What is it about elephants that so touches our hearts?

Maybe I should only speak for myself, but I wouldn't be surprised to learn that elephants' suffering especially wrings many people's hearts.

Was it watching the Disney film "Dumbo" when we were young that imprinted on our minds the cruelty to circus elephants? It did on mine. Becaue of the movie "Bambi" I can't bear to think especially of deer being hunted. I believe that the film "Free Willy" has had the same impact on a younger generation. We need a film about a piglet escaping a factory farm and then going back to release his mother and all the other pigs.

As an adult I was talked into going with my five year-old daughter to the Greater Vancouver Zoo in Aldergrove. The first thing that greeted our sight after paying our money was the elephant Tina in her corral, swaying from side to side. Her feet had pounded depressions into the dirt; her eyes were glazed and there was no reaction to anyone who approached her. I felt sick in spirit, angry for her, angry at everyone milling about gawping, angry at the zoo owners, and angry at myself for being there and watching her misery and for being so incapable of helping her. I wanted to come back and save her, but I was helpless. That was in 1972.

All I could do was to swear that my daughter and I would never go to another place where caged animals were on display. Little did I know that one day, in a very small way, I would come back for Tina.

When I had my own freedom to start an animal welfare society and build the AAS website and messageboard, I was able at last to help free Tina. The messageboard was used by the organizers of protests, and to keep it readers up-to-date on addresses to write to, dates and times and contacts. It was even used by the media.

AAS was another hand in the chain of helping hands that freed Tina and allowed her to spend her remaining days in a sanctuary where she could roam through fields and woods with other elephants. Our hand was a small one compared to so many other hands, but helping Tina was one of the big moments in my life.

“Now what is it moves our very heart, and sickens us so much at cruelty shown to poor brutes? First, that they have done us no harm; next that they have no power whatever to resistance; it is the cowardice and tyranny of which they are the victims which makes their suffering so especially touching.” Cardinal Newman 1801-1890