Andrée, I read your essay and thought I would share a few personal thoughts (en anglais): Thank you for your time taken to write down your thoughts.

I met a pansy yesterday; he was crying his eyes out by the garden. When I asked him what was so distressing him, he said 'my other pansy friends and I were having a gab in the sunshine and blowing in the breeze with some grass when all of a sudden somebody ripped us out by the roots and didn't give tuppence that they were hurting us and letting us bleed our life-giving waters into the stinging chlorinated waters in the vase.'

Being a pansy myself, I know what its like to have other people say hurtful, hateful and spiteful things to me about matters that are really not theirs to decide without caring a whittle that I might have feelings too. It is an easy thing to cast aspersions at people we deem by our own standards to be Untermenschen.

A druid will not cut a tree or snip a rose until asking the Spirit of the Forest and Fields for the blessing and the right to cut down that which is living and green. I think this is a sensible approach.

In a glat-kosher slaughterhouse, the highly ritualized and scrutinized shechita (slaughter) of an acceptable animal is done by a shochet with much care and devotion to The Faith and the life of the animal, such that it "offends not The Father." Indeed, next to freshly broken glass, the ritual knife of the Shochet is one of the sharpest surface known and the 'one stroke' rule is such that the animal simply loses consciousness during the prayers and laying-on of hands to comfort it.

I'm an unrepentant and grateful meat-eater. I like my Ontario Beef (Prime Rib Roast) rare, et je fais un rôti de lard comme le façon que j'appris de mon grand-maman Tessier, née dans le village de St. Marc-des-Carrières, CO. Portneuf. I serve local turkey with gratitude for Canadian Thanksgiving and use the left-overs to make nutritious food for my loving dog. I buy my meat for my table and my business through a responsible supplier that I personally know and I have been present during slaughter as is custom for the men in my family who are chefs and highly trained butchers.

A different perspective on animal cruelty: I knew a family who tried to enforce a vegan diet on their puppy - a wonderful happy English Bull Terrier. Poor dog; they killed it within three weeks from malnutrition. They said it was toxicity from meat in the dog's system. I need to gag, excuse me.

What I find most amusing is that rather than be sucked into the maelstrom of your anger, I can remain quite calm and pleasant and invariably end up saying "look who's doing all the shouting" at so-called 'activists'. I don't need a bullhorn to make my point or express passion. I use the pen and the word in any number of languages I am pleased to speak, quite successfully so.

Some Anglophones often yell at my French-only or Norwegian-only speaking family or friends; yelling at somebody who doesn't speak your language or understand you doesn't make them understand better; it only makes the person doing the yelling look aggressive and lacking in perspective and the ability to rationally make one's point.

Some vegans or vegetarians are quite social with me and cast not judgements on my free choice. In turn, I am enabled to respect their choice.

In my private life, I unquestionably believe in the Doctrine of Transubstantiation and in a loving Creator that frees me of guilt and anger. Ergo by extention of your thesis, am I not culpable of eating meat through The Host (sic. Flesh) and therefore should immediately stop this my bounden duty by my own free choice as a Canadian who choses what and how to worship? You're brash! And your apologia is flawed by guilt and a rage that has you poisoned to the point that you resort to swearing, much like the soldiers I served with, defending innocent children from the murderous Provisional IRA in Northern Ireland in the 1970's. Yes, I have quite a history, don't I? Wisdom and Age are the gifts of Time.

Nei-Nei my child, you nor your kind shall not dictate to this free spirit or to the customers I thankfully serve who are grateful for my skills and caring devotion to my art. I'll go on eating my Ontario-raised meat and poultry, enjoying my Ontario-grown vegetables and fruits, and feeding my beautiful and unconditionally loving Red Setter, his favourite Ontario venison and Ontario duck. And I remember to be grateful to the Almighty Creator whom I choose to call God that He blessed ALL OF US in Canada with the freedom of choice and all good things to eat as we so please.

Ah, my Home And Native Land; we Canadians resolved this Neanderthal debate years ago by deciding that it was a Canadian woman's right to choose and a private matter between herself, her physician and the God of her understanding. Vivre la libertée!