Meet Tom.....

Last month I attended the Annual General Meeting of the DSC and after all the financial stuff was taken care of we could enjoy our guest speaker Josey Kitson. It was really an honour to meet her, I have heard her name around many times and I always get emails from her, but never met. Josie is the Executive Director of the Canadian Division of WSPA. What an absolute delightful young woman with so much passion and drive for the work WSPA does. Her presentation that evening was about different animal charities in Canada and then global. It was a very interesting presentation, and we talked about the current undertakings of WSPA, e.g getting Tim Horton's to take a stand against cruelty to farm animals, which they are on their way to do so. So applaud for that. During her presentation she mentioned one foundation, of which I haven't heard of at that time, but was immediately intrigued, mostly because these animals are also one of my favourite animal. It is the Fauna Foundation, which is located just outside Montreal. The Fauna Foundation was established in 1997 and  deemed at first as a rescue for unwanted animals of any kind, especially farm animals, but their main focus has become the rescue and nurturing of chimpanzees that were rescued from research or needed a home after a lab has been shut down. They welcomed 15 chimpanzees from the laboratory for experimental medicine and surgery and took three more in that were used for research as children. Sadly seven of them have passed away and the 12 remaining residents have won the hearts and minds of thousands of people and are ambassadoers for thousands of chimpanzees still held in labs and zoos throughout the world.
The stories Josey told about the chimps were just amazing and it is hard to imagine what these creatures have gone through in their life time. During the travel through the Fauna Foundation this is were I have met Tom, and omg he stole my heart right away and so did his caretaker Pat. Here is their story.....