Durham's patron saint of animals leaves legacy of love
Aug 21, 2008 - 10:11 AM
Joyce Smith's dedication to caring for the orphaned, abandoned and abused animals of Durham Region is her epitaph. And it's now up to our community to ensure that her worst nightmare doesn't come true: the eventual extermination of the animals she left behind.
The founder and operator of the Second Chance Wildlife Sanctuary, a familiar face and name to many in Durham, died Monday at age 79.
Since 1996, she operated the sanctuary on land graciously donated by the Cherry Downs Golf and Country Club. While cats especially found a home and a lot of love in Joyce's care, she accepted other animals as well, including skunks and raccoons. Guinea pig or gopher, exotic or native bird, they all had one thing in common: they wouldn't have survived without Joyce.
It was a full-time job for her, one that people half her age would have had a hard time doing. No, more accurately, caring for animals was her life. Joyce rose before 6 a.m. every day and began the task of feeding the 200 or 300 cats in her care, medicating those that needed it and cleaning their litter boxes. These and other jobs kept her busy until about 1 a.m., when she would finally retire.
Funding was always an issue. Events and fundraisers were held to raise money for Second Chance, but it was always on precarious ground.
Joyce's biggest fear, one that kept her awake nights and that she shared with the News Advertiser earlier this year, was that she would die and all of the animals would be destroyed. She knew dedicated Second Chance volunteers would carry on the shelter work, but Joyce believed that not owning the land on which the shelter sits would probably be a death sentence for the creatures she loved so much.
"We've decided we're going to keep it going as long as we can," M.J. Galaski, a member of the sanctuary's board of directors, told us this week. "We need as much public support as we can get. We're going to try and continue Joyce's dream."
Not all of us want to take a cat home, but if you do, think of Second Chance. And you don't have to adopt an animal from the sanctuary to help. Donations or volunteers are always welcomed and needed even more now. Visit
www.second-chance.ws or call 905-839-2575, ext. 150, an emergency number at lawyer Michael Head's office, if you can help in any way.
We owe it to Joyce to do what we can to ensure the animals to whom she devoted her life are not tossed away like trash. She put in 19 hour days almost every day, to the detriment of her own health, to care for creatures that had been treated this way. She can no longer labour for her animals and is at rest. But, she won't be at peace if a life of caring went for naught and her beloved creatures perish.
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