Gotta die some time

"Everyone's gotta die some time," Steven Ferriere, 10, said, looking at a prize carcass.  The dead were hung, upside down, in front of the child, behaded, skinned and drained of blood, arms and legs amputated.  But the cadaver that was laid across the groud didn't seem to make Ferriere or his friends the least bit squeamish.

"The cool part is where their hearts got ripped out," said friend, Kyle Blaker, 10, beaming.  

It was a sunny day, warm for mid-November, when a collection of strangers picked up their farms and moved them into the city.  The wind was pushing maple leaves around Exhibition Place when the locals came.  The Royal Agricultural Winter Fair opened Friday at the National Trade Centre, and people can see it for $15 at a time, until it shuts down Nov. 17, not a fortune yet far from the quarter charged at the first fair in 1922, five cents for a child.  This year's event is an all-day spectacle, running from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., except Sunday, when it closes at 8 p.m.. 

Cattle, horses, dogs, rabbits, all in a state-of-the-art facility on the Harbourfront of the largest city in the country.  Inside the doors and up an escalator, a long hallway, buffed and polished, stretched out into the distance like an airport terminal.  Banners hung stately overhead: STATE OF THE ART FACILITY.  OVER ONE MILLION SQUARE FEET.  HI-TECH EXHIBITION CENTRE.  Digital marquees screamed which way for visitors to go.  Inside the trade room, cows watched a vendor at a concession stand sell charbroiled cheeseburgers and hot dogs.  The atmosphere was much less glamorous there.  With cement under people's feet, hay under the animals' and metal posts supporting an unfinished ceiling, it looked like a warehouse, and smelled like a barnyard.

"I think the sheep are nervous," Stefan Weber a student at St. Mary's District Collegiate Vocational Institute said.  "They don't like this many people around."

The crowd was a mixture of rough country-folk and conservative urban dwellers, dressed down for the occasion.  Media personality Martha Stewart fluttered about, speaking to a camera about a gigantic pumpkin.  She stood tall in a business suit, not touching anything.  She drew more eyeballs than the giant gourd, standing out like a perfectly manicured sore thumb.  Embroiled in insider-trading allegations, she took no questions from reporters.

A black-headed, white-bodies sheep moaned loudly and repeatedly behind her.  Other wooly creatures wore masks on their long faces and dirty blankets across their backs to keep them clean for showing.  They looked like they were going to execute a man by guillotine, but they were there in hopes of taking home a Royal red ribbon, the Miss America of mutton.

Jena Karmali, an art student at Earl Haig Secondary School, crouched down beside one of them, sketching.  She drew that animal in particular because it its hair was "different, and fun," she said.  "You don't often get a chance to draw animals that aren't moving."  None of the sheep moved very much.  They couldn't.  They were restrained by tight cells.

"The market lambs you try not to get too attached to," breeder Lee Brien said, wrapping a blanket around Look About Jane, a breeding ewe.  "But the breeding ewes you can have a place in your heart for."  She have been Brien's family's livelihood for five generations, he said.  He gushed of loving every kind of livestock.  Sheep are cheap for breeders, and the serve a dual purpose.  "You can get food from a lamb, and fleece to make clothes."

Almost-black sheep wool and fleece the off-white colour of Toronto snow lined a series of long tables sectioned off a few metres away.  The wool, bundled with red twine, faced the scrutiny of a panel of judges.  Fake grass didn't quite crunch underfoot.

Janie Lever, a sheep breeder for six years, said what makes a good sheep is "conformation, how the body is put together."  A straight back and long length between the shoulders and hind end is ideal.  It's also good for a sheep to have a good, solid back end, with strong muscles in the hind legs.  Shoulders should be narrower than the hips.  Hoofs need to be flawless.  And, while the shoeep have teeth only on the bottom, the judges, Lever said, want them to meet up with the upper gum line precisely.  Fleeces needs to have luster, and shine, she said.  It has to have good crimp, a long, tightly curled lock of six inches.  And good strength is a must.  Put these factors together, and you have a prize-winning lamb.  "Our purpose is to sell breeding stock... to other breeders," she said.  These fairs are a form of advertising.  

The sheep are livestock, destined to be slaughtered.  Some farmers try to distance themselves by not becoming too attached.  But the odd connection is inevitable.

Brien remembered with fondness the first lamb he sheared.  It was killed, and, presumably, eaten that same year.  "I knew it was going to happen some time," he said, his eyes moving away.  "It never lasts forever."

Lever recalled a little Oxford.  She was a triplet, and a runt.  Half the size of her sisters, her mother couldn't nurse her.  Ewes have only two teats.  It might have been a short lifetime for the ewe.  But Lever did something many breeders might not have done.  She picked up the sheep into her arms, and deposited the thing into a children's playpen in her home.  She wrapped a diaper around her, and named her Precious.  The little lamb had fleece a smokey grey, dark near the head, and light around the body.  "She often stands with her front feet up, looking into the fire," Lever said.  Day after day, Lever fed Precious with a bottle.  And a picture on display beside Lever's show ewes portrays a glimmer of love int he farmer's eyes in its presence... some would say, in the eyes of Precious, too.

Around the corner, in a hallway, were those two 10-year-old humans, Ferriere and Blaker.  They looked at the spectacle with interest.  Ribbons and bows adorned the bodies stamped ROYAL WINTER FAIR.  The one on the ground cam in first.  Its ribbon uniquely read, CHAMPION.  A trophy in the centre of the display window featured a shiny sheep, standing proud.

Susan Buzek, a homemaker passing by said: "I do eat meat, but I don't like looking at stuff like that."

Her daughter, Shannon Buzek, said "Yummy! Yummy!"  A wee Sydney Buzek looked up at her sister, not yet able to detect the sarcasm.

Weber said: "I don't feel bad.  I mean, we have to eat."

And it was Ryan Master, 10, whose gleaming eyes interjected: "It's awesome, you get to see them dead."

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