The ethics of any animal welfare organization must be unimpeachable and open to scrutiny and criticism at all times. Ms Travers may have changed the very foundations of her beliefs about animals' rights to be free from cruelty, but her background means that she is a questionable choice to direct any animal welfare organization. Even now she is disparaging of PETA activists who oppose the bludgeoning of baby seals and the stripping of their coats to make fashionable coats for humans and she once defended the SPCA's killing of abandoned "pest" cats.

Her background includes buying, breeding, racing and then selling horses in an industry that has been documented many time as inflicting some of the worst cruelty on animals. Her relationship with a business that supplies primates for research is another reason that makes her a questionable choice to direct an animal welfare society, even though she makes sure her animals are vaccinated yearly and her dogs don't "flop around" in the back of a pickup truck.

The BC SPCA's public persona has been under attack in the last few years. It is matters like this that cause a loss of faith in the SPCA and cause me, at least, to ask what are the bona fides of the other directors.