BARBARA CARTWRIGHT HAS ALWAYS LOVED ANIMALS, AND SHE HAS LIVED WITH
a lot of them. “At one point in my house, we had two dogs, 12 cats, 17 rats, two hamsters and a
guinea pig,” she says. “It wasn’t intentional; it just happened that way.”
An early lesson from her mother helped plant the seed that caring for wildlife can be shown
in different ways. “I took a garter snake out of the garden, put it in a container with some grass
and called my mom over to see it,” says Cartwright. “She fawned over the snake and then said,
‘Now I think you need to send it back because its family will be missing it.’ I carry that forward
into the work I do today around recognizing the needs of animals and other creatures.”
As CEO of the Canadian Federation of Humane Societies (CFHS), Cartwright is a champion
of animal welfare at every level. Her scope of work spans a variety of issues, from tackling cat
overpopulation to improving Canada’s dismal farm-animal transportation laws to addressing
globally significant events, such as the (at least) 13 North Atlantic right whales that have per-
ished off the East Coast since June 2017.
“They’re the most critically endangered large whales in the world,” she says. “There are only
about 450 left, so two percent of their population have died due to ship strikes in Canada
because they’ve moved their feeding space. Part of my job is to speak to the public about whatbest health DECEMBER | JANUARY 2018 35IMAGE COURTESY OF VALERIE KEELER, VALBERG IMAGING; ILLUSTRATION, ISTOCK