When agents from the Ontario Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals arrived at the Toronto Humane Society's River Street facility on Tuesday, the shelter sparkled like the twinkle in Mr. Clean's eye.
But it will take more than a fresh lemon scent to remove what stains the THS.
Years of feuding with Toronto Animal Services and with the Ontario SPCA have prevented a collaboration that would benefit animal welfare, other animal advocacy groups say. A week after allegations surfaced against the shelter in The Globe and Mail, members of the board of directors have yet to formally meet. The charity's membership list remains closely guarded by its president, Tim Trow, who has avoided six visits from a process server seeking the society's membership list. That has prevented a group of concerned members and former staff from gaining access to the list and building an insurrection.
Chances are that the Ontario SPCA's investigation will take weeks, and in the intervening time, many animal advocates wonder about the fate of the 1,100 animals that are left with fewer than 80 staff and a dwindling force of volunteers to tend to them. And then there are the lost and abandoned animals that will continue to land on the THS's doorstep.
"You still have to work with what you have," said Barry MacKay, a naturalist and former member of the board of the directors. "There is a need to shelter these animals, there is a need to take them off the streets."
Some rescue groups, including A Cause for Paws Animal Rescue in Toronto, are preparing an offer to work with THS in any capacity.
But the relationship between many other rescue groups and the THS has been strained, largely because Mr. Trow is not perceived by groups like A Cause for Paws Animal Rescue and Toronto Cat Rescue as a big advocate of spaying and neutering. Rescue groups are concerned that they are the ones left to care for all the puppies and kittens that follow.
Current and former board members doubt that co-operation will come unless the current board of directors is dismantled and Mr. Trow is replaced. Many directors are old friends of Mr. Trow's, and at least one, Deloris Qasim, though concerned by the way Mr. Trow treats his staff, said she will keep him in power as long as the president maintains the shelter's low euthanasia rates.
One former board member and a current board member, who asked not to be named, said that board meetings are typically devoted to stories of animal abuse, reading Mr. Trow's letters to foreign leaders or chief executive officers about commercials or images he found offensive, and discussing why the latest employees were fired.
Mr. MacKay noticed a similar dynamic during his time on the board of directors in Mr. Trow's first presidency in the early 1980s.
He said that the first change that needed to happen at the THS was to develop something more sharply defined than "a vague feel-good mission statement."
That mission statement should include a direct effect on Toronto's pet population in a way that could mobilize members of the city's pet-loving population, he said.
Mending bridges with other animal lovers and rescue groups should be a priority, said Liz White, director of Animal Alliance, a Toronto-based animal advocacy group.
"First of all, there needs to be co-operation between the OSPCA, the Toronto Humane Society and Toronto Animal Services," she said.
Ms. White suggested a lack of co-operation has created inefficiencies among the city's shelters. She put forth a working model in which TAS would be the front-line shelter taking in lost or abandoned animals, and the THS would acted as a "second-chance program" for animals that are more difficult to match with an adoptive family.
This division of labour has been successful in other Canadian cities, such as Calgary.
The THS has problems getting along with its peers, and at the same time, seems incapable of reforming itself from within.
"The truth of the matter is there's no accountability; the Toronto Humane Society has become a fiefdom," Mr. MacKay said.