Maclean's Magazine
OvertoYou
February 10, 2003
BARBARA RIGHTON

IF THE MEASURE of a society is how well it treats its animals, I'd like to speak up on behalf of horses. Once they were man's best friend. Today, they can be found by the hundreds, old, crippled, badly trained or starving, at a country auction northeast of Toronto. As a journalist 22 years ago, I attended this auction's predecessor at a nearby flea market to report on the human consumption of horse meat. Haunting the loading area after the onlookers had gone home, I watched too many miserable beasts scrambling up the ramps onto trucks for the long ride to the "kill plant" in Owen Sound, Ont. Herding them on were the meat men, some cruel, others just matter of fact with their whips and prods. At a couple of auctions I imagined myself suddenly jumping into the path of a half-blind palomino or a braying miniature donkey and screaming at their tormentors. Instead, I just wrote my story, hoping that it would change something.