Rich Avanzina was President of the San Francisco SPCA from 1976 to 1999. He was one of the early leaders in animal welfare reform. He didn't just talk new humane shelters, he built them. I had the pleasure of visiting the new shelter in San Francisco in 2001, talk to staff and volunteers including then President Ed Sayres. It restored my faith in the human race.

While I did not agree with all their policies (there is always room for improvement) what they have accomplished is so far ahead of anything we have done in BC. On the one to ten scale SF SPCA is an eight, the best I saw in BC was a two. Until someone does something better, San Francisco SPCA is the state of the art in shelters.

I understand that the BC SPCA will be constructing a new "state of the art" shelter in Penticton. Has anyone seen the plans? It would be interesting to know what the BC SPCA considers the "state of the art". I look forward to being impressed.

In Victoria, President Troman recently announced that the BC SPCA was spending $650,000 to enclose their 40 year old Alcatrazian pound kennels in order to solve the noise problem. No state of the art here. Does the BC SPCA believe that our community is going to wait 40 more years for modern facillities? What a waste of $650,000!

I wonder how the current leadership of the BC SPCA rationalizes their decisions given the recent announcements from Rebecca Ledger that kennels are like jails and dogs react badly when "incarcerated" ( January 22, 06 - Vancouver Province newspaper) It's a wonder Ms Ledger took so long to come to this realization or to publish it. She could have saved a lot of time, money and maybe prevented some animal suffering if she had just talked to Rich Avanzina 15 years ago.

Finally, it is somewhat ironic that the first new shelter built in BC will be in Langley, a communmity abandoned by the BC SPCA in 2003; by the Langley Animal Protection Society an organization that didn't exist in 2003! I would wager some money that the next new shelter on the Lower Mainland will be built in Delta.

Rick Sargent