Exotic pet owner killed by tiger he fought to keep

Norman Buwalda was sixty-six years old when he entered the cage of a tiger weighing forty-seven stone to feed the animal on a January morning in 2010. He did not leave that enclosure alive. The tiger that killed him was the same one he had fought through the courts to keep, the same one he had won the legal right to possess, the same one that had mauled a ten-year-old child six years earlier on his property in Southwold, Ontario.

Buwalda, a wealthy Dutch native, had spent two years battling Southwold Township over an exotic animal bylaw that would have banned wild beasts from private land. The township had passed the ban in response to the 2004 attack on the child, who had slipped and fallen near a Siberian tiger that Buwalda had led out of its compound on a heavy chain leash so the boy could photograph it for a school project. The child suffered severe injuries to his neck and head. But Buwalda challenged the bylaw in court, and an Ontario Superior Court judge ruled it flawed and too broad. He won. The ban was struck down. Buwalda, who served as chairman of the Canadian Exotic Animal Owner's Association, had never faced charges for that first attack—he was legally entitled to own the animals—and he continued to keep his collection: two lions, two tigers, and a cougar, all housed in a screened-in outbuilding on his property near London, Ontario, roughly twenty-eight kilometres southwest of the city.

On January 10, 2010, Ontario Provincial Police arrived at Buwalda's home after a family member discovered his mutilated body and managed to lock the tiger in a separate section of the cage before calling for help. The police found the animal pacing inside its enclosure. Constable Troy Carlson stated that Buwalda had gone to feed the tiger when it attacked and killed him. No one had witnessed what happened inside the cage. The officer noted only that the animal had done what it did.

Neighbours had spent nearly half a decade trying to have the exotic animals removed from Buwalda's property. All their efforts had failed. Joanne Does, who lived nearby, told the Toronto Star that Buwalda had once told her he trusted animals more than people, that he felt closer to them. She described him as appearing like a bully but said he was a very sad man, lonely. Another neighbour, Patricia England, recalled that Buwalda had insisted his animals wouldn't hurt a fly. She said that as beings on this planet, everyone has a place—but Buwalda's home was not the right place for wild animals. It was not the animal's fault, she said. It was just doing what a tiger does.

Following Buwalda's death, the tiger that killed him was taken away and rehomed. His collection was disbanded. The legal battle that had consumed two years of his life, the court victory he had secured, the right he had fought so hard to preserve—all of it ended in the cage where he had gone to feed an animal he believed he understood better than any person.