Tim Trow had one sacred rule for the Toronto Humane Society: save every pet. But the shelter grew overcrowded and chaotic, the staff mutinied, and the police shut the place down.
Tim Trow, in his midtown home, became obsessed with animal welfare during a childhood spent on a North York farm (Image: Rob MacInnis)
Bandit was less than two years old when he arrived in August 2003 at the squat River Street building occupied by the Toronto Humane Society. A dark brown pit bull–Labrador cross with a square face, he was surrendered by his owner after he attacked her three-year-old grandson, leaving him with head wounds that required 200 stitches.
Bandit found an ally in Tim Trow, the society’s president at the time. Trow, a tall, imposing 300-pound lawyer with short greying hair, kept the dog loose and unmuzzled in the THS meeting room he used as his office. They shared the space with as many as 30 caged cats and kittens. Bandit would bark and lunge at their cages, and once closed his powerful jaws on a mother cat’s front paw, pulling off the skin and tissue—“degloving” it, as veterinarians say—and fracturing several bones.
Bandit became a symbol of the lengths to which Trow would go to reduce the THS’s euthanasia rate to almost nil. He protected diseased and aggressive animals, even those that were considered to be dangerous or close to death. The biggest obstacle in Trow’s crusade was the Ontario Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, the provincial body that oversees 46 branches and affiliate shelters, including the THS. To Trow, the OSPCA represented the worst kind of animal management, prioritizing population control over care.
The directors of the OSPCA, in turn, suspected Trow was an out-of-control zealot who put his staff at risk by sheltering animals like Bandit. Many employees said they were scared of the dog and kept their distance, and at least three complained of being bitten. The OSPCA heard numerous complaints about Trow’s management style and his vindictiveness toward any staff member who disagreed with him. And they believed his reluctance to euthanize had resulted in a facility where almost every room, including Trow’s office, was crowded with neglected animals.
The OSPCA’s directors decided Trow had to go: the THS had become a mismanaged sanctuary, with Trow and his team collecting animals that the staff couldn’t begin to take care of. To get rid of him, they’d have to prove that the city’s biggest self-professed lover of animals was a torturer and a criminal.
The OSPCA, which formed in 1873, is an organization with unusual powers: a charity that enforces provincial laws. In addition to running animal shelters, the OSPCA hires and licenses inspectors, called peace officers, who work on behalf of the Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Services to investigate incidents of animal cruelty by individuals and by operations like puppy mills. Although it receives government funding to train inspectors, it relies on charitable donations to carry out its enforcement work. (In 2009, it received gifts worth $15.6 million.) In the decades after the OSPCA’s founding, as various humane societies formed across the province, many joined forces with it. Branches are now governed by the main OSPCA office in Newmarket, while affiliates manage their own affairs and hire their own inspectors.
The THS is the rebel affiliate of the OSPCA family. It was launched 14 years after the OSPCA, by John Joseph Kelso, a Toronto journalist who was concerned about the cruel treatment of animals in the city. Many of the THS’s recent members were involved in or influenced by the 1970s radical animal rights movement, which condemned the subjugation of animals in society. One THS president staged a hunger strike protesting medical testing on animals; others have organized campaigns against the fur industry and whaling.
The practice of euthanasia has been the biggest flashpoint in the OSPCA’s dispute with the THS. Before deciding to euthanize an animal, veterinarians typically consider its level of pain or distress, the probability of curing serious diseases or chronic medical conditions, and whether the animal is aggressive or dangerous. An overdose of the drug phenobarbital is injected into a vein on a front leg (more common for dogs) or hind leg (more common for cats, who dislike the anaesthetic’s smell of alcohol). The phenobarbital usually shuts down the animal’s heart and lungs within a minute, sometimes before the full dose is delivered. It induces sleep, making for a calm death, although reflex brain activity will sometimes make an animal twitch.
The THS—especially under Trow—kept euthanasia rates low. He argued that if our hospitals didn’t have enough beds, or if pneumonia was prevalent there, we wouldn’t exterminate the patients. The OSPCA and most other shelters regularly dole out lethal injections in order to keep the shelter population under control or to cope with infectious diseases. This past May, there was a public outcry when the OSPCA’s Newmarket shelter revealed plans to euthanize more than 300 animals because of a ringworm outbreak. (Ringworm, similar to athlete’s foot in people, is contagious but curable and not terribly painful.) In the end, the OSPCA euthanized 102 cats while protesters lined the streets demanding the animals be spared.
Finally, some decent research on the issue instead of the endless rhetoric! We’d have even more facts had the media not stuck its muck-raking nose into the investigation while it was still ongoing. No one looks good here, the whole mess was botched from start to end.
February 10, 2011 at 1:34 pm | by KarinNo one will ever agree on the value of letting sick and injured animals die in their cages versus euthanizing them, but low rates are nearly always bolstered by overcrowding (which promotes stress and disease) as well as pawning off unadoptable animals to Animal Control so a 7% rate is fishy at best. This happens at several shelters in Ontario.
The bottom line is that hiring unqualified workers and putting staff at risk of injury and death is unconscionable and illegal. He should be in prison for that alone. However, there is ample evidence that indicates that he is a hoarder. Prison terms do not help with that, only treatment. I hope he is getting it.
Under all the rhetoric is the fact that a few disgruntled employees with a personality conflict with their boss (Mr. Trow) manipulated the OSPCA (who for their own reasons were only too willing to be involved) into bringing down the Toronto Humane Society.
People should be aware that the “new” THS run now by the “reformers” does not take in strays. In other words, they are no longer rescuing. They “work with” other rescue groups, which means they cherry-pick from other rescues, taking adoptable cats and dogs from them for the River Street location. They accept pets from owners who have to relinquish them, on payment of a fee ($60 I believe it is) but they don’t accept “drop-offs” or “found dogs.” All lost and abandoned dogs and cats are left now for the OSPCA and their euthanasia policy.
The old THS mandate of helping abandoned and neglected animals has been lost in the “reformers” quest for pristine and spacious conditions and happy unhurried staff. And that’s why people like myself who supported the “old” THS will not fund the “new” one and are finding other rescue groups to support.
February 10, 2011 at 7:36 pm | by JudithLena, I am so very sorry about your cousin’s death. I’d heard rumours of his death and the reason, but neither was ever confirmed in print anywhere. It was absolutely avoidable if he had received antibiotic treatment immediately after the bite.
The THS raid was about the suffering and dying of the animals, and the old guard had to go in order for the animals’ suffering and dying to stop.
The new board is making a huge difference in the operations of the THS. If you withdrew support because of the old guard, please write, call or visit the new THS. I think you’ll be pleased and hope you’ll consider returning your support to THS.
Reva D, bite me. You have no idea what people are involved in or working on, and personally I can work on more than one issue at a time. This is an animal welfare issue, take your poverty ragging to an appropriate article. Otherwise, I’ll start going on poverty articles and rag you about animal welfare. Hey, go for it, put your money where your mouth is; sell everything you’ve got and give it away. I’d pay a buck to see that. Get over it. There will always be poverty. So long as one person has more than another, the latter will be crying poverty regardless of how hard the former worked for it.
February 15, 2011 at 10:32 pm | by Social MangeJudith, by law the THS CANNOT accept strays. The old THS was breaking the law by taking strays.
The old THS didn’t work with rescues, even though rescues tried very, very hard to get animals moved out of that hellhole. The new THS does work with rescues.
Get yer research right.
February 15, 2011 at 10:34 pm | by Social MangeI worked at the THS for many years at a time when we believe in helping owners keep there pets rather then take them from them and running a low cost spay/neuter clinic to help reduce population. We worked with rescue people to help place difficult pets and made sure all animals were spay/neutered or at least a committment was made to do so once they were of age. Once Mr Trow came on board life for staff and animals changed and in a negative way. I was told we didn’t need rescue groups help because animals didn’t need to be rescued from the THS. But they did and so did all of us staff. Coming to work each day and picking out all the dead animals before starting work took it’s toll on many of us and our dreams of helping animals was desolved into a dread of going to work to face animals we couldn’t help. I stated to Mr Trow that it was wrong that a lost healthy animal comes here just to become so ill it dies and was harassed and told it I didn’t like it leave and I did but feel sadden. No matter how the end of his time came about I thanked god for all the animals that would never have to enter those doors to suffer again
February 20, 2011 at 7:01 pm | by SadieI read this article with interest for two reasons. First as a fourth year vet student I know and understand the ethical dilemmas surrounding euthanasia. Believe me it is never an easy decision and no vet ever wants to euthanize an animal, however the oath we take when we graduate is that we will up hold animal welfare above everything else, and unfortunately sometimes that means euthanizing an animal. At the end of the day the major issue for me with the way Tim Trow ran the THS was that he did not allow the vets on staff to make clinical decisions for what was in the best interests of the animals welfare. This would create a very stressful working environment and it is illegal. Secondly on a personal note I volunteered at the THS the summer after my first year of vet school and was appalled with what occurred. There were very few trained staff members attempting to provide medical care for far too many animals. I primarily worked in the kitten nursery and it wasn’t uncommon to find at least 3 or 4 kittens that had died in their cages every time I was in. Over all it was a very negative experience. I sincerely hope that the changes being implemented will be positive ones and that the THS will go back to it’s former self
February 21, 2011 at 4:06 pm | by RobinDoes anyone recall that cat that died in a trap in the ceiling? I DO. I also recall many other cats that died SLOWLY and PAINFULLY in the Distemper Room. The only and one time I was in that room (I have pet cats so I could not go in there due to policy) was enough to traumatize me for life. The neglect, the pain in there, it was horrible. That’s how Trow kept the euthanasia numbers low: Death of ‘natural causes’ aka NEGLECT. Who knows how long it took that poor cat in that trap in the ceiling to die of starvation. What a horrible death. That cat was not a stray, he had a name. It’s been proven. Get some facts.
February 22, 2011 at 1:28 pm | by Mirniewhat was the dead cats name?
December 12, 2011 at 10:02 pm | by Curious