The Nanaimo SPCA, with the Powell River SPCA, were the two SPCA branches about which AAS heard consistently good reports. We posted many times that these two branches practiced real animal welfare.

Both branches' standards were set many years ago under the direction of Audrey Hill who still runs the Powell River SPCA. I was told that Audrey mentored Lorrain Chiornado and she chose Lorrain to manage the Nanaimo SPCA after Audrey moved to the Sunshine Coast.

I was also told many years ago that Audrey had the wisdom to see that the Nanaimo SPCA could never practice animal welfare as long as it was paid to do animal control by the City of Nanaimo and that is why the Nanaimo SPCA got out of its dog-catching contracting business. If this is true, Audrey is in the ethical company of Richard Avanzino, an animal-loving lawyer, and an early leader of the no-kill movement who, after he became the President of the SF SPCA, realized in the 1990s that the ethically unacceptable amount of killing the SF SPCA did, could not be stopped, no matter what its good intentions, as long as it took money to control and dispose animals for the City of San Francisco. In fact, Avanzino understood that no matter what good things the SF SPCA did, animal control and disposal was ethically incompatible with animal welfare. "We were founded to protect our communities' animals and provide for their well being, not to perform animal control or kill cats and dogs. The killing function is a government responsibility and passing it off to a humane organization through a contract is a disconnect."
http://209.85.173.132/search?q=cache:pzfONrr4XlEJ:www.maddiesfund.org/nokill/sfspca_give_up.html+Avanzino+-+pound+contracts&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=11

Jean Martin is right when she says that Lorrain's departure is sad for the animals of Nanaimo.