BCTV and the SPCA go back a long way. Tony Parsons was given a cocker spaniel by Eileen Drever several years ago. Drever was the Vancouver SPCA's and then the Chilliwack SPCA's media darling, supplying it with easy, popular, heartwrenching stories of neglected dogs. When Drever decided to do something about the starving cows in Harrison Falls, she cleverly gave her first tape of the cows to BCTV and almost lost the case against the owners because the evidence was tainted. It should have been inadmissible but the judge believed Drever's defence of being a well-meaning amateur and not knowing she should not have given the evidence to be shown on TV before giving it to the police. No kidding, she got away with that, even though the defence lawyer proved that Drever had executed plenty of warrants and was no amateur.

(There is a lot more interesting background to the story of the SPCA and the starving cows that would astonish you. AAS paid over a thousand dollars for the court transcripts and they pretty much prove what we had said all along, that when the SPCA said it had just "stumbled" on the cows, it wasn't telling the truth: that the RCMP had tried to get the SPCA to investigate and take it to crown a year before, but it's a long story, for another day.)

Drever was at the Surrey SPCA for years, some of that time as manager. Surrey has a well-deserved reputation as the biggest animal killing SPCA of them all. She was at the SPCA when the horses in a field in Surrey, that could be seen from the SPCA, were allowed to die of starvation, the SPCA saying there was nothing it could do. AAS has all the old clippings on that one too. In fact we have plenty of evidence on the SPCA that we are holding in reserve, should it ever decide again to sue me. Sort of insurance, and the best of it involves money and land.