Just in time for Passover, Fern Levitt has a message of freedom for Canadian audiences—about elephants. On April 11, her new documentary, Lucy: The Stolen Lives of Elephants, will begin streaming nationwide on CBC Gem. The film casts a harsh spotlight on the treatment of nearly two dozen elephants owned by parks and zoos in Canada, most notably Lucy, of the Edmonton Valley Zoo, whom protesters have called to be released in recent years due to her age and declining health.
To make this film, Levitt spent three years reporting on what she and others believe are irrefutable animal rights abuses. And it isn’t the first time she’s done it: her last film focused on the mistreatment of sled dogs in Alaska’s iconic Iditarod race. After learning that some sled dogs were gassed to death, she couldn’t help but draw comparisons to the Holocaust, which had been a previous artistic focus of hers.
On today’s episode of The CJN Daily, Levitt joins Ellin Bessner to explain why she went undercover to document the treatment of elephants around the world, including Lucy and the approximately 20 living at Ontario’s African Lion Safari—whose management she says has since threatened to sue her.
Transcript
Transcripts are AI-generated and may contain errors.
Ellin Bessner: And she joins me now from Toronto. Welcome to The CJN Daily for your first time.
Fern Levitt: Thank you so much. I’m glad to be here.
Ellin Bessner: The last film you did that I could find was about 10 years ago. Why did it take 10 years for this one to come out?
Fern Levitt: Well, after I did “Sled Dogs,” and that documentary is the first animal documentary I’ve ever done, and it was exposing the cruelty of the commercial sled dog industry and the laws in this country that really don’t protect our dog, i t was a very emotionally difficult film for me to make because I love animals; I love dogs. And when I’m filming these dogs in these sled dog kennels and they look at me, I can’t help them. I can’t help them. All I can do is film. And so I needed a break. I really needed a break from that. And I thought, I am not doing another animal-related documentary.
Then what happened is someone sent me a picture of Lucy. Lucy is this lone elephant in the Edmonton Zoo. She was taken from Sri Lanka when she was only two years old. Female elephants are with their herd and their mothers lifelong. She was supposedly an orphan, but she was taken from Sri Lanka and brought to the Edmonton Valley Zoo, which is one of the coldest cities in the world. She has lived predominantly mostly alone since that time. I looked at her in this cement compartment in the zoo with these painted trees, palm trees, and I looked at her and I thought, I have to help her. I have to do something to help her.
Ellin Bessner: As a person growing up in Canada, what was your own personal experience with seeing zoo elephants and even maybe riding one when you were little or even as an adult?
Fern Levitt: Yeah. I did it all. I went to zoos as a kid. I went to the African Lion Safari. I grew up in Hamilton and that was close. So I went there. Never thought two things about it. Thought, oh, this is wonderful. They’re running around free. And we did it with our kids. I have three daughters. We went to zoos. We took them to the African Lion Safari. We rode elephants. I even remember going dolphin swimming in Mexico in a pool. I knew it was wrong. I knew this was not right to keep these dolphins in these pools. But I wanted to touch a dolphin; I wanted to swim with the dolphin. So I wasn’t thinking about them. I was thinking about me and what I wanted. And it wasn’t until I did “Sled Dogs,” and we rescued a dog who had lived on a chain for nine years. I looked at him and he was depleted from that terrible life. It was my dog that really changed me. I said, I looked at him and I said, I am never going to abuse an animal again for my supposed entertainment. And that’s how I changed, but not until then. And I was in my 60s when I did that.
Ellin Bessner: So let’s get to Lucy. Describe how she was used for entertainment purposes. What are some of the things they made her or still make her do?
Fern Levitt: Well, they say now she’s retired. Who knows if that’s true? She was used to entertain the people that came to the zoo. She played this fake piano. She was there to entertain the crowds and do things that no elephant would do.
The issue with elephants and why zoos and why captivity is so wrong for them is these animals naturally roam thousands of kilometres every single year through a diverse environment, and they serve a very critical role in keeping our ecosystems in balance. As they’re traveling through this diverse environment, they’re feeding on seeds, and it passes through their body and more vegetation grows. They tear down branches so more sunlight. I mean, they’re called the gardeners of the forest. And as Dr. Joyce Poole says, who is an elephant expert, without them, forests collapse. By taking these animals who are highly intelligent and need to roam in order to stay healthy and contribute to the environment and put them in these small places where they’ve got nowhere to go and nothing to do causes all kinds of physical and psychological problems. Even though zoos say it’s about education and conservation, it’s none of that. All they’re teaching kids is that it is normalizing keeping these animals in these elaborate prisons; that’s all that is. For Lucy, for female elephants, to be taken away from her, from where she belongs, or from her herd and put alone in the Edmonton Zoo goes against everything that is natural to these animals.
Ellin Bessner: Was she ever used to breed?
Fern Levitt: They tried. They sent her to Calgary, I believe, to breed, and she didn’t. She couldn’t. Because elephants in captivity have a very difficult time breeding. They don’t have a difficult time in the wild, but they do in captivity. A lot of these animals are forced into artificial insemination.
Ellin Bessner: There were recommendations made by experts about what the Edmonton Valley Zoo should be doing. Changing her environment, changing her conditions, and these were not followed. Can you walk us through some of the things that should have been done?
Fern Levitt: Well, some of the recommendations were that she had a pool. Elephants need a pool in order to lie in, especially for her. She has such arthritis. That’s also a problem with captivity. These elephants in the wild never see any bouts of arthritis because they’re always moving their bodies. But she was obese. She had arthritis. They recommended that she had a pool that she could lie in and rest her legs. That’s never been implemented. That she had a larger space in order to roam, both indoor and outdoor—that’s never been implemented as well. All these important issues that were asked for and recommended—those are only two of the biggest examples—were not given. That they no longer use a bull hook. A bull hook is this stick with a sharp point at the end, and they continue. It is legal in Canada to use a bull hook, and they continue using a bull hook.
Ellin Bessner: With Lucy, do you feel that she could survive the transfer to or is it too late now?
Fern Levitt: No, she absolutely has to go. I spoke to Dr. London. She is the only independent veterinarian elephant expert that they brought in, and she does transportation all the time. When I spoke to her at length, she said she absolutely could go, absolutely and would survive. If she has survived almost 50 years living in the cold, she absolutely could survive the three days it would take for her to be transferred. We’re very careful in those preparations. We make sure the elephants are ready to go before we send them, and we have never lost an elephant. So, yes, she could go. To be able to finally leave that place and be around elephants for the first time and be outside deciding where she should go and what she should do in the warmth of California sunshine—what a difference from where she is right now. And as I said, elephants, female elephants are never alone at night. She’s in this barn all by herself for, like, 10 or 12 hours. And it just… I can’t even think about it. So heartbreaking. And it’s a black mark on who we are as a country and as a people by keeping this animal basically a prisoner.
Ellin Bessner: In your previous films, you’ve dealt with the Holocaust. Not only references in terms of the actual going on the March of the Living and filming those, but in the sled dogs, I was very interested in how you saw that they were being gassed and chained and kept. And you called them concentration camps. Why do you feel this way about animals, when some Holocaust survivors, people, might not appreciate using that. It’s a very fraught way. You’re probably aware of it.
Fern Levitt: Because of the similarities, because of the unbelievable… And of course, I was aware that there would be survivors and survivors’ children that were sensitive to me using that. But there were so many similarities. One of the places that I filmed, I was told by somebody, a whistleblower who worked there, that… And this is a place in Huntsville, so not that far away, that every spring they would sit around. The owners and the staff that worked there would sit around and decide which animal, which dog was going to live and which dog was going to die. And there was deprivation of food. I mean, when we rescued our dog, he was 20 pounds underweight and constantly drinking water because he was deprived of that and kept them in the most horrific conditions. They sat from six months old to the day that they died or were shot. They were on a chain. And then one of the places that we exposed in Quebec, the owner had built a gas chamber. And when I was told by a whistleblower who worked at that place that there was a gas chamber where they were gassing puppies and dogs, I was… You know, it… It was… I… I just thought, I can’t live in a country that has built a gas chamber and is gassing these puppies. It’s too close. When I filmed a documentary on the Holocaust, I was in those gas chambers. And that, to me, was just intolerable.
Ellin Bessner: Our listeners should know there were charges laid against the owners.
Fern Levitt: Right. They were guilty, and they’re still awaiting sentencing.
Ellin Bessner: Does that [Holocaust parallel] also work for this film, or is it not as much for you?
Fern Levitt: Yeah, it works for the film because they’re also taken from where they belong and raised in these unnatural settings and suffer horribly. And for me, you know, it’s… We have to do better than this. We have to do better than this.
And, you know, I mean, we all fell for it. The zoos are very good at telling us that this is all about conservation and education. And when we go to the African Lion Safari and we sit in our cars and we’re traveling through, we feel like we’re at an African safari, you know, and that the animals are free and walking around. And it’s a really great illusion that they’ve built there, but it’s nothing but an illusion. We filmed throughout the wintertime. We used a drone, and we filmed throughout the winter, into the spring. And in our documentary, it shows that none of these animals are outside; they’re all inside. And someone told me who worked there that the elephants are chained in a barn all winter long. So what you see when you go there in the summer is not the reality of this place. It’s all an illusion. Plus, the fact that they would separate babies from their mothers. So for the African Lion Safari to say we’re all about conservation and education, and in my film, they were very critical about the film, basically calling me a liar when in 2021 they tried to do this. Elephants are so attached to their babies, to their herd, that to take a baby away from a mother is the same thing as taking a human baby away from a human mother.
Ellin Bessner: How much do they get for these elephants when they sell them?
Fern Levitt: A million dollars. They were going to get 2 million for two elephants. So it’s a money-making venture. And of course, you know that she’s an elephant, so she brings in a lot of tourists, a lot of money, and that’s what zoos are. They’re all about money and not for the betterment of these animals.
Ellin Bessner: We’re interviewing you just in the middle of a Canadian federal election. And I’m not sure our listeners may have heard about the bill that came through the Senate of Canada before the Trudeau government paroled Parliament. Proposed changes to the Criminal Code that would have outlawed having elephants for captivity, for entertainment, and they called it the Jane Goodall Law. So now what are you worried about now that we’re having an election, and who knows who’s going to be the next Prime Minister?
Fern Levitt: Well, first of all, I want to talk about that. That was an act to end the captivity of great apes and elephants. So it wasn’t just elephants; it was great apes as well. And if that bill passes and becomes law in this country, we will be the first country in the world to end elephant and great ape captivity. That’s huge. The first country in the world. And for some reason, and I don’t understand the reason, and I’m gonna be political right here, the Conservative Senate and the Conservative Party have voted against most every progressive animal welfare law. They were against the Free Willy Act, which… why would they be against the Free Willy Act? But they were and fought against it tooth and nail. And they were against this act as well and fought against it tooth and nail because the Liberal Senate tried to bring more animals into that act to stop the captivity of other animals as well. And this should all be a nonpartisan issue, and it’s not. And why they’re fighting against animals and better laws for animals when people in this country care deeply for animals and certainly care deeply for their dogs, they’re on the wrong side of this. So I truly believe, and I know because I’m working with this with the Canadian Senate because of my film that if the Liberals get in again and Carney becomes Prime Minister, that bill, Bill S-15, will be introduced again. And I believe it will pass, and we will be the first country to stop the captivity of elephants and great apes. And that is a very, very big deal.
Ellin Bessner: Going back to the number of elephants, you mentioned African Lion Safari. I didn’t… I don’t think our listeners realize how many actual elephants are living in Canada, in either zoos or circuses or what have you. Do you know? And where are most of them located?
Fern Levitt: Well, the African Lion Safari is actually the largest breeder of elephants in North America and has the most number of elephants of any zoos in North America. They have about 17 or 18 elephants, and there’s a lot of breeding going on, and there’s a lot of selling of these elephants that continue to this day. And there are elephants in Quebec somewhere as well, and then there’s Lucy in Edmonton. So we don’t have many, but we do have the African Lion Safari, and they’re fighting Bill S-15, you know, tooth and nail because elephants are big business. They breed them and breed them and then sell the males to other zoos. And when I was filming undercover, they would tell the public, well, there’s no wild left. There’s no wild left. So we’re serving a very important role here in keeping these species alive because, without us, they would become extinct. And that’s the same place that was beating the crap out of these elephants in order to get them to perform tricks.
Ellin Bessner: Is there no example that you would recommend of good places that kids who can’t go to safaris can see, or how they can learn about it?
Fern Levitt: What rhey need to do? And the example that we showed is what’s going on in Buenos Aires, in Argentina. It was brilliant. And what they’ve done is they’re using robotics and animation to teach children about wild animals, which is what they do when teaching them about dinosaurs. Kids are fascinated by dinosaurs, but there’s none left, yet they’re still learning about them. The message the zoo gave, the ecopark gave, was that kids, we need to protect the wild for the sake of the animals, for the sake of our planet, and for the sake of us. And that’s a very different message from what zoos give out, which is that the animals belong here and it’s important that you’re educated. So, parents, if your kids want to learn about wild animals, and they need to learn about wild animals, you don’t need to see them. What you can do is watch wonderful documentaries about wild animals where you actually learn about them, because what you’re going to do by taking them to zoos is showing them animals that aren’t acting the way they do in the wild. You’re teaching your kids, as I did, that it’s acceptable to keep these animals in elaborate prisons and there’s no learning in that.
Ellin Bessner: There’s an interesting coincidence of timing. Your film comes out at the end of March, spring, beginning of April, right before Passover, which is the Jewish festival of freedom. Have you considered navigating your film and then the holiday which asks for “Let my people go” and putting those two together?
Fern Levitt: Oh, my God, that’s so beautiful. Well, I’m really hoping, because we, as Jews who’ve been through what we’ve been through, have been enslaved and have been killed because of the cruelty of others, that we especially have a responsibility to protect these animals because they have as much right to live on this planet as we do, and they have as much right to freedom and respect as we do.
Ellin Bessner: Well, it is even in the Jewish customs, in the Torah, which is Tsar Baale Chayim, to be mindful of the pain of animals. It’s a mitzvah.
Fern Levitt: Yeah, it is a. It is a mitzvah.
Ellin Bessner: Thank you very much.
Fern Levitt: Thanks so much.
Editor’s note: The CJN reached out to African Lion Safari for a comment on the new film’s allegations.
“African Lion Safari will not be commenting on any legal action, current or pending, but will offer that in Ontario, it is illegal to knowingly lie with the intent to defame someone’s reputation and that in cases where you know you’re lying, there is no public participation protection for doing so,” said Trish Gerth, the park’s general manager, in a written statement.
“African Lion Safari continues to provide world-leading elephant care for our herd and has been at the forefront of many critical research and conservation initiatives for the Asian elephant species. We soundly reject any allegation that, at any time, any elephant in our care has been mistreated or abused.”
According to the statement, Canada has robust animal cruelty laws that protect all animals from distress, mistreatment, and abuse.
Show Notes
Related links
- Watch the documentary “Lucy: The Stolen Lives of Elephants”, on CBC Gem, beginning April 11.
- Learn more about the volunteers lobbying for Lucy’s freedom, on their website Leap for Lucy.
- Read about Fern Levitt and her family volunteering to help an orphanage in South Africa, in The CJN, in 2008.
Credits
- Host and writer: Ellin Bessner (@ebessner)
- Production team: Zachary Kauffman (senior producer), Andrea Varsany (producer), Michael Fraiman (executive producer), Mark Weisblott, editorial director.
- Music: Dov Beck-Levine
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