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57 2 from rural roots to angels’ wings twyla françois rural roots run deep I was born and grew up in a small, religious farming community in Manitoba , Canada. While I lived on the edge of town, many of my friends lived on farms. Here, among these nonhuman animals, my awakening began. I remember helping my friend milk the cows (even in the 1970s and ’80s the milking was done mechanically). When I walked amid cows in the barn, they stopped and sniffed me. They watched what I was doing, much as I was watching what they were doing. I came to see that each of these cows had her own personality. I was also extremely bonded to my pet cat, Mittens (sorry—she came with the name) and began to see that these cows were very much like her. I thought: “If I choose not to eat my cat, perhaps I can choose not to eat cows, too.” In rural Canada, almost all students are enrolled in a program called 4-H (“Head, Heart, Hands, and Health”). With an almost religious fervor (including the chanting of a prayer), 4-H youth are taught about all things rural. The girls learn the domestic “arts”—our final exam was to cook a meaty meal for our instructor’s husband; the boys (and some girls) learn how to suppress their feelings of compassion for nonhuman animals, which they are taught to raise and kill for profit. Of course this isn’t how “animal husbandry” is presented, but this is the unspoken mandate of 4-H. My friend, from a dairy farmer family, was enrolled in the livestock program . She was instructed to select a newborn calf, take him as her own, learn to care for him, name him, groom him, and then present the calf at the town i-xvi_1-192_Kemm.indd 57 4/13/11 11:35 AM 58 twyla françois fair in the summer. Little did she know that she was not showing her beloved calf for his beauty—those in the audience, bidding on the calf, were meat buyers. As her calf was loaded onto a trailer to be taken away and killed, the full meaning of what she’d done hit her. There was no going back, no matter how many tears she shed or pleas she pled. This is, in fact, stipulated in the rules—no child can have his or her calf back. As quickly as possible, the organizers handed her a check for $1,000. To my surprise, her tears were quickly replaced with thoughts of how she would spend the money. I don’t know how I came to Peter Singer’s book, Animal Liberation, but I recall reading a copy when I was thirteen. (I still have this tattered, original copy.) My family rarely went to the city, and I didn’t know anyone involved in animal rights, so it’s a mystery to me how I got this book. Animal Liberation shaped my views on nonhuman animals. Singer’s words are powerful, and while the philosophy was over my head, the descriptions of what was happening to farmed animals in agriculture shocked me, and much of my teen years were spent thinking about those farmed animals and crying at night because I felt absolutely helpless. Shortly after reading this book I became a vegetarian—a change I fought with for nearly a decade. Everyone told me I needed to eat meat. In fact, they made the simple act of not eating meat almost painful. School lunches were a nightmare, and I’m sure I was seen as something of a freak. My teen years were particularly painful—there were few people who understood my beliefs, and I wasn’t yet able to communicate my understandings and feelings effectively. Only with the perpetual support of my mother was I was able to see those years through. My mother greeted each of my new beliefs with a desire to understand . We spent long hours discussing the worth of nonhuman animals. My family has, in fact, always been incredibly supportive. My now sixty-something father and my older sister supported my relatively recent move to veganism, and they became vegetarians in response. I’d like to be able to say that once I left my rural roots, and moved to the city, I became an activist. But I didn’t. In my late teens and early twenties, I was a shell of who...

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