OK ... so the closing of the Stanley Park Children's Zoo still has some lessons for the kids.
When the Vancouver Park Board made the decision to close the longtime attraction as a cost-saving measure (while keeping the money-losing Queen Elizabeth Park Arboretum open because it had potential as a tourist draw), I blogged that the Children's Zoo's "last lesson" would be that profit, more often than not, trumps value.
Well, looks like I was wrong. The latest learning experience generated by the Children's Zoo has to do with integrity and keeping one's promise. The Vancouver Sun reports that it appears the pygmy goats that had been such a fun part of the Children's Zoo have been sold through a livestock auction house and may be, even as we speak, the featured attraction in stews, curries or any number of dishes.
Re-selling the goats, according to the article, would have been a violation of the agreement signed by the owner of the hobby farm where the goats had been sent.
The lesson? People sometimes aren't good to their word -- especially when money comes into the picture. Let's assume, too, that the owner of the hobby farm is not fundamentally a bad person -- you know, the kind who would stand there, washing his hands with humble soap as he expressed a desire to give a good home to these animals, all the while plotting to send them to market at the earliest opportunity.
After all, it's been a year since the animals were sent off to new homes: that's hardly the "earliest opportunity". Maybe the owner felt there were 1,001 reasons to justify selling the animals: a sudden economic downturn (who hasn't experienced that?) and a belief that there was no other option. But assuming there was no loophole which would have put the owner within his legal rights to sell the goats, that leaves the question, When and under what circumstances does your word -- regardless of whether it's on paper in a contract -- cease to be valid? The Bible has some pretty strong language about covenant-breakers.
It also has some pretty strong language about judging others, so let's take this to a higher level. This latest last lesson from the Children's Zoo is more a discussion topic: if you give your word and stand by it, will God not bless you more than if you break your word because you think you think you have no other choice?
Showing posts with label stanley park. Show all posts
Showing posts with label stanley park. Show all posts
Monday, February 13, 2012
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
The Last Lesson of the Children's Zoo?
My dad has always been a photographer. He snapped off photos of practically everything as I was growing up, and -- being a TV producer -- he also acquired a 16mm movie camera and shot miles and miles of footage of things in our lives (as well as stock footage for his show, Klahanie).
One of the earliest pictures he has of me is as a 2-year-old, standing nose to nose with a fawn in Stanley Park. A little baby with a little baby. (I remember a couple of years later, my mother took me to a concert, when Leonard Bernstein brought the New York Philharmonic to Vancouver (did he really play at the Forum?) -- and they played Debussy's Afternoon of a Faun. I thought it was a nice piece about a baby deer.)
But back to Stanley Park. It was my first encounter with a wild animal. Later, when the "Children's Zoo" opened, we got to get up-close-and-personal with a lot of animals you wouldn't ordinarily see; and while staged shows in the Aquarium and caged -- or otherwise boundaried -- animals in the rest of the zoo were interesting, there's no substitute for that kind of contact with another species.
Amid all the hubris of the "saving" of the Bloedel Conservatory in Vancouver, there was the nemesis that the Stanley Park Children's Farmyard -- formerly called the Children's Zoo -- would be closed. Its last day will be January 2, 2011 -- the day after the annual Bright Nights Christmas festival closes. The reason? It lost a quarter-million dollars last year. Bloedel was also a money-loser, but that was blamed on construction of the Canada Line, which limited road access to Queen Elizabeth Park and the Conservatory for a couple of years. (How a viable business can go into the tank because of only two years of limited access is a question for smarter economic minds than mine, but to this unlearned and uneducated one, maybe there were problems before then? Here's one: I was born and raised in Vancouver, and have not set foot in the Bloedel Conservatory in well over 30 years. Hmm.)
But maybe it's easier to "sell" a Conservatory -- with a built-in spectacular view of Vancouver and the North Shore from the top of Little Mountain and a gourmet restaurant -- as a tourist attraction than it is to promote "another petting zoo". After all, bringing in the tourist dollars is a bigger deal than something that would entertain and educate young local children and deepen their appreciation of animals and, by extension, farming and the source of their food. (I had no problem with the knowledge that the little lamb I played with on one Sunday could well be the star of someone else's souvlaki the next Sunday -- after all, it wasn't the Stanley Park Children's Abbatoir ...)
(A loss in the neighbourhood of $250,000? The City of Vancouver is spending 100-times that much, setting up separated bike lanes.)
You want to know how to bore a young kid to tears? Take them to a flower and plant exhibit. That's probably why I haven't been to the Conservatory since the mid-70s: too many memories of wanting to be someplace else. But I could have spent hours at the zoo -- the "regular" zoo or the children's zoo -- no problem. But that little bit of joy for a kid -- some gentle education -- sadly takes a back seat to economics.
Kids are being required to grow up too fast these days. (There are "advocates" who want them to explore their sexuality while they're still children, which reminds me of Goldie Hawn's one-liner on Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In in the 1960s about petitioning Congress to lower the age of puberty); maybe this is just another sign of the times. You want to go to the Children's Farmyard kid? Sorry: it's closed, 'cause it wasn't making money. Why is it important to make money? Well, lemme tellya .....
The last lesson of the Children's Zoo? Sad, dontcha think?
One of the earliest pictures he has of me is as a 2-year-old, standing nose to nose with a fawn in Stanley Park. A little baby with a little baby. (I remember a couple of years later, my mother took me to a concert, when Leonard Bernstein brought the New York Philharmonic to Vancouver (did he really play at the Forum?) -- and they played Debussy's Afternoon of a Faun. I thought it was a nice piece about a baby deer.)
But back to Stanley Park. It was my first encounter with a wild animal. Later, when the "Children's Zoo" opened, we got to get up-close-and-personal with a lot of animals you wouldn't ordinarily see; and while staged shows in the Aquarium and caged -- or otherwise boundaried -- animals in the rest of the zoo were interesting, there's no substitute for that kind of contact with another species.
Amid all the hubris of the "saving" of the Bloedel Conservatory in Vancouver, there was the nemesis that the Stanley Park Children's Farmyard -- formerly called the Children's Zoo -- would be closed. Its last day will be January 2, 2011 -- the day after the annual Bright Nights Christmas festival closes. The reason? It lost a quarter-million dollars last year. Bloedel was also a money-loser, but that was blamed on construction of the Canada Line, which limited road access to Queen Elizabeth Park and the Conservatory for a couple of years. (How a viable business can go into the tank because of only two years of limited access is a question for smarter economic minds than mine, but to this unlearned and uneducated one, maybe there were problems before then? Here's one: I was born and raised in Vancouver, and have not set foot in the Bloedel Conservatory in well over 30 years. Hmm.)
But maybe it's easier to "sell" a Conservatory -- with a built-in spectacular view of Vancouver and the North Shore from the top of Little Mountain and a gourmet restaurant -- as a tourist attraction than it is to promote "another petting zoo". After all, bringing in the tourist dollars is a bigger deal than something that would entertain and educate young local children and deepen their appreciation of animals and, by extension, farming and the source of their food. (I had no problem with the knowledge that the little lamb I played with on one Sunday could well be the star of someone else's souvlaki the next Sunday -- after all, it wasn't the Stanley Park Children's Abbatoir ...)
(A loss in the neighbourhood of $250,000? The City of Vancouver is spending 100-times that much, setting up separated bike lanes.)
You want to know how to bore a young kid to tears? Take them to a flower and plant exhibit. That's probably why I haven't been to the Conservatory since the mid-70s: too many memories of wanting to be someplace else. But I could have spent hours at the zoo -- the "regular" zoo or the children's zoo -- no problem. But that little bit of joy for a kid -- some gentle education -- sadly takes a back seat to economics.
Kids are being required to grow up too fast these days. (There are "advocates" who want them to explore their sexuality while they're still children, which reminds me of Goldie Hawn's one-liner on Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In in the 1960s about petitioning Congress to lower the age of puberty); maybe this is just another sign of the times. You want to go to the Children's Farmyard kid? Sorry: it's closed, 'cause it wasn't making money. Why is it important to make money? Well, lemme tellya .....
The last lesson of the Children's Zoo? Sad, dontcha think?
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