A committed environmentalist and advocate for animals, Glenn launched a variety of projects and pushed for municipal guidelines and laws that protect animals, both wild and domesticated.
New Animal Hospital
Toronto’s first municipal animal hospital opened thanks to Glenn’s assistance in raising funds for the project. The hospital, located next to Scarborough’s animal shelter, has performed more than 11,000 operations. City vets can now provide better care for sick and injured animals that come into the shelter.
Banning Puppy Mills in Toronto
Glenn passed a motion to ban the sale of cats and dogs at retail stores in Toronto. This bylaw made it much harder for puppy mills—which mass produce dogs in horrible conditions—to sell their animals. The fewer animals sold by puppy mill owners means fewer abused animals.
Outdoor Dog Kennels at Our Animal Shelter
Glenn helped to build a one-acre outdoor dog kennel and exercise area adjacent to our Scarborough Animal Shelter, so that dogs can be walked, trained and played with by volunteers. Our dogs will have a healthier environment and our residents will meet happier, healthier animals to adopt!
Toronto’s—and Canada’s—First Mobile Spay and Neuter Clinic
Glenn worked hard to purchase the City’s—and Canada’s—first mobile spay and neuter clinic. This amazing project has been made possible with the help of many people, but especially PetSmart Charities, which donated $250,000 toward the purchase of the state-of-the-art vehicle. The mobile clinic reaches out to many lower-income communities in Toronto, offering free or subsidized spay and neuter services to families who often do not have a veterinarian for their animal and whose limited incomes deter them from spaying or neutering their pets. The mobile vehicles will also become part of the City’s emergency response team to provide temporary shelter and emergency medical assistance to animals in need (e.g., at fires in high-rise buildings, where hundreds of people and their pets may be urgently evacuated). Read more…
Free Spay and Neuter Clinic for Feral Cat Rescue Groups
Glenn helped create a free spay/neuter clinic (paid for mostly through private donations), so that volunteers who rescue stray cats can have them spayed/neutered in an attempt to control and reduce Toronto’s cat overpopulation problem.
Banning Shark Fins in Toronto
Working closely with Councillor Kristyn Wong-Tam, Glenn helped to ban shark fins in the City of Toronto. Shark finning is a cruel and barbaric practice whereby live sharks are removed from the ocean, their fins cut off while they’re still alive, and then thrown back into the ocean where they either drown or bleed to death.
Licensing of Wildlife Operators
Glenn worked hard to try to pass legislation to require animal control companies to be licensed in order to ensure that operators do not use cruel or lethal means to trap or remove animals, do not spread disease, and do not cheat the public.
Toronto Wildlife Centre
Glenn worked closely with the Toronto Wildlife Centre to find them a permanent location to build the largest wildlife hospital in Canada. The 34,000-square-foot animal hospital is located in the Rouge Valley National Park. It operates on and rehabilitates thousands of creatures per year, with some 270 species of birds, animals, reptiles and amphibians walking or waddling through its doors.
Supporting FLAP
Glenn worked closely with the Fatal Light Awareness Program (FLAP) to create the first, mandatory bird-friendly development guidelines in the world. In City-owned buildings, a lights-out policy has been in place since 2005, and, in 2006, the city-wide “Lights Out Toronto” public awareness campaign was launched. This campaign is part of the bird-friendly policies adopted by Toronto City Council in 2006. These policies are included in the award-winning Bird-Friendly Development Guidelines, which suggest ways to mitigate the dangers that buildings pose to migrating birds. The guidelines are being reviewed and copied by other municipalities around the world, including New York and Chicago. In 2010, the City launched the Toronto Green Standard, which requires bird-friendly elements to be incorporated into almost all new development in Toronto.
Protecting Cormorants in Toronto
Working with some our city’s other bird lovers, Glenn took steps to protect the colony of cormorants nesting on Tommy Thompson Park (aka the Leslie Street Spit). The colony has grown to nearly 12,000 pairs of double-crested cormorants and is the largest nesting colony on the north shore of Lake Ontario.
Retiring Our Three Elephants
Working closely with Councillors Raymond Cho and Michelle Holland Berardinetti, Glenn took steps to move our three aging Toronto Zoo elephants to a large elephant sanctuary in sunny California. Our elephants lived in a small two-acre compound and stayed inside a barn during our cold winters. Elephants need large spaces and warm weather, and ours received a warm welcome at the best elephant care facility in North America.
New Cat Adoption Room
Glenn helped build a new 1,200-sq.-ft. cat and kitten adoption room at the Scarborough Animal Centre, so that shelter cats would have a large, cheerful environment instead of the cold, hard windowless rooms they previously had.
First Municipal Cat Recovery Centre in Canada
Glenn helped create the first City-supported feral cat recovery centre in North America. The old 2,000-sq.-foot industrial unit is run by volunteers and has 20 to 30 cats per night recovering from spay/neuter operations—with over 3,000 cats per year recovering in this centre before they are released back into their community (minus the ability to breed).
New Air Filters and Air Conditioning in Scarborough Animal Centre
Glenn helped raise funds to install a new HVAC system at the Scarborough Animal Centre that does two important things: first, the HVAC system provides air conditioning, for the first time, to the animals in the shelter. While this may seem like a small change, it is important that abandoned, stressed animals in the shelter feel a bit more comfortable in the long, hot summer days. Second, the new HVAC system filters the air of pathogens, thereby reducing the amount of disease and colds (known as “kennel cough”) that spreads through the shelter.