Russel, treasurer of Kuujjuarapik, confirmed that nuisance dogs in his tiny Inuit community in northern Quebec are regularly taken to the dump and shot.

“We have to do that occasionally, yes,” he said. “They are dogs that are endangering the people. When they start to be scary, when people are afraid to walk in the street, we have to do that.”

“It’s a choice we have to make. It’s not easy,” he added.

He said it was not fair to single out Kuujjuarapik for conducting a dog cull.

“We have no vet, no SPCA. We’re very isolated,” he said. “It’s happening all over Nunavik (northern Quebec). We’re not the only one.”

The International Fund for Animal Welfare uncovered the practice while providing veterinary services in eight towns in northern Quebec, all of which had culls, over the past eight years.

In the past, IFAW has not been able to stop the dog shoots.

“I don’t see my role as going into the communities and telling them what to do,” Hannah said. “I prefer to assist and empower.”

This year, however, the group found out about the cull in advance.

“Once we heard about the dog shoot, we got together with community members who wanted to find a humane solution,” Hannah said, applauding the townsfolk for their initiative.

“It’s fantastic that they wanted to try something different.”


She refused to name the towns that have culls because, she said, the problem is not isolated to those towns, and because stray dogs don’t fare much better further south, where shelters are jammed with unwanted pups.

“They do it because they have to. They don’t do it because it’s a hee-haw,” she said.

The problem, Russel said, is that nobody in his village of 1,100 is qualified to spay or neuter dogs, so the stray population gets out of control and the animals begin roaming around in packs, scaring kids on their way to school.

This year, however, for the first time, Kuujjuarapik has scraped together money for a veterinarian to come operate on female dogs.

“The better solution would be if there were some responsible dog owners, but that’s not the case,” Russel said.

A century-old sword used by Métis leader found in Saskatchewan

Métis family 1899 in rural Alberta

BATOCHE, SASK. A missing sword believed to have belonged to the famous Métis leader Louis Riel has been found.

The sword disappeared Wednesday during the Back to Batoche festival in Saskatchewan.

It had been on display at a table hosted by a Métis delegation from British Columbia.

Robert Doucette of the Métis Nation of Saskatchewan said the sword was recovered on Sunday by a security company working at the festival. He said the artifact was turned in by a man from the nearby One Arrow First Nation.

"You know when a cultural item like that goes missing, it's irreplaceable. And when it comes home, it comes home to the relief and the gratitude of all people of that nation," Doucette said.

A $500 reward for the return of the sword had been offered, but Doucette says it hasn't been decided yet if it will be paid out.

Festival spokeswoman Gaylene Poulin said that a couple of kids had been found playing with the sword at the Batoche rodeo grounds.

"Two kids were sword fighting with it. They had no idea what they were fighting with," Poulin said. "We don't know who took it but we're glad it was found."

Doucette said he felt a huge relief when he was told that the sword had been returned.

He said he wrapped it in a traditional Métis sash, took to the stage and invited Métis Nation of British Columbia president Bruce Dumont to join him.

"We hugged each other and all the Metis, First Nations and non-aboriginal people who were there cheered," Doucette said. "It's just another icing on the cake to a great, great eight days out here at Batoche."

The festival is an annual celebration of Métis culture held near the site of the 1885 showdown between the Canadian army and Métis and aboriginal fighters, who were led by Riel.

The Métis were defeated and Riel was found guilty of high treason and hanged in Regina.

He is considered the greatest leader of the Métis as well as the founding father of Manitoba. The province has a holiday named for him.

Dumont explained that the priceless sword is the property of the former Métis Nation of British Columbia's regional director, Henry Hall. It has been authenticated, Dumont said, and has Riel's initials on it.

He said he didn't know what was happening when Doucette called him to the stage and unwrapped the sash.

"People were coming up and saying, 'Can I touch it and can I look at it?' At that time I didn't even want to let go of it," Dumont said.

"We very much appreciate it being returned in good condition with no damage."

The Canadian Press

9-week-old needs long-term home

9-week-old needs long-term home

Tragic fire claims 3 in Nunatsiavut Region

A fire in Nain on Saturday evening was too intense for firefighters to enter the house immediately


A small town in northern Labrador is reeling after its second fatal incident this month, with three people killed in a weekend house fire.

A Nain man, 50, and two small children — ages two and four — were killed when a fast-moving fire devoured a house in the close-knit Inuit community.

The tragedy came close on the heels of a July 9 drowning that claimed the life of a nine-year-old boy.

"It's quite tragic. Everybody's affected by this," said RCMP Const. Steve Conohan. He said volunteer firefighters felt helpless because the heat in Saturday's house fire was so intense they could not immediately enter it.

A woman escaped from the fire and called for help around 7:45 p.m.

"Nain being a small coastal community, any time fire happens in a small community like that, the entire community is impacted. To have the loss of three people from the same family is especially tragic, especially since there are two young persons involved."

The fire leapt to a nearby house and destroyed it also. No one was in the second house at the time.

Emergency crews spent Sunday putting out hotspots in the rubble. RCMP forensics investigators were en route to Nain to examine the scene.

Conohan said the volunteer firefighters were deeply affected by Saturday night's fire.

"As a volunteer firefighter, you come to a fire scene, your first inclination is to try and help whoever may be trapped," he said.

"It must definitely affect you if you can't get in there."



Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/north/story/2010/07/26/nain-fire-deaths-tragedy-726.html#ixzz0unKq3SLg

New York state Plans to Eliminate 170,000 Canada Geese

By ISOLDE RAFTERY/ NY TIMES

Thinner Flocks
The 2009 plan that state and local authorities have been following to reduce the number of Canada geese living in New York State by two-thirds.

View the Plan »

It’s a doomsday plan for New York’s geese.

A nine-page report put together by a variety of national, state and city agencies shows that officials hope to reduce the number of Canada geese in New York to 85,000 from 250,000.

That means that roughly 170,000 geese — two-thirds of the population — will be killed.

The nearly 400 geese gassed to death this month after being rounded up in Prospect Park in Brooklyn — as well as an unknown number of other geese killed in New York City in recent weeks — were but a small part of the ambitious overall goal outlined in the document, which was obtained by City Room.

“The state of New York has close to 250,000 resident Canada geese, which is more than three times the state’s population goal of 85,000,” the report states. It is unknown how many have been killed so far.

The plan, according to a high-level official at the United States Department of Agriculture, was a result of five months of meetings between February and June 2009, after the crash of US Airways Flight 1549 in the Hudson River. Canada geese hit both of the jet’s engines, causing the splashdown.

Those attending the meetings that yielded the plan included officials from the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation, the National Park Service and key staff members from Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s office, the official said.

He said that politicians peppered officials from the Department of Agriculture with questions about the science and asked how many goose strikes had occurred and the danger they posed. They learned that there have been 78 Canada goose strikes over 10 years in New York, and that those strikes caused more than $2.2 million in aircraft damage.

The plan was written with the approval of everyone at that table, the official said, including this paragraph:

“The captured geese are placed alive in commercial turkey crates. The geese would be brought to a secure location and euthanized with methods approved by the American Veterinary Medical Association. Euthanized geese would be buried.”

Inuit remains in Chicago museum for over 80 years return to Labrador

More than 80 years after they were taken by a young curator from Chicago’s Field Museum, the bones of 22 Inuit are going back to a remote Labrador community



Les Perreaux

From Wednesday's Globe and Mail
Published on Tuesday, Jul. 20, 2010 8:35PM EDT

Last updated on Tuesday, Jul. 20, 2010 9:16PM EDT



The bones of 22 Inuit lay for 83 years in storage at Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History, a prestigious institution that held the proceeds of a long-buried crime on the coast of Labrador.

For all those decades, the Inuit had no idea an ambitious archaeologist from the south had robbed their graves. But on the archeological grapevine and in the researcher’s writings, the heist was not forgotten. Now, those Inuit bones are going home.

The mystery began to unravel in 2008, when a researcher working for the Smithsonian Institution sent a note to Labrador’s Torngâsok Cultural Centre with some gossip he had heard around the campfire: The Field Museum may have the remains of some of your people.

A small team from Labrador launched a two-year quest that will end soon with the return of the bones.

“The story is quite unbelievable. In a way, it could turn into a happy story, even though what was done was immoral, disrespectful and disgraceful. Now we want to do what is right,” said Johannes Lampe, Minister of Culture in the Nunatsiavut Inuit government of northern Labrador.

The remains, including a handful of complete skeletons, came from the Inuit community of Zoar, which was founded in the mid-1800s by missionaries of the Moravian church, a German Protestant denomination. By 1894 the community had been abandoned, with little more than a graveyard to mark its existence.

“It’s really a beautiful area, but it wasn’t the perfect spot for settlement,” said Jamie Brake, an archeologist with Labrador’s Torngâsok Cultural Centre, based in nearby Nain. “There wasn’t much fresh water, it wasn’t a good spot for hunting, the caribou rarely passed by. It was also a very bad area for flies.”

In 1927, William Duncan Strong, a young curator from the Field Museum, arrived on the coast of Labrador. Mr. Brake and Helen Robbins, the repatriation director at the Field, reviewed Dr. Strong’s personal journal and expedition reports to reconstruct what happened next.

Dr. Strong quickly got into trouble with the Inuit when he went to Zoar and dug up marked graves. After hearing complaints, the local magistrate, a man named Simms who ruled from a ship offshore, ordered Dr. Strong to return the graves to their original state.

Dr. Strong filled the graves, which were marked and documented by the Moravian missionaries. He then skulked back to Chicago with the bones of 22 Inuit.

The Inuit, who assumed the remains had been placed back in the graves, forgot about their American visitor. The administrators of the Field Museum, for their part, believed the bones had been obtained in good faith – until recently, at least.

Dr. Strong, who died in 1962, went on to a long career of considerable repute. Grave-robbing was common in the 19th century, but by Dr. Strong’s time the removal of remains without permission was considered unethical. His actions mystify those who followed him.

Ms. Robbins described Dr. Strong’s writings as ambiguous: While he felt taking the remains was distasteful, he didn’t seem to feel remorse.

“He was a very junior curator, just out of graduate school, it was his first big job. He was told the museum wanted physical anthropological specimens, he felt he needed to do that,” Ms. Robbins said. “I think he was a complicated man. I hate to throw stones at him. He was young and new to his profession.”

While U.S. law requires the return of native remains in the United States, institutions like the Field Museum and the Smithsonian have led the way, voluntarily returning hundreds of sets of remains to Canada, mainly on the West Coast.

Mr. Brake and others from the cultural centre worked for months to confirm the identities of the Labrador remains, and to track down living descendants. The Old German documentation left by the Moravian missionaries and tangled family trees have made the work extremely difficult.

“We looked closely at two individuals and ended up with 150 pages with names and dates relating to potential descendants. We quickly hit our limit on how much time and money we could dedicate,” Mr. Brake said.

The Field Museum has agreed to pay for repatriating the remains, but many details remain to be worked out with Nunatsiavut.

One detail has been decided. Mr. Brake said the remains will be buried in Zoar, where they were unearthed 83 years ago