Gail Moerkerken was told on Thursday, May 23rd, by Dean Edmonds, the manager of the Vancouver SPCA, that John van der Hoeven had just agreed that he would supply Gail with a current photo of Odie. van der Hoeven then left town without a word to Gail or as far we know, to anyone else either. Gail has been asking for a photo of Odie since April.

John van der Hoeven is the boss of all SPCA branches. He can instruct someone else to do this if he is too busy. Or he can tell Gail when he intends to follow through.

But that would not be his style. AAS has listened to years of complaints from SPCA members, directors, agents, and volunteers; how they have tried to get their concerns acted on, or put on the SPCA's agenda at an AGM, or voted on, or even made known to the BC SPCA board of directors to no avail. And always they said the same thing, "I told John van der Hoeven but nothing was done that I ever heard."

SPCA boards must have allowed this to happen; Mr van der Hoeven could not have got away with this for so long if it was not a system that worked well. In fact, when boards were presented with damaging revelations about the Society they were "directing", they themselves used the tried-and-true methods of denial, dismissing the complainant as a crank, and a spew of mistruths about what a wonderful job the SPCA was doing.

The blame for the existence of employees like van der Hoeven, who to give him his due, did a fine job of creating a pound contracting empire and running a tight ship for twenty years - just as his bosses (the board of directors) must have wanted - lies with the boards of the BC SPCA. They have a duty to know and to make inquiries when complaints do get to them and to take them seriously and investigate them. We can't tell you number of times we have been told by someone that they have quit in disgust because no one at the SPCA cared to know what was going on.

Mr van der Hoeven perfected the black hole method of getting rid of complainants. We have numerous letters to Mr van der Hoeven on file to which he has not deigned to reply.

But there is new breed of women that is not so easily dismissed. Gail and others at last have a forum to get past the stonewalling. It is the AAS web site and the AAS message board. At last - the real animal welfare network is uniting and the proof needed to hold the SPCA's feet to the fire is arriving daily. It is the power of the web and the intelligence and bravery of these (mostly) women who really "speak for those who cannot speak for themsleves" that will "prevent cruelty to animals" by making the SPCA do the job the public thinks it is doing.