Deer Pen Road

They had always kept deer at the High Park Zoo, until one February evening in 1999 when, according to the Toronto Star, some enterprising soul, looking to supplement his protein intake or perhaps his bank account, took a large knife into their pen and dragged one of the poor creatures to a nearby parking lot.
     They’d kept deer in High Park since the first animal paddocks were installed in 1893, but now the zoo officials said they had little choice but to review their security procedures.
     And so we got barbed-wire fences on Deer Pen Road . . . and no more deer.

Today, unfortunately, the greater threat to High Park comes not from the odd urban poacher so much as the barbarians that rode into city hall last year on a wave of suburban resentment. To them, together with the compliant bureaucrats charged with implementing an arbitrary 10% cut to their budget, the zoo is little more than a line item. And so, for the sake of that $224,600, they have chosen to close down more than a century of Toronto history and pack up the remaining animals by the end of June, just in time for the mayor’s annual backyard barbeque.

Photo by Alan Baillargeon.