I Lived In The Zoo

I am sure that most of you have read the article in the Telegraph Journal or heard a news report on one of the radio stations. I am writing this to clarify a few things. To begin this whole situation never had to happen. If there were questions the Board of Trustees only had to come to us and ask them. Why they chose the route they did is something we will never understand. We did not want to bring a lawsuit against the Zoo in the first place but our lawyer advised us this was the only way we could quell the constant barrage of vicious comments that were being made public. There are several mistakes in the newspaper report as we did not start the Cherry Brook Zoo but Pam and Paul May brought the zoo to our city. Len worked at the zoo since 1974 to 2016 which is 42 years not 37 and I began in 1979 when we were asked by the then Board to move in and take over operations. We had been fighting with a lawsuit for over two years and our life has been in limbo. The Zoo’s lawyer called our lawyer in May 2018 asking us to drop the lawsuit and they would drop their side. We said no as we wanted to clear our names, it was never about money. Our lawyer called us into a meeting in August as a discovery hearing had been set by the Zoo’s lawyer (this is not a court of law) and he explained that he would need a retainer of $50,000.00 for this meeting and that it would cost us a minimum of $100,000.00 to do our discovery hearing. He also explained that the Zoo has no equity as the City of Saint John owns the land and therefor any buildings and that we would never recoup our costs and it would be pennies on the dollar. The Zoo’s lawyer is being paid by the Directors Insurance and it is costing them nothing but we have no such coverage and it could ruin us financially. It was at this time we had to seriously sit down and make a decision and the financial burden was too much for us to carry on as we do not have that kind of money and it was agreed that we would drop the lawsuit and that would be the end of it. The comment that there is an ongoing investigation by the City of Saint John Police is incorrect as we have been told by two lawyers that there never was any investigation on the part of the City Police. The Chairman’s statement is incorrect and we are assuming a misunderstanding on her part. We have never been approached or questioned by any member of the City Police in this regard. Faced with insurmountable financial issues we were of the understanding through our lawyer that this would be the end of it by both parties. We did have a defense put together with past Board Members willing to testify on our behalf to the facts but no one in our position could afford to carry this any further. There is a lot more to this story and all we have done over the years and what we have sacrificed for our passion for the zoo. In 2011 the Executive and our Auditor came to us and told us our severance package of $125,000.00 was all the monies that were in the Zoos bank account and if we did not sign off on this the Board would close the Zoo that night. They had legal documents ready for us to sign and a Board of Trustees meeting beginning right then. We had fifteen minutes to decide. We could not in all good conscience be the ones responsible for the Zoo closing and we signed off on our severance package and unknown to us there was a clause written into this document that we could not sure the Zoo or Directors. Our mistake was in trusting people who knew that we would never do anything to harm the Zoo. In the last two years we were at the zoo Len cut his salary by almost $20,000.00 to keep the Zoo going and to protect our staff.  We will never be able to find justice in the courts but despite all that has happened we know that our deep love for the Cherry Brook Zoo is something we will never regret. To continue the back and forth only hurts the Zoo and that is something we never wanted to do. 

Lynda Collrin