This is an open letter to Mr Dave Hamilton, (Of Courtenay) an executive director of the B.C. Society for the PREVENTION of CRUELTY to animals. (SPCA)

Dear Mr Hamilton,

Congratulations Sir, on your appointment last month to this very worthy organization.We are indeed lucky to now have a representative from the Comox Valley to represent our concerns provincially and nationally on the board of directors re cruelty to animals in our valley at this special time.We are therefore asking you to intervene on behalf of some defenseless animals which are being commercially exploited for profit each and every year, right here in the Comox Valley, your home town, Sir: the infamous Comox Valley Rodeo.

This disgraceful display of animal cruelty barely propped up, and financed, by certain car dealers,tack & feed stores and such,has no place in your home town, Sir, anymore than it does in anybody else's town! This is not a cow town.

Animal acts at circuses were banned long ago in Canada for this very reason.Trucking poor defenseless creatures great distances from town to town, week after week ,in the heat and trauma of a long hot summer accompanied with a circus of out of town cowboys, surely is cruelty of the very worst description. These animals are then thrown around and wrestled to the dusty dirt ground, as with the Calf Roping events, sometimes even breaking their necks, or worse, over and over again each, and every week. Is this not cruelty Sir?

Even adult animals are ridden, with a thin steel cable cutting deep into their stomach and back nerve areas just to make them jump. The fear, and agony can only be imagined.

Is this Sir, not a serious act of animal cruelty of the worse type, in a modern civilized country, like Canada today? Using animals for entertainment cannot be tolerated in Canada in this day and age.

The Society for Cruelty must therefore step forward,as the Vancouver section did at the recent Calgary Stampede' 09 and, protest this barbaric spectacle. Many citizens of the Comox Valley
from S.P.C.A. supporters to veterinarians, plus the many animal welfare groups deplore this circus of cruelty coming to town, every year and boycott this disgraceful event. Animals do have rights
and feel pain. They are not just here for so called sport, for the very few.

'The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated '
-Mahatma Gandhi-

We ask you in your capacity Sir, as a citizen of the Comox Valley and as the new executive of the S.P.C.A.to step forward at this special time and show leadership, and courage, to stop this disgraceful event from occurring on public property ,or private, now or in the future. A good first step would be to stop the little calf roping event as, a first step. We are prepared to do all that is moral, legal and non violent ,including boycotting, to stop this cruelty. Can you now do your part?

Together we CAN stop this, NOW..

We await your reply Sir.

"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about the things that matter"Martin Luther King"

-For the Animals.- We Thank You.

David & Adel Routledge,Cumberland,B.C.