Activist ... French film star Brigitte Bardot in Ottawa
to protest against the annual harp seal hunt / Reuters
Posted on 03/24/2006 10:56:13 AM PST by yankeedame
Bardot faces seal-hunters protest
From: Agence France-Presse By Michel Comte in Ottawa
March 23, 2006
Ottawa --INUIT men defending their traditional hunting rights protested against French film star Brigitte Bardot today when she made an emotional call for an end to Canada's annual seal pup cull.
"You must join me to ensure this hunt stops," Bardot said in the capital Ottawa, standing with some difficulty, crutches at her side, in front of a huge poster showing a seal in a bogus pose clubbing a human baby. "How can we continue to kill seals in a rich country like Canada ... I am not crazy ... I am pleading with you," she said, holding back tears after watching with reporters gruesome video footage of the hunt.
"This will likely be my last visit to Canada before I die. I want to see this barbaric massacre stopped before then," she said.
A dozen Inuit youth in traditional garb waved placards and banged drums outside her hotel.
Bardot last came to Canada in 1977 and kicked off three decades of protests against the seal hunt by hugging a fluffy white doe-eyed pup on an ice floe for photographers.
Her return to Ottawa in poor health to try to lobby Prime Minister Stephen Harper comes after Canada's fisheries minister extended the hunt last week to 2010 and set a kill quota of a 325,000 animals this year, prompting protests in France and the United States. Officials said Harper and Fisheries Minister Loyola Hearn would shun Bardot, best known for her role in the 1956 blockbuster movie And God Created Woman.
A handful of Canadian senators weighed in, reminding Bardot in a statement that "Canada is no longer a French colony".
Bardot said her fight was not with northern peoples' traditional way of life, which includes killing seals for meat and to make clothes, but with commercial sealers who profit from the hunt.
"Aboriginals don't conduct a commercial hunt," she said, flanked by US actress Persia White here to "represent Hollywood" and Paul Watson of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society who called sealers "savage".
The annual seal hunt earns about $C16.5 million (AU$20.35 million) in commercial meat and pelts for thousands of local fisherman.
Canada banned the killing of the youngest seals, less than 12 days old, in 1987 amid criticisms and threats of European boycotts that pushed the industry to the brink of collapse.
Breeding adults are off limits to hunters too, fisheries officials said.
Since then, the protests largely disappeared. But Canada awoke the wrath of activists in 2003 by approving a three-year cull of about 975,000 seals after estimating their population had ballooned to 5.9 million, nearly triple the number in the 1970s.
This coincided with the opening of new markets in China and Russia.
The Dalai Lama, former Beatle Paul McCartney and his wife Heather Mills McCartney, singer Charles Aznavour, actors Kim Bassinger, Juliette Binoche and Richard Dean Anderson, among many others, have campaigned against the hunt over the years.
Was hoping for some less recent photos.....
Sadly, the sex kitten is starting to look like Helen Thomas.
Well, Ms. Bardot has to do something, doesn't she?
Is there a baby seal shortage?
In her day....
But that was so many days ago.
sic transit gloria
I think I'll re-read Ozymandias now.
Agreed, but I do like her opinions about the Muslims in Europe.
A baby seal walks into a bar.
The bar tender says "what'll ya have".
The seal says "anything but Canadian Club".
[[[[Bada Bing]]]]
Has she actually been in a movie in the last 40 years?
I'm sure others have said this before, but I am amazed at how "celebs" will go all out and protest the wearing of fur, eating meat, the farm conditions of pigs, chickens, and goats and other ANIMALS!, but at the same time they heartily endorse the slaughter of helpless, innocent human babies.
(((.)))
(Her fight...with commercial sealers who profit from the hunt.)
The French have always had major antipathy against profits. The fact that it takes money to help others never intrudes on them.
Baby seals are pretty tasty if cooked right with a little soy sauce and wasabi.
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A grasshopper walks into a bar, sits down and orders a beer.
The bartender hands him a beer and says, "You know we got a drink named after you."
The grasshopper looks puzzled and says, "You got a drink named Murray??"
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wakka..wakka...wakka...
BRIDGET? Bridget, is that YOU???
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