Their zoo dreams spurned, Grand Bend's big cat couple set their sights on a new town

The couple who waged a bitter 18-month battle against neighbours and town officials in Lambton Shores over the right to house a collection of 10 big cats in a residential neighbourhood have sold their Grand Bend,Ont., home and plan to move their animals to a small town north of Bancroft. 

Mark and Tammy Drysdale bought a property near Maynooth, Ont., in the Municipality of Hastings Highlands, a two and half hour drive north of Toronto and west of Ottawa. 

The Drysdales did not return emails or phone calls from CBC News Thursday.

However, according to emails exchanged between the Drysdales and an area resident, the couple has been keeping their eight lions and two tigers "a half hour outside Bancroft" since the summer, when an Ontario judge ordered the animals out of the township of Lambton Shores.

Animals being kept somewhere near Bancroft

"Our animals are a half hour outside Bancroft," Tammy Drysdale wrote in an emailed dated Oct. 18. "They are safe there but we hope to move them to our new property ASAP, as soon as we can get fencing up for them, hopefully by November 15."

The date mentioned by Drysdale in her email is three days before a Nov. 18 municipal council meeting in Hastings Highland where the town will be seeking legal advice on how to deal with "Safari Experience," the name of the Drysdales' newly planned business venture.  

"We understand the situation and what's gone on in other areas and we're following our own legal advice," Hastings Highlands Mayor Vic Bodnar told CBC News Thursday.

The town currently has no exotic animal bylaw and about two dozen residents have written a letter to council, expressing their fears over the potential danger of lions and tigers being kept in the community and the need for new rules.

'He genuinely had a lion with him'

Joshua James, who lives next door from the Drysdales' newly purchased property, said he learned they were the new owners about two weeks ago when he went across the street to borrow some first aid supplies from his neighbours who rent the property. 

James said Mark Drysdale told him he owned a facility that had lions and tigers and that he had brought a lion cub with him in his vehicle. 

"He genuinely had a lion with him," James said. "He opens the door and this bloody lion jumps out of the car and just starts running around on the front lawn."

"There were cars driving by that were slamming their brakes on, like doing the double take 'what the hell is that on the front lawn?'" 

James said he and at least two dozen of his neighbours will be petitioning council to stop any facility housing large predator cats and to create regulations that bans the ownership of lions and tigers within town limits. 

"It's not normal behaviour," he said. "Everyone is going to live in fear as if we're on the outskirts of Jurassic Park."

Ontario has no laws governing exotic species

Julie Woodyer, the campaign manager for ZooCheck Canada, said the fact that the Drysdales failed to establish a home for their exotic animals in one Ontario town only to pop in another, underscores the need for some kind of provincial legislation on the private ownership of exotic animals.

"There are no regulations in Ontario to keep people from owning tigers, elephants, nearly any species. The only thing you're prohibited from owning is native species." 

"These people come to Ontario specifically because there is no regulation. They move around from municipality to municipality and local people, like what happened in Grand Bend and Wainfleet before that and now Maynooth, they're caught off guard by this."

"The municipalities aren't well positioned to deal with it. Meanwhile these animal owners make big promises of employment et cetera to these small towns that are hungry without them knowing that this is really a nightmare in the making."