Maple Leaf Stench

My nose sometimes can’t stomach the stench of my early morning commuter train ride. This has nothing to do with the train or the ride actually, but is directly concerned with the Maple Leaf Foods processing plant that is located directly across from the platform at the Appleby GO Station in Burlington.

There is an omnipresent odour emanating from the plant most of the time, but it is especially nauseating in the mornings, and often overpowering in the summer months (which we are still celebrating), when the warm morning breeze seems to waft in a perfect line from the plant to the waiting nostrils of the hundreds of riders awaiting their locomotive.

I don’t know anything about the meat processing business and quite frankly I feel that the less I know, the better. This feeling is now intensified every a.m., as I inhale the pungent stink of what was recently a four-legged creature and is now being transformed into a juicy entrée. (Juicy would be a meat eater’s adjective, not mine.)

I haven’t consumed red meat for years so what transpires behind the four walls of this aging building is largely for the benefit of other palettes and digestive systems. But it’s hard for me to believe that this acrid smell is for anyone’s benefit, least of all for those who toil on the plant’s floors or have chosen to live in the new town home development just across the street from the GO Station, to the south, in the very direction that the wind always seems to blow.

I don’t want to get into any discussion about animal rights and the ethics of turning a live animal into dinner by squalid means. My problem here is simply a matter of my irritated nose, and how on many days I can’t bear to stand on the platform for more than two minutes without holding my nose. Even then, I must try hard not to breath in too deeply (a stretch sometimes, given my bad allergies and need to inhale fully). I also have to bite my tongue so as not to exclaim to another commuter who couldn’t care less: “Good God, it couldn’t be any worse unless we could actually hear the squeals of pigs being slaughtered.”

There have been newspaper reports in recent months about the Maple Leaf plant perhaps being moved to the city of Hamilton next door. The proposal apparently had the plant being relocated to somewhere south of that city, up on the escarpment and away from residential areas. Laterally I heard that the move wasn’t being well received on the Hamilton mountain, where the locals apparently have a strong sense of smell and little tolerance for vile new industry.

As I write this, the annual Ribfest celebrations are underway in Burlington, at our beautiful and freshly renovated Spencer Smith Park on the waterfront. The festival is a veritable homage to all things animal-derived that can be digested, after much chewing work by the teeth. The event is advertised on its website as the largest of its kind in Canada. Last year it attracted 131,000 visitors, who were able to feast on the barbecued creations of “expert teams of rib cookers from Canada and across the United States.”

I write this so as not to alienate red meat lovers, who I don’t really have an issue with. They have their vice, and I have fish and chicken. I also don’t have anything against this event or others like it. I really like summer and fall festivals, even if there is plenty of red meat being cooked, served and devoured.

I’m happy to say that the aroma emanating from Ribfest each year almost approaches delightful and certainly doesn’t make my nasal passage cringe. What’s more, in childhood, when I actually preferred red meat, my mouth watered at the very idea of eating bacon or a tender and well-seasoned steak.

However, what transpires at the Maple Leaf plant has nothing to do with enjoying meat for its taste or smell. What comes from there and hits my nose with full frontal assault, is the whiff of small-scale barbarism, and I hate to think it will remain there for years to come.