Ingrid Newkirk, president of PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) which she founded in 1980, is in Toronto on Thursday on her ‘Unstoppable’ tour. Newkirk, 67, spoke to the Star ahead of the event at Trinity College:

Q. How did you become a champion for animals?

I grew up caring about animals but, like most people of my generation, that meant you loved dogs and horses and you didn’t hunt, but you still ate animals. I bought my first fur coat when I was 19. I didn’t think about animals feeling pain, hunger or thirst, and certainly (our generation) didn’t think animals were not ours to use and abuse as we pleased. I learned gradually. Then I rescued a pig from a farm when I was a law enforcement officer. The sheer cruelty in the way they treated this pig made me reconsider my options. In 1980, I thought, well, if I care about animals and it’s taken me this long maybe I should start a group and do the work to show what animals go through to become our things and show people other options.

Q: Can you tell us a bit more about the Unstoppable speaking tour?

There’s an enormous interest from young people for animal rights in the same way we saw interest in civil rights, the environmental movement or the women’s movement. There is momentum to be captured here. A lot of it is telling people that you don’t necessarily have to stand in front of a slaughterhouse but when you go shopping or for dinner or do things to entertain yourself, you can choose an animal-friendly option and be excited about it. I’m mostly talking to an older audience saying, let’s follow the lead of young people and not go to our graves not being the kind of people we could be; let’s make kinder choices. I want people to be excited about the victories that are coming, fast and furiously, to end animal cruelty; to be talking about vegan recipes, to be excited at all the things that they’ve learned they can do so easily to reduce suffering for animals because (animals) need all the friends they can get. I hope to empower people.

How have you seen animal activism change throughout your 35 years at the helm of PETA?

Last year we had over one billion views of our videos on the Internet. In 1980 when we started, there was no Internet. There wasn’t even a fax machine. You had to stand on the street and hand out leaflets one at a time to people. I am an antique but we have seen people change. You used to have to sit down, write a letter with a pen, find an envelope and a stamp and go to the post office. It’s like day and night; it’s changed exponentially. We have a whole tech department that works to find the most up-to-the-minute ways of reaching people. We try to make things really accessible today and our actions easy. We have a cruelty-free app where, if you’re shopping for a shampoo, you can look it up to see if it’s tested in animal’s eyes or synthetically. Another tactic is we’ll send members a text and they can reply with the letter Y and with that we can send a letter to a company that you agree they should stop renting their venues to the circus. Those kinds of things are so accessible.

Your base has also grown, is that part of it?

Yes. For every unkind person there is a kind person and then there’s the in-between person who doesn’t realize the potential they have to change the world for animals, to do good. We work to move the fence-sitters from being cruel by showing them how they can do it. The other thing is that demand for faux fur or vegan leather and vegan foods and computer-program alternatives to dissection and testing are a huge business now. Major companies are seeing that the marketplace has changed and continues to change so they are now more interested in how they can supply cruelty-free, animal-friendly goods, clothing, foods, lab equipment and everything.

PETA is provocative but also gets results. What do you attribute to this success?

Well, we’re not timid (laughs). We’re not afraid to make fun of ourselves or have a laugh. We brainstorm gimmicks to get a serious story in the news and, let’s face it: people are interested in sex and controversy. So our job is to get the information out there, even if we have to take our clothes off when it’s below freezing or climb up a pole somewhere. We’ll do what we can.