Spotlight: Louise Jorgensen

Reconnecting with purpose: animal rights activist comes full circle.

I’ve always had a deep connection with animals. Maybe more so than with other humans. Their intentions are always clear and pure and I know exactly where I stand with them. They don’t judge, bully, want to fool or compete. When I respect them, they give me respect. They treat everyone as equal.

During my childhood I kept a menagerie of mice, hamsters, guinea pigs, rabbits, dogs, and cats. I held a fundraiser on my front lawn for the Toronto Humane Society when I was ten years old. My mother was never terribly fond of having animals in her house, and didn’t quite understand my connection with them, but she usually tolerated my need anyway. When I was 12 my uncle purchased a cage filled with rabbits from a downtown Toronto butcher when I became inconsolable after bearing witness to them. My uncle helped me to build an outdoor pen in my backyard and we found loving homes for most of them.

In high school, I connected with a couple of students who were also friends to animals and we decided to organize an animal rights club. None of us were vegetarian or really knew that it was possible. All our lives we’re taught that eating animals is necessary. We didn’t know what our goal was with this club but we knew we wanted to stop people from harming animals. We called a Toronto cow slaughterhouse and asked if we could come to bear witness and, to our surprise (and horror), they said yes. We were not permitted to film but what I witnessed that day is forever engraved on my heart.

We called a Toronto cow slaughterhouse and asked if we could come to bear witness and, to our surprise (and horror), they said yes. We were not permitted to film but what I witnessed that day is forever engraved on my heart.

I remember a worker prodding the cow into a rusty metal box, barely larger than the cow himself. The cow looked around, eyes wide in fear. He looked right at us then suddenly tried to leap from the box toward us, his face not far from my own. Did he understand that we cared? Other animals are far more intuitive that humans. I was trying not to appear affected by this cow’s execution but I couldn’t contain my feelings. I started to cry. I remember shouting, “No!”. The worker laughed as he prodded the cow back into the box and shot him with a bolt gun, the piercing sound ricocheting off the cold, concrete, blood stained factory walls. I remember the side of the box lifting and the stunned cow sliding down a concrete slope toward another worker waiting at the bottom. The worker looped a chain around his back leg and he was lifted, still kicking, two stories high on a conveyor that took him around a corner to be cut into pieces. My heart was pounding. I couldn’t believe what I had just witnessed.

Although I knew that animals had to be killed for us to eat, like many, I didn’t know - or want to know - the details. Wasn’t eating animals necessary? My mother referred to killing and eating animals as, “the necessary evil” but I questioned: is any evil necessary? Witnessing this cow being killed cracked open a wall of social conditioning in my heart that felt like a dam collapsing, flooding my mind and heart with intense emotions and questions. “How could this be happening?”, “Why is everyone okay with this?”.

With this shocking experience fresh in our minds, we wrote an article and handed it out to students at our school- at least those willing to look at it. We didn’t have social media back then and getting information to others was extremely limited and completely manual. We didn’t have, at our fingertips, quick and easy ways to spread information or to network with other activists and organizations like we do today. Few students showed interested in our cause so our club dissolved and I lost contact with my friends.

Fast forward many years, now a mother, we moved from the city to a rural area near Toronto. In 2007 my son Cameron - who was 12 and mostly vegetarian all of his life - and I decided to become vegan together after learning about the dairy industry. We visited animals at a small slaughterhouse near our home when no one was there, bringing them treats and letting them know we care. I was feeling a strong pull to get active again to help these animals and began searching for a way.

Victims penned at a rural slaughterhouse near my home. | 2010

After some research, I discovered that Peta was holding a protest at a large Toronto pig slaughterhouse. Cameron and I both attended the protest where we connected with other animal activists - some of whom I still work with today.

Protest organized by Peta at Quality Meat Packers pig slaughterhouse, 2011 | Photo: Toronto Sun

At this protest I also met Anita Krajnc who lived nearby and wanted to hold ongoing protests at this slaughterhouse. The following month I attended the inaugural Toronto Pig Save protest and continued to drive 80km downtown two, sometimes three times each week to help organize, create graphics and placards for, photograph, and be a voice for animals again. I was ecstatic to finally connect with more people who felt like I did.

“Pig Island” 2012 | Photo: Julie O’Neill

I have always been creative and loved photography but didn’t have a specific focus for my work. I’ve worked hard to master my photography skills so that I could more effectively get these victims seen by the public, focusing on their individualism so that others will see them as someone.

Toronto Pig Save 2013 | Photo: Anita Krajnc

After the pig slaughterhouse suddenly went bankrupt in 2014, I began organizing weekly vigils for the cows at Canada Packers (now St. Helen’s Meat Packers) in the Stockyards District of Toronto where I first bore witness to a cow being slaughtered. I am still organizing vigils for the cows to this day and encouraging others to come to bear witness to them. Thousands of people have come to witness the suffering that these sentient beings experience to become that faceless slab of flesh in the grocery store. Countless attendees have said that they would never again contribute to their suffering including former butchers, a steak house manager, a priest, and everyday consumers.

Feeling the heavy energy from the cows | Photo: Agnes Cseke

I had reconnected with the part of me that wanted, and needed, to help these animals. A part of me that was always there but that bottled for so long. Although there have been many distractions and forks in the road, I have come full circle. Back to the reason why I was put on this planet. Back to the place where my heart was first cracked open all those years ago by bearing witness to the execution of the cow. Back to being a voice for the most vulnerable, exploited, and murdered beings on this planet. And I will be for the rest of my life.
~ Louise Jorgensen

Follow Louise’s Animal Sentience Project website and Instagram for more animal photojournalism, photography, and animal rights content.

Bearing witness to cows used for their milk at St. Helen’s slaughterhouse in Toronto.

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