Welcome to Fur Trade Tales, our series of real-life stories from real people of the fur trade. This is our second Trapline Tales, but look out for Fur Farm Tales, Furrier Tales, and more to come. If you'd like to contribute, please let us know at [email protected]

---

As a teenager growing up in the Selkirk Mountains of British Columbia, trapping with my father in the high country was exciting and fun. He taught me to respect the animals we trapped because they gave their lives for our livelihood. For him, it wasn't how many he caught, but how he caught them and in particular how humanely he could do so. He felt there had to be better methods of trapping and better tools than were on the market.

SEE ALSO: Trapline Tales: Ski doos and marten scent. By Calvin Kania.

While Dad pursued his dream of making a better mouse trap, I was more inclined to pursue the next marten or muskrat. I loved marten-trapping because we did it in the high alpine country. It was always a struggle to get there in January, with the steep inclines of the logging roads and the fresh powder snow, but it was worth it – pristine country, brisk, fresh, pure white and untouched, under a clear blue sky. We would find a big ole spruce or hemlock tree with the boughs drooping down to create shelter from the five feet of snow that lay around, then under the tree we'd build a fire and make a pot of tea.

But make no mistake, trapping in the high country is anything but easy. As you will hear in the tale I'm about to tell, it requires perseverance and stubborness.

One Sunday in the summer of 1974, when I was 15, my parents and I headed up Airy Creek, a pristine area we had not trapped for five years, for berry picking and a fish fry. Picking berries has always been one of Mum's favourite things, and along the way her eagle eyes were hard at work. "Stop the truck," she cried. "I see some huckleberries!"

Now a few years earlier, she'd wanted to pick wild strawberries and dragged me along to help because that's what kids were for in those days. Do you have any idea how small wild strawberries are? About the size of a small button on my golf shirt. So imagine how long it took to fill an ice cream pale. All day. So when Mum got excited about picking those huckleberries on her own, we stopped the truck right away. "Yep, no problem Mum! Way you go! See you later!"

Fish Fry

Dad and I then ventured on up the old logging road until we came to a spot where a bridge used to be. The timber company had not logged here since 1970, so they hadn't kept up with road and bridge maintenance. Most logging roads in British Columbia are "de-activated" if the logging company is not intending to log the area again for some time, and with the total loss of this bridge, you could definitely say it was de-activated. The creeks here are not that big to traverse, but big enough to keep our truck and snowmobiles out when there's no bridge. Anyway, Dad decided if we were going to trap into the head end of Airy Creek, we needed to find a way to cross it come winter time.

Since it snows very heavily in the Selkirk Mountains, it wouldn’t take much to make a bridge to hold a snowmobile. So we got busy cutting three good-size hemlock trees and fell them across the creek side by side. We then winched them up onto the road bed on both sides of the creek, and cabled them to some larger trees on the bank.

By this time it was getting late in the afternoon and Mum finally caught up to us with her bucket of freshly picked huckleberries. She looked around and asked where the fish were. "In the creek," says Dad. "Are they cleaned yet?" "No, they're still swimming around." "Boy," she says, "I send you two up here to catch some fish for supper and you're fooling around with logs. Don’t you get enough of that around the farm? If I have to do your work and mine, so be it." And off she went with her fly rod.

About an hour later she emerged with a few trout and saw no fire or tea pail boiling. Yep, we dropped everything in an instant and got on that fire and cleaned the fish!

Let me tell you, there is nothing better than a fish fry on an open fire on a beautiful summer afternoon. The fire is ready, the black cast-iron pan is hot, and half a pound of butter is thrown in to melt. The fish are gently laid in the pan, but before you know it, they curl up so fast. With fresh home-baked bread, tartar sauce, fresh cucumbers and tomatoes from the garden, those little trout tasted so good with our freshly boiled tea.

The day came to an end and we were all full of Mother Nature's bounty.

Bridge-Building

That fall, Dad and I drove up to check on our bridge, hauling along some 1x4 wood planks Dad had sawn up on his portable sawmill. The three timbers were still in place, and we laid the planks across them so they looked like a railroad track.

But those planks were still two feet apart from each other, so we spread some hemlock boughs across them. In this high country in winter, the snow falls gently in big flakes and accumulates very quickly. By the time we were ready to trap, there would be four feet of snow piled up on that makeshift bridge, and our snowmobiles would have no problem crossing.

We never trapped the high country until after Christmas. Snow in December came hard and fast, accumulating at two or three feet a week, and that made it almost impossible to break trail to check the line every few days. So we usually left it until mid-January when the snow eased up, started to settle, and gave us a good base to travel on.

Trapping Time

January was now here and it was time to trap some marten, lynx and wolverine up Airy Creek. I was so excited as we got our gear together – traps, bait, hatchets, nails, snowshoes, extra gas, and a sled to pull our supplies.

And for goodness sakes, we couldn’t forget our eau du toilet marten call scent (see recipe here). After all Mum had endured during our creation of this fine call scent, we'd darn well better not forget it! It was such a wonderful scent that it was stored in a quart jar with a lid and a very stiff 12-inch metal wire handle wrapped around the base of the lid for carrying. Even us trappers didn’t want to get any of it on our mitts or clothes!

With both snowmobiles mounted on the trailer – our vintage Bombardier and the newer Ski Doo Elan – and all the supplies loaded up, we started the truck and headed down the road. We reached our destination within half an hour because the logging company had kept the main road open. There we unloaded our equipment, fired up the snowmobiles and off we went, breaking trail over the old logging road.

It was pretty easy at this point as most of the road bed was level. Then we started to climb, and the machines slowed as we were now pushing snow, but we finally reached our bridge without having to break out the snow shoes.

"Wow! Look at that bridge!" I yelled. It was a thing of beauty. At least four feet of snow was piled up on it and it had a bow in it, but not to worry, Dad said. We got out the snow shoes and carefully walked across, packing the snow so it would be easy for the snowmobiles to cross.

Dad went first with the Bombardier. It was smaller and lighter than the Ski Doo so it could stay on top of the snow better and was easier to break trail with. He fired it up, gunned it, and was across in no time.

Now it was my turn, and I was pulling the sled. "Don’t go so fast," warned Dad. "If the sled slips off the bridge, you’ll be going with it into the creek." Oh gee thanks, wasn’t that something to look forward to! I was also scared of heights even at that early age. "Don’t look down," he said, "just straight ahead. When you get to this side you can gun it 'cause we have a steep hill ahead and we need as much traction as we can get before we bog down."

I let him get a couple hundred yards past the bridge before I started across. "Don't look down!" I kept telling myself, and lo and behold, I was across and feeling exhilarated. Now the work begins, I thought, because I knew those snow shoes were going to get a good workout breaking trail further up.

My machine was doing well because I was following in Dad's broken trail. He was already out of sight around the first bend because we were not to stop. We were gaining elevation fast and had to break as much trail as we could. Then I came around the next bend and there he was, stopped! What the !? We hadn’t gone a quarter of a mile. "What happened to the road?" I asked. "There isn't any," he replied. "It's down there at the bottom of the creek."

Mega Project

All of our summer work, gone in a flash. There it was, no road, for all to see. Over the years since the timber company last logged there, one spring the creek must have been high and washed 100 yards of road entirely away. All that was left was a barren hillside of sand and gravel with a drop of 300 feet to the creek below. "Now what?" I asked. "I guess we just start building a makeshift trail across the hillside along the bank," Dad said.

Well, if you think the bridge-building was a project, this was going to be a mega project. But first we had to build a trail under the trees that came off the hillside and piled up on this side of the road where it ended in mid-air. Of course it would have been a whole lot easier to have checked out this road last summer before we went to all the trouble of building a bridge.

It took us all day to build a trail across that embankment. It was a good thing we always carried a snow shovel, and Dad knew a few things about road-building having worked on the Alaska Highway during World War II.

We decided to break some more trail before daylight ran out, but we'd only gone another half mile when I'll be darned if we didn’t hit another washed-away road. We shook our heads in bewilderment. "We've come this far and done this much work," said Dad. "There's no turning back now. We’ll just come up tomorrow and work on this section."

Well, we eventually found our way to the head of Airy Creek, and that winter caught 35 marten, two lynx and three wolverine. There were remnants of old logging camps scattered about, some going back to the 1940s, and an old collapsed cookhouse and bunk house were great locations for our lynx sets. No more washed-out roads, and our bridge held up through the season.

We did it for income, of course, and it helped that Dad knew how to stretch a penny. But we also did it for the love of trapping, and for simply being out there. And we couldn't have done any of it without Dad's perseverance and stubborness, qualities which he passed on to me and which have helped me survive close to 50 years in the fur trade.

There is a saying that the only things we all have in common are birth, death, and taxes. If there is a fourth thing common to every human being on the planet, it is that human lives depend on killing animals. This is true for hunters, trappers, animal-rights activists, vegans, and everyone else, regardless of where we live, our cultural differences, or our lifestyle choices. I don’t say this out of callousness or for shock value; rather, to put every one of us on the same page, in the same common history book of our species. If only for a moment.

I would like to think we can all have the humility and honesty to acknowledge the fact that human life depends on the death of animals, despite how uncomfortable we may be with this truth. To that end, I won’t spend time going over the various ways that human civilizations and settlements displace wildlife and affect habitat. Many of us do our best to reduce our direct and indirect impacts on the natural world, but close as they may come, these impacts will never reach zero. None of us is exempt from the effects of human civilization on wildlife. The task as I see it is not so much to accept or refute this fact, but rather to reflect on our own understandings of it and what it means to have a relationship with animals that involves death.

One of the most common points of disagreement in conversations about animal ethics centers on the consumptive uses of animals. Concerns over the treatment of both wild and domestic animals and their use for food, fur, and other products is an important conversation and one that I believe should be of highest ethical importance to human beings; however, we often bring a set of unstated and embedded assumptions to these discussions that need to be examined if we are to ever truly understand our own ethics, have productive conversations with others, and be effective at conservation.

Reflecting on Foundational Concepts

One of the underlying assumptions that we need to critically reflect on in discussions over the use of animals is the very concept of killing. Our individual and collective understanding of the moral defensibility in killing animals and the nature of the human-animal relationship that is established through an interaction that involves killing are informed by our views of death itself.

In discussing the ethics around the use of animals, we must be thoughtful to the fact that understandings of central concepts such as death and killing are not universal. Cultures throughout the world have vastly different understandings of what it means to die, what happens after death, the relationship between life and death, and therefore what it means on a deep ethical level to kill an animal. Therefore, we cannot approach discussions with the assumption that we all understand the moral foundations of the topic in the same way. More importantly, we must be conscious not to assume that our own culturally-grounded way of understanding these concepts is correct. To approach conversations of such ethical gravity in that way is to demonstrate a sense of cultural centrism that has proven dangerous to both human cultures and ecological systems in the past.

It is possible that some of us have never really taken the time to deeply reflect on our own relationship with the death of wild animals. For the majority of the world that lives in urban centers and will never be personally involved in killing an animal, thinking about this may never be a necessity. In his examination of humanity’s relationship with nature and our own natural history, the author J.B. MacKinnon in The Once and Future World poignantly describes watching a grizzly bear feed on an elk calf. MacKinnon reflects on nature’s experience with death: “springtime in Yellowstone is not the season of gambolling fox kits ... but of the hungry bear and wary bison. Of death, that ordinary horror”. Killing is all around us all the time; whether and how we choose to understand that fact of life on a primal and philosophical level is our choice. MacKinnon goes on to suggest that “to endure among other species, you must experience the world as a place you share with them”. If we wish to share the world with wild creatures and natural processes, we owe it to ourselves to engage with them on their terms.

---

Consider the fact that most modern human beings eat next to nothing that is hunted or gathered from the terrestrial surface of the earth. This is an outcome that would strike our ancestors as bizarre if not apocalyptic, and yet it can’t be said to be the product of choice. We drifted to this point, generation by generation.

J.B. MacKinnon in "The Once and Future World"

---

Let me clear about what this is not. I dislike dead-end arguments in discussions about ethics. It might be tempting to dispute the suggestion that death and killing are equal parts culturally contingent concepts and natural parts of the world, as simply a hunter’s way of justifying his own actions. That has been suggested to me before and I will humour that idea, but it is far more complex than that. Human ethics change over time to incorporate new ideas and knowledge and this changing is precisely what keeps ethics strong and meaningful. Therefore, the suggestion that any single argument can settle an ethical debate is unconvincing at best and suspicious at worst. This is not a claim that killing wildlife is morally defensible because “we have always done it”. I don’t believe that historical precedent justifies continued practice. However, in the same way that history does not justify the present, neither can it be disregarded as irrelevant. So I do think that the long history of interaction between humans and wildlife that has always involved a predator-prey relationship makes the conversation worth having in light of that history and not in exclusion of it. Cultures and belief systems are built upon shared experiences and give rise to knowledge systems and worldviews that are rooted in the places of those experiences. It is the diversity of these cultures that contributes to different understandings of what it means to kill an animal and our conversations on the ethics of killing and using animals must include space for the wide variety of cultural views that exist in the world.

Multiple Worldviews

Our evaluation of the ethics in killing animals for our own uses is bound to be informed in some measure by our understanding of what death means and the subsequent emotions we attach to dying and being dead. It is helpful to consider examples of different cultural understandings of death. These contrasting worldviews around death mean that understandings about the relationship enacted with an animal in the act of killing it can also be very different. Bear in mind that I am highlighting two examples here and that the diversity of human cultural perspectives is nearly as wide and deep as the biodiversity of the natural world itself.

---

The dread of something after death, / The undiscover’d country

"Hamlet" by William Shakespeare

---

The Reverend Charles A. Curran, Professor at Loyola University of Chicago, discusses an understanding of death informed by Judaeo-Christian traditions. Curran explains that in Christian worldviews, death “immediately invokes in us the emotion of fear”. This fear of death is not so much a fear of the physical process of dying, but rather “the notion of the beyond that the word ‘death’ brings to us, because its fear is a fear of the beyond”. This fear is also related to the gravity of having to weigh the morality of our lives and what Curran describes as an “extreme ego anxiety about passing into nothingness” – the fear of irrelevance and being forgotten. There are other more obvious teachings in Christianity about what killing means for the morality of our own lives.

A Judaeo-Christian view of death has been imprinted on some of Western culture’s most influential pieces of art and literature, and it is perhaps only natural that our feelings around our own death would be imparted onto animals when we consider their death. Daniel E. Van Tassel, Professor of English at Muskingum College, notes “the stamp of such Christian views of death” in the “expression of fear at the imminence of death” among a number of Shakespeare’s characters. Van Tassel cites three reasons to fear death in Judaeo-Christian traditions: we fear losing the enjoyment of life and worldly pleasures, the emotional and physical pain that comes with death, and the eternal misery after death. In considering how such a culturally-dominant, if latent and subconscious, understanding of death may impact our view of killing animals, we can certainly identify in animal-rights and other anti-hunting/trapping campaigns references to the second fear of death: fear about the pain and suffering that killing brings. In this fear we see MacKinnon’s characterization of death, “that ordinary horror”.

---

Like other northern hunting peoples, many Yukon First Nation people conceive of hunting as a reciprocal social relationship between humans and animals.

Paul Nadasdy, in "Agricultural metaphors and the politics of wildlife management in the Yukon". 

---

In a book chapter I have frequently returned to in discussions over human-animal relationships, Paul Nadasdy, Associate Professor of Anthropology at Cornell University, discusses the contrasts between Western and Yukon First Nations’ understandings of the concept of wildlife management, focusing particularly on contrasting notions of ownership and control between cultures. Within a Yukon First Nations worldview, humans and animals interact on the basis of a reciprocal social relationship defined by the need to uphold certain responsibilities. Humans hunt wildlife but do so within the context of specific practices designed to maintain the relationship, practices that vary between cultures, but “commonly include the observance of food taboos, ritual feasts, and prescribed methods for disposing of animal remains, as well as injunctions against overhunting and talking badly about, or playing with, animals”. Maintaining the social relationship one has with animals is of utmost importance and in this particular cultural worldview, involves killing.

There is an element of control and agency that is important in understanding the contrast between different worldviews. In a Western worldview, humans are most commonly positioned above and in control of nature: the world is here to be used by humans. In, for example, a Yukon First Nations worldview, animals have agency and can choose not to present themselves to human hunters. Humans must therefore fulfill certain social obligations towards animals and these obligations are often carried out through hunting. The concept of killing and what it means to kill an animal is thus conceived of quite differently in a Yukon First Nations context than one dominated by Western knowledge and cultural traditions.

The idea that there exists a plurality of knowledges informed by one’s culture must accompany us into ethical conversations and decision-making around the use of animals. We must remember that in many cultures, a context of respect and gratitude is the very the foundation of how humans have come to understand a relationship with animals that involves killing.

Conclusions

I am not a religious person and I would not even suggest that I am spiritual. I have come to understand my actions and morality on my own terms and I have tried to inform that understanding as much as possible by lessons in nature, though inspiration for this understanding can come from many places. I want to make it clear that caring deeply about wildlife is not dependent on religious or spiritual guidance; I have thought and felt deeply about both the individual animals I have killed and about the populations and species of which those individuals were a part. When I kill an animal, there is an intense and undeniable connection with that individual – from the moment I first see it to every single time I cook a portion of it – and there is also a connection with that animal that feels more historic, a sense of shared history on the landscape. Animal-rights campaigns often focus on individual animals that have been given human names. This kind of anthropomorphism often loses the ability to situate the relationship between human and animals on an evolutionary scale. For me, it is precisely the simultaneous feelings of intense personalization with an individual animal and a depersonalization with the awareness that there is a deeper historic interaction that we are a part of that gives the encounter so much meaning.

One thing that many of us can agree on is that healthy ecosystems and wildlife populations are critical for the survival of our species and this planet. We might also agree that maintaining healthy ecosystems and wildlife populations depends on human appreciation and valuation of those places and species and in order for humans to care about and take care of the natural world, they need a personal relationship with it. It may be that some wish to redefine the foundation of this relationship in a way that reflects changing social and cultural norms, but this cannot be taken for granted and this new foundation cannot be laid without conscious and thoughtful reflection, otherwise we risk losing the historic relationships within which both humans and animals have mutually evolved.

We may personally disagree with particular conservation policies or strategies, but it is imperative that we maintain our connections with animals and understand that there are cases where this connection takes place through an interaction that involves death. I personally consider ethical concerns about animal welfare as one of our most important considerations in killing animals. However, when engaging in discussions with one another over the ethics of using animals, we need to be conscious of the foundational assumptions on which these conversations are built. We need to identify and critically reflect on the culturally specific concepts we bring to our decision-making around killing and understand and respect that ethics are a sliding scale throughout the world.

In doing so, we may find that misunderstandings and disagreements run deeper than the specific applications and policies we find ourselves debating and that we gain much more from engaging with a plurality of ethical perspectives than from disregarding them.

Welcome to Fur Trade Tales, our new series of real-life stories from real people of the fur trade. We kick off with our first Trapline Tales, but look out for Fur Farm Tales, Furrier Tales, and more to come. If you'd like to contribute, please let us know at [email protected]

---

Everyone in the fur trade has tales to tell, and I am honoured that Alan Herscovici – the creator of Truth About Fur – thinks mine are worthy of launching Trapline Tales. It’s the least I can do. Alan has devoted his working life to the trade, sometimes at great personal cost, and has been a passionate spokesperson to the media on behalf of us all. We owe him a great debt of gratitude.

Today I run a company called Fur Canada, making a range of fur products, museum-quality taxidermy specimens, and traps, but my journey in the fur trade began long ago, in a place called the West Kootenay, in British Columbia. I grew up there in the 1960s and '70s, and it had to be the best childhood any kid could experience. With my parents and siblings, I learned the ways of living off the land. We grew every kind of vegetable, had milk cows, chickens, horses and beef cattle, and in winter I would assist my father on his fur trapline.

Snowmobiles – and a Missed Opportunity

Every weekend during winter was a new experience. My father's trapline was 100 kilometres long, and it took us five years just to rotate every corner of it. In 1963, we also acquired the area's first snowmobile.

One day my mother and I were shopping in Nelson when I spotted a parked truck with two big, yellow snow-plowing machines on a trailer. "What are they?" my mother inquired of the gentleman attending them, who happened to be a distributor. He graciously explained how they worked and their advantages over snowshoeing. He called them "snowmobiles", and they were made by a Quebec company called Bombardier. She said her husband was a trapper and might be interested in one, so he followed us home. My father quickly took a liking to these machines, and since it was late, invited the gentleman to stay the night.

Next morning, my older brothers and father road-tested the machines, and by lunchtime the deal was made. We were the proud owners of a brand new Bombardier snowmobile! I still have it to this day, and one day will restore it to its original state.

During that winter and the next, the gentleman made follow-up visits in case repairs were needed. He was very impressed with my father and his success with the machine, because within that first winter, he had contracts with the power company and timber company to check on their power lines and spar tree equipment that was inaccessible in the back country.

On one of his visits he told my father that he was the sole distributor for Alberta and British Columbia, and the territory was now more than he could handle. Would my father like to take over the distributorship for BC? My father pondered for a moment and could only envision the excessive work ahead in promoting, selling and servicing the product during the trapping season – the most important part of the year for him. His answer was an emphatic "No!" I'm not sure he gave much thought to setting up his two teenage sons and me, then just six years old, in the snowmobile business, as fur trapping was his passion. You could say, there was a great missed opportunity for the family, as hindsight is always 20/20.

Breaking Trail

A few years later my father purchased another snowmobile. At this point Bombardier was selling them under the brand name Ski Doo, and our new Ski Doo was called an Olympic.

At 10 years old, I was operating our original Bombardier and my father ran the Olympic, because it was much bigger and heavier. We were trapping in the high Selkirk Mountains, so it was common to get 40-60 centimetres of snow in a week. He would break trail and I would follow. When the snow became too deep and the machines bogged down, out came the snowshoes and I would start breaking trail one step at a time. In that deep, fluffy snow it was difficult, so I would only go about 300 metres and return to the snowmobile. I would get it unstuck, fire it up and away I went. Straddling my freshly broken snowshoe trail, I would get the machine up to full speed until that ole Bombardier hit the virgin snow, go 20 metres and come to a stop, stuck again. Out came the snowshoes and the process started all over again.

Many a Saturdays were spent breaking trail. We would return the following day to set traps. Then a few days later return to check the traps. This kind of fun went on from December to the end of February, when the high-country trapping season ended.

Stinking Rotten Scent

In the summer there was no trapping, of course, but it was still on our minds, and one of the highlights was making call scent for marten. There were two goals. First, it should not freeze. And second, it should be a stinking rotten scent, and the hot summer weather was perfect for this.

Here's how we did it:

1. Take 10-20 mink scent glands, and 10 complete beaver castor glands. Chop and mash them into a fine paste, then place in a glass gallon jar.
2. Add 2 cups of herring fish roe.
3. Add 1 litre of fish oil – herring or salmon works great.
4. Stir ingredients until fully mixed.
5. Place the jar atop the roof in full sun with a light lid cover.
6. Every 30 days give ingredients a stir.
7. After 90 days, remove the jar from the roof and secure with a tight lid until trapping season starts.

During the summer, our recipe would cook and percolate on the roof. It was one of those odours that had to be acquired in order to appreciate the effort that went into making this eau du toilet scent.

All trappers understood the value and creativity of such a fine call scent and its importance in trapping marten. My mother, on the other hand, did not have the same appreciation for our efforts. She had a few choice words for us during those hot spells when she was hosting summer garden parties and the marten eau du toilet scent would waft its way down from the roof top and into the party.

Parting Shots

• Shame on provincial governments! Shame on Air Canada! Canada has a free trade agreement with the USA, Mexico, Korea and others, but we don’t have free trade and free flow of goods within our own country! And can you imagine? Our national airline has an embargo on a wildlife species that the Inuit people of the Canadian Arctic legally harvest for sustenance!

• Sorry Mum! The first critters my father trapped, back in the 1920s, were skunks, when their fur was highly prized. He always joked that his wedding day, November 10, was also the first day of the skunk-trapping season. He told that joke for 72 years until he passed away on his 97th birthday. My mother did not quite see the humour. She says the joke wore off after the first five years.

• Squirrel surprise. When I was about 10, a chum and I ventured into the realm of squirrel cuisine. After hours setting up a spot in the woods, including a makeshift rotisserie, finding dry wood in three feet of snow with wet matches, smudge smoke in our eyes, wet clothes and cold feet, we were ready. We skinned and eviscerated that little critter, then stuffed it with hazelnuts and roasted it over an open fire. Surely this would be a mouth-watering meal, the best-tasting squirrel ever! Well, let's just say that it sounded better than it turned out. It was several more years before I ventured back into the fine cuisine of squirrel cooking.

SEE ALSO: Top 5 tasty furbearers: Muskrat stew and more

• Name-dropping. Among the many products my company makes are coyote fur collars for parkas, and one of our clients has an impeccable pedigree: Amundsen Sports of Norway. The name rings a bell, right? CEO Jorgen Amundsen is carrying on a family tradition of adventurers started by his great uncle, Roald Amundsen, the first man to set foot on the South Pole in 1911!

 

Fur-trimmed and down-filled parkas are everywhere in our cities these days, but is the coyote, fox or other fur trim on the hoods just decorative, as activists claim, or does it really help keep us warm?

We're not all Inuit hunters, Iditarod dog mushers, or polar explorers, but we've all seen them, if only in pictures: men and women braving the elements in voluminous parkas, topped off by huge hoods with giant fur ruffs. Yet their faces are so exposed, and most of the fur trim doesn't even contact the skin, so can they really be that warm? Or are they just for show? Have faith: fashion statements are the last thing on anyone's mind when the mercury plummets and the wind picks up. Developed over millennia by the indigenous peoples of the Arctic, these ruffs work.

For most southerners, a parka hood is just about protecting the head from a bit of wind and rain. But people who work at –30°C, often for long periods, need much more. That doesn't mean bundling up like Himalayan mountaineers though, because beyond keeping warm, they also need to function effectively. Whether it's trapping, fishing, or driving a snowmobile, they want clear vision both in front and to the sides. Giant fur ruffs fit the bill perfectly.

Here are the key design features, and why they work so well:

Show Some Cheek

There are two ways your body loses heat in cold weather: conduction and convection. Conduction is not a major concern for southerners, unless we get soaked to the skin, and then our body will cool down really fast, especially if there's a wind to add convection. And so we blithely pull our hoods close around our faces, and there may even be a draw string for just this purpose.

Now try ice fishing in Nunavut – or almost anywhere in Canada, for that matter – in January, and see what happens! Your hood's fur trim is tight up against your cheeks, right next to your mouth. Each time you exhale, the moisture in your breath forms ice on the fur. And since ice is a far better conductor of heat than air, your fur trim, far from keeping you warm, becomes a very efficient conductor of heat away from your face. Next thing you know, you've got frostbite.

Real polar ruffs greatly reduce this ice formation. The fur trim is still tight up against the face, but contact is made behind the cheekbones. Hence the exposed face we talked about.

SEE ALSO: Amazing facts about fur: Dressing for the Arctic

Think Big

You also want your hood's fur ruff to be large. Your traditional caribou or seal skin parka is already bulky, so top it off with the lion-meets-angry-frilled-necked-lizard look! The most spectacular of all ruffs, a “sunburst" ruff, can measure three times the diameter of the wearer’s head!

Wind removes heat from your face by convection, and the faster it blows, the more heat it removes. But when the wind hits a solid object, a boundary layer is created in front of the object, inside which the wind slows down. The larger the object, the thicker and more insulating the boundary layer. Ergo, the greater the diameter of your fur ruff, the warmer you'll be.

This has long been intuitive to Inuit designers, and in fact to all of us. It's the reason why, when we face into a gale with a wall at our backs, the wind speed is much less than if we're standing in the open. The wall has created a boundary layer.

In 2004, a research team from the universities of Michigan, Washington and Manitoba quantified this boundary layer effect using a heated model of a human head, thermocouples, a wind tunnel, and a variety of hoods. As expected, the most effective hood by far in slowing heat loss had a sunburst ruff. It was particularly superior to other hoods when the wind was at a high yaw angle to the model's face, i.e., blowing from the side.

(For an excellent graphic showing how a fur ruff creates a boundary layer, see "Why fur-lined hoods are so warm," Chicago Tribune.)

Varying Hair Lengths

The Inuit have also long understood that fur trim works best when the hairs are of varying lengths. This is naturally the case when traditional furs such as arctic fox, wolf, or wolverine are used, since they have long guard hairs and short underfur, and different parts of the pelt are different lengths. Coyote and fox also have these qualities and are more commonly available on modern parkas. The effect can be enhanced further by using two types of fur within one ruff.

The same 2004 research team sought to quantify this also, comparing the sunburst ruff with a "military hood" with short-haired fur of uniform length. Once again the sunburst ruff came out top, with the researchers concluding that a variety of hair lengths disrupts the wind flow more and thereby helps build an effective boundary layer.

One comparison not made by the researchers was between real fur trim and fake fur, but since fake fur hairs are uniform in length, the conclusion is unavoidable that fake fur trim can't compete with the real deal.

That aside, their conclusion was unequivocal: "The present experiments clearly demonstrate the superiority of the sunburst fur ruff configuration for all wind velocities and yaw angles tested. ... The sunburst fur ruff design is truly a remarkable 'time-tested' design."

Southerners Take Heart

The good news for everyone living south of the Arctic Circle is that we can all benefit from this "time-tested" design – perhaps just scaling it down a bit. Caribou or seal skin parkas are overkill for most of us, not to mention the stares they'd attract. But we can easily fit ourselves out with a down-filled hood with real fur trim that's plenty big enough.

The most popular fur for ruffs these days is coyote, which not only keeps us warm, but also dovetails with the need to manage a growing coyote population across North America. Fox can also be effective.

SEE ALSO: Abundant furbearers: An environmental success story

Truth About Fur's Alan Herscovici lives in Montreal, currently blanketed in snow, where temperatures in January average about -10°C, but have risen no higher than -20°C for much of this winter. With wind chill, it can feel like -30°C.

"Call us 'southerners' if you want, but there are days I feel like Nanook of the North," says Alan. "The coyote ruff on my parka has proven its worth this winter!"

***

To learn more about donating to Truth About Fur, click here.

The fur trade is criticized by activists for killing animals "just for their fur", when in fact the list of by-products is long and diverse. Carcasses are made into fertilizer, bio-fuel, pet food and crab bait, while rendered fat is used in leather tanning and cosmetics. And don't forget (cue drum roll) muskrat stew!

City-dwellers find it hard to swallow that furbearers taste good, and in some cases they're right. Opossum, skunk and coyote will never make it onto a gourmet menu. But there's still plenty of fine dining to be had!

So without further ado, here’s our list of Top 5 Tasty Furbearers.

#5: Roast Bear

At number five in our countdown comes bear. We’d rank it higher because just one animal can feed a village, but laws governing the sale of wild meat mean you can't just walk into your local store and buy bear.

Eating bear has a long history in North America, and "roast bear was on the menu for more than a few state dinners during our nation's youth," writes Holly A. Heyser in The Atlantic. But beware. The saying goes, you are what you eat, and it's never truer than for "insanely variable" bear meat. "Eat a bear that had been dining on berries and manzanita and you are in for a feast. Eat a bear that had gorged on salmon and it'll taste like low tide on a hot day. Ew.”

But there's a bonus, no matter how your bear turns out. Save the fat because eggs and beans fried in bear fat – yum!

#4: Scrumptious Squirrel

In fourth place comes squirrel. We like these critters because they're really dual purpose, providing fur and food for a lot of people. Nine percent of all furbearers trapped in Canada are squirrels and 5% in the US. Squirrel fur is not that valuable, but feeding a lot of hungry mouths gives them added value.

Old-Fashioned Squirrel Stew is said to be “downright delicious” and looks it too! Or get creative with these recipes for pot pie, fried squirrel, and baked squirrel.

#3: Mouthwatering Muskrat

Coming in at number three is muskrat, for two reasons. First, because muskrat stew tastes great. And second, because North Americans consume so many of them. Muskrat fur is not as wildly popular today as it once was, but it’s still the most trapped furbearer, accounting for 35% of animals taken in the US and 28% in Canada.

Just remember that muskrats are named for their musk glands. Fail to remove these properly and you're in for an “unpleasant dining experience”, but clean it right and cook it right and it’s “delicious”.

#2: Succulent Seal

At number two comes succulent seal, and it might have come in first if it weren't for one sad fact: Americans are not allowed by law to enjoy this culinary delight.

What we really like about seal meat is that it’s not a “by-product” of harvesting fur, but a product in its own right. Seal meat has been an important source of protein for Canada’s Inuit since the dawn of time. It’s also important to the economies of all sealing communities, especially since the EU joined the US in banning almost all seal products.

With very little fat, seal meat is extremely healthy, and its mild, briny taste means it can be prepared in many ways – smoked, tartare, seared top loin, mixed with pork for a sausage flavour, and so much more. So it’s also growing in popularity with city-dwellers looking to combine healthy living with fine dining.

#1: Beaver Tail

And at number one in our countdown comes ... beaver! Once a favorite of Mountain Men, it's still popular today and widely available. We also like that one large animal can feed a family. And provided you take great care in removing those smelly castor glands, it can pass for brisket. Here’s a recipe for beaver stew, and one for pot roast.

But the clincher for us in naming beaver our favorite furbearer feast is the tail. It's made almost entirely of fat, and is the part Mountain Men wanted most of all to keep them warm through the long winter nights. We must be honest, though; part of its appeal is that it's notoriously easy to mess up. Do it wrong, and you'll think you're eating Styrofoam, but cook it right and it will melt in your mouth like butter!

Bon appétit fur lovers!

Mink oil is a by-product of fur farming with a curious history that is hugely under-appreciated today. Once touted as a magical tonic for skin and hair, it’s now mostly used for less exotic purposes like leather conditioner and bio-fuel. But if you know where to buy, you can still give your complexion the treat it deserves.

Mink oil comes from the fat on a mink's abdomen. Most of the fat remains attached to the skin during pelting, and is removed during the "fleshing" process as it can "burn" the fur if not thoroughly scraped off before the pelts are stretched and dried. Each mink yields 200-300 grams (7 to 10.5 ounces) of fat. Just handling this fat tells you it's special as it melts into a pale-yellow oil that softens and soothes your hands. It's even more appealing when it's been purified and deodorised.

Native Americans would have been the first to notice how soft mink fat made their hands, but our story begins in the 1950s. After World War II, mink fur emerged as a fashion favourite, eclipsing the pre-war favourite, fox. Mink farming took off and a steady supply of mink oil was available for the first time. But who would buy it?

An obvious market was soon identified, leather conditioner, and that’s still a major use today. But the marketers had something more exciting in mind: cosmetics. Mink fur already had the luxe image, yearned for by any woman who could afford it or persuade her man to buy it. So the marketers pinned the luxe label on mink oil too, and a new range of beauty products was born.

Mink Oil Beauty Products

This was in keeping with the times. In Europe, the centre then and now of the cosmetics industry, companies were paying chemists to try anything that might unlock the secret to youth, including animal fats and a range of questionable animal extracts – hormones, embryos, placentas. So it really wasn’t surprising when, in 1949, a Paris-based company called Stendhal launched “L’huile de Vison” (The Oil of Mink).

The market was cool at first. Department store R.H. Macy introduced a mink oil cream in 1951 but found it a tough sell, and wondered if women might fear growing fur on their faces!

But things took off in the early 1960s with Stendhal’s "La Ligne Vison" (The Mink Line), featuring mink oil in pure form and in sunscreen, eye shadow, skin cream and soap. Competitors followed suit, adding mink oil to lipstick, cleanser, moisturizer and hair products.

A range of benefits, summarised here by Pureminkoil.com, were claimed:

• Mink oil supplemented human sebum (our natural skin lubricant and waterproofing) very well because its composition is so similar. Our skin absorbs it quickly and deeply because it passes through the pores rather than the epidermis. Our skin is moisturized and nourished, and left velvety to the touch, never sticky or oily. Hard spots are softened, and wrinkles are prevented.
• Mink oil was not associated with any allergies so it was perfect for hypoallergenic cosmetics.
• Mink oil formed a barrier that slowed the loss of both water and sebum from the skin. This meant your skin remained moist for longer after applying makeup.
• Conditioners and sprays containing mink oil increased hair body, suppleness and sheen, and improved the texture of damaged hair.
• Pure mink oil was so stable it could be used for two years after opening a bottle. Cosmetics containing it also stayed fresh longer.
• The mink was the "only animal in the world exempt from suffering any kind of skin diseases," and this "outstanding ability to heal on its own and their luxurious fur is distinctively related to its nourishing substance stored in its subcutaneous (under the skin) fatty layer of their skin."

We're not sure about that last one, but if mink oil cosmetics are so great, why are they hard to find these days? Maybe modern, high-end cosmetics work just as well and are cheaper to make or have a longer shelf life. Maybe also it’s because mink fur lost some of its near-mystical celebrity status in the 1990s, so mink oil’s greatest marketing strength faded too. And perhaps also it's because consumers, while still valuing natural ingredients in their cosmetics, now often prefer plant extracts to animal sources.

Whatever the case, most mink fat today has a less exotic destiny.

RECOMMENDED READ: Mink oil by Cosmeticsandskin.com

Still Prized

As any livestock farmer knows, efficiency is the key to profits, so it is important to use as much of the animal as possible. While it's rare for farmers to be paid for mink fat or oil today, they appreciate that the value of this resource lowers the cost of handling mink carcasses. The mink carcasses are usually composted into fertiliser – either on-farm or in separate facilities – or used to make bio-fuel. Mink oil is also used for bio-fuel, either alone or mixed with other animal fats. (The fat may be composted too, but it slows the process down.)

In regions where mink farms are clustered, the steady supply of fat is especially prized. Bio-fuel producers know that its protein level is higher than other animal fats, and that means more energy per unit. A good supply also makes refined and purified mink oil a viable business for use in cosmetics, leather conditioning and other purposes.

And that’s why North America’s biggest mink oil producer is based in Nova Scotia, the heartland of Canadian mink farming. Spec Environmental Solutions, which also composts mink carcasses, renders the fat at 70°C, producing some 500,000 lbs of mink oil last year.

Spec refines some of its mink oil for specialty markets but sells most in raw form to companies that further refine it for sale to end users. Most ends up with tanneries to make leather pliable and waterproof, but consumers also buy it to condition leather saddles and baseball mitts, to waterproof boots, and other uses. These are niche markets, but they can only grow with the growth of on-line shopping.

SEE ALSO: Why American mink is the world's favourite fur

Strict EU Regulations

In Europe, another centre of mink farming, the story is a little different. Strict EU regulations governing the disposal of carcasses mean that almost all mink carcasses, along with the fat, are turned into bio-fuel. Composting is rare. There are a few producers of mink oil, though not on the scale one might expect given Europe's position as the centre of the world's cosmetics industry and its biggest market. In the Netherlands, we're told, there are a handful of producers, and there's at least one each in Belgium and Iceland.

In Iceland, the Einarsson family farms horses, sheep and, for the past 34 years, mink. But it's always been a problem knowing what to do with the mink carcasses, since there's no local composting or bio-fuel production.

Making pet food is an option they're considering, but their breakthrough has been production of mink oil conditioner for leather shoes and saddles, and a range of lotions and creams, under the brand name Gandur.

Gandur had an unusual start in life, resulting in two product lines, one for humans and one for animals. "It all started when my mother decided to try to make a lotion for our horses, for when they develop sores around the hooves," explains Einar Eðvald Einarsson to the Iceland Monitor. "My brother is a vet and through him we tested it on more horses. One thing led to another and we started selling it."

Then humans started using horse hoof lotion for their own "various skin conditions" and a new product line for humans was born. Today, Gandur mink-oil products for humans are sold in pharmacies in Iceland, Sweden and Denmark.

"This is not a question of a great profit," Einarsson tells Truth About Fur. "This is a question of finding a use for a material that would otherwise be thrown away here in Iceland. We firmly believe this is of benefit for our environment."

So how does he feel about the merits of mink oil? Mink fat is high in omega fatty acids, he says, and more like the fat of a fish than that of a land animal. “The fat of the mink is much like our own fat, different from most other animal fats. The chains of fatty acids are very long and that’s why they are able to penetrate the skin so well. “

And there speaks a man who knows. Don't you owe it to your skin to find out for yourself? In the case of mink, it seems, beauty is indeed more than skin deep!

***

To learn more about donating to Truth About Fur, click here.

As Canadians prepare to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Confederation (July 1, 1867), and also the 375th anniversary of the founding of Montreal (May 17, 1642), this is a fine time to recall the unique role played by this country’s fur trade history.

In fact, fur trading had been practiced for hundreds – probably thousands – of years before Europeans arrived on these shores. Montagnais hunters from what is now northern Quebec, for example, were already trading fur pelts for corn, squash and other foods produced by Iroquoian farmers in the St-Lawrence valley when Jacques Cartier first visited the island of Montreal in 1535.

Fur trading with Europeans probably began when French fishermen crossed the Atlantic to exploit the extraordinary stocks of large codfish off the coast of Newfoundland and in the Gulf of St-Lawrence. When Cartier landed on the coast of northern New Brunswick, in 1534, he met Indians who clearly had experience with Europeans – they held up fur pelts on sticks, eager to trade.

It wasn’t until Samuel de Champlain built his habitation, in 1608 – to found what would become Quebec City, nucleus of New France – that the North American fur trade began in earnest. In the two hundred years that followed, furs provided the incentive to explore the vast interior of the continent ... and for a long series of wars and skirmishes to control it.

In 1627, Cardinal Richelieu granted a monopoly on fur trading to The Company of 100 Associates. Monopolies were sought to justify the risks involved in purchasing and transporting trade goods from Europe, and (hopefully) returning with furs more than a year or two later. But monopolies could also thwart innovation, with serious repercussions.

Radisson & the Hudson's Bay Company

One of the most dramatic examples is the story of Pierre-Esprit Radisson. At 15 years old, Radisson was captured by Mohawks and lived in their village on Lake Champlain long enough to learn their language and woodcraft – skills that served him well when he was able to escape and return to Trois-Rivières. In 1654, with his brother-in-law, Médard Chouart des Groseilliers, he explored far to the west, into the James Bay region, returning with a rich cargo of furs, and the bold idea that vast new fur supplies might be more easily secured by bringing ships directly into the interior of the continent through Hudson’s Bay.

New routes, however, threatened the politically well-connected merchants who controlled the French fur trade. Radisson and Des Groseilliers were briefly imprisoned and their furs confiscated. When their efforts to plead their case at Court, in Paris, failed, Radisson and Des Groseilliers eventually found their way to the English Court of Charles II. There, with support from the dynamic Prince Rupert, a cousin of the King, a group of influential investors was convened and The Company of Adventurers into Hudson’s Bay was born.

Under the Royal Charter granted on May 2, 1670, Prince Rupert and his partners became “true lords and proprietors” of all the lands drained by Hudson’s Bay, about 1.5 million square miles – one of the largest real estate deals in history. This immense territory, which came to be called “Rupert's Land”, included about 40% of today's Canada and significant parts of Minnesota and North Dakota. (While no longer directly involved in fur trading, the Hudson’s Bay Company is the oldest, continuously-operating, joint-stock company in the world. The 1670 Royal Charter is now on display at the corporate headquarters, in Toronto.)

The next 90 years were marked by intense competition between French, English and American fur traders. LaSalle and other French adventurers had established a string of trading posts and forts down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico, controlling “Louisiana” (named in honour of Louis XIV) and hemming in the fast-growing New England colonies. By 1739, furs represented 70% of the exports from New France. But danger threatened, as the American colonies challenged French control of the Mississippi and points west, while the Hudson’s Bay Company intercepted fur supplies that had passed through Indian trade networks to Montreal and Quebec.

The North West & American Fur Companies

The conflict came to a head with the British conquest of New France, in 1760, but this did not diminish the ferocious competitiveness of the lucrative fur trade. English, French and, especially, Scottish entrepreneurs set up the North West Company (1779), in Montreal, and pushed deeper into the continent through the St-Lawrence River and the Great Lakes, challenging the (London-based) Hudson Bay Company’s monopoly. Competition also intensified south of the St-Lawrence, with the founding of John Jacob Astor’s American Fur Company (1808). In search of new fur supplies, Astor pushed westward; his Columbia River trading post at Fort Astoria (1811) was the first United States community on the Pacific coast.

The current western border between the USA and Canada reflects, to a great extent, the fur territories once controlled by the American Fur Company and the Hudson’s Bay Company. (The HBC was merged with the NWC in 1821.) In fact, it is not at all sure that the young Dominion of Canada – formed in 1867 with the confederation of the provinces of “Canada” (Ontario and Quebec), Nova Scotia and New Brunswick – would ever have expanded to include British Columbia and the Pacific Coast, had not the Hudson’s Bay Company pleaded the importance of maintaining the lucrative Vancouver Island fur trade under Canadian control.

Many North American towns and cities began as fur-trading posts, but probably none was more influenced by the fur trade than Montreal. Montreal became the continent’s most important fur-trading entrepôt because Champlain recognized its strategic position at the intersection of the St-Lawrence and Hudson (via Lake Champlain) river systems, and because the rapids at the west end of the island (Lachine) prevented European ships from venturing further upstream. The Fur Trade Museum, in Lachine, housed in a stone fur warehouse built in 1803 by North West Company stockholder Alexander Gordon, is an excellent place to learn about Montreal’s fur-trade history.

"Beaver Club" Dinners in Montreal

Traces of fur trade history are everywhere in Montreal. One of the city’s oldest remaining buildings housed the convent of the Grey Nuns, who supported their missionary work with fur trading. Beaver Hall Hill, in the downtown core, was the site of “Beaver Hall”, the home of Joseph Frobisher, one of the North West Company’s leading partners, and the host of many of the company’s raucous “Beaver Club” dinners. Perhaps most significantly, the internationally respected McGill University was founded with a £10,000 grant from James McGill, a leading fur trader and founding partner of the North West Company. The university’s main Sherbrooke Street campus stands on the site of McGill’s “Burnside Farm”, which he bequeathed for this purpose.

Montreal’s fur trade remained important into the modern era: the Hudson’s Bay Company’s warehouse and auction sales were located on Dorchester Street (now called “Rene Levesque”), until they were relocated to Toronto after the election of the (separatist) Parti Quebecois government in the late 1970s. And Montreal became one of North America’s most important fur-manufacturing centres (like New York and Toronto), with the arrival in the first decades of the 20th century of hundreds of skilled (mostly Jewish) fur craftspeople – including my own grandfather, who arrived here in 1913.

After the Second World War, the North American fur-manufacturing sector was further strengthened by immigration from Kastoria and other villages of northern Greece where fur-working had been a way of life for centuries. Montreal was also the gathering place for thousands of North American and international fur designers, manufacturers and retailers who attended the association-run Montreal NAFFEM for thirty years, until 2013.

Canada's fur trade history reflects the country's cultural mosaic at its best: First Nations, French, English, Scots, Jews, Greeks and many others have worked together for hundreds of years to build this remarkable industry – a dynamic tradition of competition and cooperation that is well worth remembering as we celebrate these important anniversaries in the history of Montreal and Canada.

Of all conflicts between advocates of sustainable use of wildlife and advocates of animal rights, none has been more enduring than the sealing issue. For more than 50 years, sealers have been on the front line in a war to decide how we manage our wildlife – so long, in fact, that there is a danger their supporters will lose interest. To everyone who recognises the importance of keeping this traditional harvest alive, I say, renew your support for sealing. It's needed now as much as ever.

Sealing was not always the cause célèbre of the animal rights movement. Back in the 1960s, when the anti-sealing campaign began, the prime target was whaling. Despite the little-known fact that the whaling industry had already halted the excesses of its past, animal rightists (and not a few conservationists) were determined to shut it down completely. And they nearly succeeded.

This cleared the way for the anti-sealing campaign to grab the headlines – something it has been doing ever since. Half a century on, the beleaguered sealers are still fighting, with the current battleground being the EU.

SEE ALSO: CANADA CELEBRATES ITS FIRST NATIONAL SEAL PRODUCTS DAY

What makes the sealing story so remarkable is that it has lasted this long. Most of the credit belongs to the sealers themselves – both indigenous communities of the High North, and the descendants of settlers – for their refusal to die. Thanks also must go to a handful of governments for their unflinching support.

The sealers, of course, are fighting for the future of their cultures and one of the few livelihoods available to them. Anyone who has visited the northern reaches of the world will understand why. We are struck by the natural beauty of the rugged landscape, the purity of the air, and the abundance of life in the oceans. This beauty continues to exist because people maintain traditional ways of life, and central to this is utilizing local natural resources, including seals. Fishermen and hunters tackle the seas and the ice to bring home their catch, and what they don’t consume, they sell.

This beauty continues to exist because people maintain traditional ways of life, and central to this is utilizing local natural resources, including seals.

Governments, meanwhile, have supported the sealers for a variety of reasons. They recognise their right to self-determination, they want to keep people “on the land” (not flooding into overcrowded cities), and they recognise the role played by wildlife use in ecosystem management. Because seals consume commercial fish and forage species, and sustain others such as sharks and orcas, governments are increasingly focusing their research on the impact of seals and seal harvesting on the ecosystem as a whole.

This approach reflects a need to ensure that seal populations will continue to thrive. It also ensures that we live up to a moral responsibility to understand the impacts of harvesting choices on other species. This can mean limiting seal harvesting or encouraging it, depending on particular regional circumstances.

Finding the right balance between prey and predators makes the marine ecosystem more productive and preserves its biodiversity.

Veterinarians, too, have supported sealers by denouncing the message of animal rights groups that sealing is inhumane. The most common method for harvesting seals is using a rifle, while use of the "hakapik", a traditional harvesting tool, is increasingly rare today. Veterinarians consider both to be humane because they consistently cause instant unconsciousness before death.

The sealers have also received broad support from advocates of sustainable use with no direct interest in sealing. Croc farmers, kangaroo meat harvesters, you name it; across the globe, wildlife users have thrown their support behind the sealers. Meanwhile major conservation groups such as the IUCN and WWF have acknowledged that sealing does not pose any conservation issues.

Yet despite the perseverance of the sealers themselves and the breadth of support for sealing, all is not well in paradise. The relentless attacks from groups with seemingly inexhaustible funds have tested our support to the limit and found it wanting. Proof of this is the fact that sealers are still losing ground with the recent closure of the EU market (except for that reviled exemption for products from indigenous communities). The enormous potential US market, meanwhile, is just as far off as ever. The US has banned all marine mammal products since 1972, and no one, not even the governments of sealing nations, is willing to mount a serious challenge to this ban.

SEE ALSO: EU SEALING POLICY IS HYPOCRITICAL, ANTI-DEMOCRATIC

So to any wildife user wavering in their support for sealing, I recite the classic poem of German Lutheran pastor Martin Niemöller:

“First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out –
Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out –
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out –
Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me – and there was no one left to speak for me.”

As advocates of sustainable use, we should be enormously thankful that, against all odds, the sealers have survived the last 50 years. But we must not take their survival for granted. They are under constant threat and cannot be allowed to disappear, if for no other reason than that we may be next.

FROM OUR WEBSITE: IS IT ETHICAL TO PRODUCE, BUY OR WEAR FUR?

Sometimes a particular aroma can bring back vivid childhood memories leaving you awash in feelings of love, comfort, and belonging. It may be cinnamon buns or fresh laundry for some. For me it is the smells of hides and fur. Wild fur is a part of my family heritage.

My father came from a line of French Canadians who trapped fur bearers in northern Alberta, including the beavers and muskrats of the Athabasca Delta. At 19, he moved to Fort Smith, Northwest Territories and continued to trap on the Alberta side of the border. At the age of 23, he married my mother, who shared his life for 56 years – his perfect match.

My mother is a Chipewyan Dene from Northern Saskatchewan. She moved to Fort Smith as a young teenager. Having left her home community early, she’d had little opportunity to learn the traditional skills of her people. As the young wife of a trapper, she instinctively turned to the elders of her new community for their knowledge and experience. Chipewyan was the language spoken, and I remember their happy faces and the sounds of laughter when it was my job to bring tea as they worked preparing meat, or skinning and fleshing beaver and muskrat.

When my father’s trapping partner was forced to retire because of health problems, I remember being proud of my mother when she convinced my dad that she was the one who should take up the job. She was excited and eager, and I still remember her delight in making a very special lynx-fur hat – a hat befitting a lady trapper.

It was the trapper’s way of life that defined my parents. It gave them an intimate connection with the natural world. They were hard-working people. After a long day on the trap-line, my father would head downstairs to tend to the raw furs while mom sewed late into the evening. She became a well-respected and expert sewer of fur and hides. My parents kept our large family well fed with healthy wild meat and dressed in the warmest of furs. The six “little Dragons” were northern kids who didn’t know the meaning of cold!

They often shared colourful stories about their days together on the trap-line, like the times the wolves out-smarted them, or the afternoon dad went out for a couple hours and came back with four beautiful lynx. The trap-line always brought new adventures for more stories. My parents were also keenly aware of the health and numbers of animals in their territory, and they managed these populations much as a rancher would.

When my father passed away a few years ago, I thought a lot about my parents' remarkable life together, the trap-line, and the barrels of fur he left behind that my mom continues to sew with to this day. I wished for a way to carry on the family tradition.

It was about this time that I moved back to the North. My son, Joel, who had been enjoying snowboarding in the mountains of British Columbia, was now outside every day in -40 weather. I was continually adding fur to the inside of clothing, for both him and his buddies, as my mother had done for us. I was reminded of how effective an insulator fur is as I watched them out in the frigid temperatures for hours. I soon found myself cutting little pieces of fur into squares and gifting them to friends as hand-warmers they could slip inside their mitts.

My ah-ha moment came when, after a while, those cozy warmers had my friends asking for more. I realized that this gift from nature could be shared with more people. Not knowing anything about business or developing a retail product, I began taking steps into that world. I chose sheared beaver primarily from the Genuine Mackenzie Valley Fur Program and went on to develop branding, packaging, and marketing strategies.

Encouragement and sage advice came from my mother, as well as from those who purchased and loved those first Aurora Heat™ hand and foot warmers. Soon I began to hear from people with circulatory problems and arthritis about how my fur warmers were making a difference for them. We celebrated the first anniversary of Aurora Heat in March, and it is now available on-line and in stores across the North and beyond.

Am I excited? You bet I am! I love everything about my new fur business. I love continuing my family heritage and traditions, sharing my mother’s Indigenous culture and ancestral knowledge of thousands of years, and celebrating my parents’ love of the land. I love that I am part of a way of life that continues to thrive in Canada with our cold winters and open-minded people.

I especially love being part of the societal awakening of our need for natural and sustainable products. I love the beauty and the usefulness of fur. There is something about having a piece of nature in your mitten, socks or pocket that is incredibly grounding. We can’t all afford a beautiful fur coat, but anyone can own a pair of reusable, all-natural fur hand or foot warmers to keep fingers and toes toasty-warm year after year.

My vision for Aurora Heat is to offer more people an opportunity to experience the warmth and comfort of natural fur, and look forward to developing more products. I truly believe that if we rely more on nature for our needs, we will come closer to living in harmony with this earth. And, I know my father would have just the biggest grin!

May the fur be with you!

***

SEE ALSO: Hudson's Bay Company stocks Fort Smith line of fur hand warmers. CBC News, March 9, 2019.

Visit Aurora Heat's website or follow it on Facebook. Email Brenda at [email protected].

A Visit from St. Nicholas

'Twas the night before Christmas, when all thro' the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
Full poem

Everyone believes in Santa, but few count themselves lucky enough to have seen him. For those blessed few of you, did you notice something odd? His red cloth jacket and pants, and black leather boots, were nowhere to be seen. He was dressed, from head to toe, in nothing but fur!

Something most Santa fans don't know is that his true appearance, and character, were not discovered until the early 19th century, with New York the centre of enlightenment.

Historically, Saint Nicholas was depicted as a stern holy man, and this tradition was exported to New York by Dutch colonialists. But a group of writers and scholars, led by Washington Irving in his 1809 book A History of New-York, began to question Santa's dour image. What they discovered would rock the world, and especially the Dutch. Christmas would never be the same again!

Far from being a mirthless humbug who punished naughty children with the rod, Santa was a jolly fellow who delivered presents down chimneys from a sleigh pulled by reindeer.

SEE ALSO: A Christmas allegory: Fake trees, fake fur

In 1823, Clement Moore of New York's Protestant Episcopal Church described Santa in more detail than ever before. In A Visit from St. Nicholas (aka Twas the Night Before Christmas), Moore said that Santa's "cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry," his beard was "white as snow", and his belly "shook like a bowl full of jelly". What's more:

He was dress'd all in fur, from his head to his foot

And why not? Given that Santa spends the whole night flying around in the dead of winter, fur is the logical choice.

Then along came Thomas Nast, "Father of the American Cartoon", who churned out so many depictions of Santa, he ended up making a book of them. Through the pages of New York-based magazine Harper's Weekly, he also had nationwide reach.

Nast's problem was that he had never seen Santa, and considered A Visit from St. Nicholas a work of fiction.

Like a young girl dressing her Barbie doll, Nast decided Santa needed a complete wardrobe. He might go for sheared fur, or no fur at all, but it was his red cloth outfits with Arctic fox trim that captured the public imagination. Though Santa has never been seen in such an outfit, we're now supposed to believe that's all he ever wears!

Well, now you know better :) Which leaves just one question: what type of fur does Santa wear?

Of course, no one knows what he prefers when at home, but as a reindeer-herder, reindeer fur seems an obvious choice. Nothing beats it for warmth.

SEE ALSO: Amazing facts about fur: Dressing for the Arctic

But early illustrators of A Visit from St. Nicholas chose to depict Santa in fur resembling muskrat. There are two reasons to believe they got it right.

Firstly, reindeer fur is very bulky, and therefore ill-suited to sliding down chimneys.

Secondly, muskrat was the most popular fur in New York at the time. Perhaps Santa was just trying to blend in!

Merry Christmas to all from Truth About Fur, and, of course, from Santa!

Earlier this year I wrote a blog post listing “5 reasons why PETA won't make me ditch my Canada Goose”. For anyone who has been living under a rock (or in some tropical paradise), Canada Goose is a popular brand of amazingly warm, down-filled coats with coyote fur around the hood to protect your face from winter’s fiercest blasts.

The article included a photo of me with Maggie, my 10-year-old Golden-Lab rescue dog. In response, several readers asked, sarcastically, why I hadn't used Maggie to trim my parka instead.

Then, in the past few weeks, activists protesting the opening of the first Canada Goose bricks-and-mortar stores – in Toronto, New York, and London (UK) – deployed the same tactic, bringing their dogs to the demos. If we are not ready to use our pets for fur, they argued, how can we justify using coyotes?

At first glance, they raise an interesting dilemma: since Maggie and the coyote are both canines, it seems morally inconsistent to love and pamper one while killing and “exploiting” the other. But is it really?

Here are five reasons why my dog is not a coyote, and why wearing fur is not like wearing your pet:

1. Coyotes don’t sleep in our beds

Fact is, dogs in much of North America and Europe – at least in urban areas – have become members of the family. Dogs have long helped humans with our work; they have been our devoted companions. But now they have moved into our homes, and for many families they have become surrogate children. Parents living with teenagers may sometimes feel that dogs are, in fact, preferable to human children. Be that as it may, it is clear that pets dogs are no longer on the outside looking in, but have become an integral part of the family. Using dogs for food or clothing has therefore become taboo, akin to cannibalism. Trees, plants, and other animals – including coyotes – are in the other category: consumables. That’s how the world works. (Sorry, PETA.)

2. Dogs chose us to protect them

Dogs split away from their wolf ancestors at least 15,000 years ago, maybe much earlier. And, as Stephen Budiansky (The Covenant of the Wild: Why Animals Chose Domestication) and others have argued, it is very likely that dogs chose us, rather than the other way around. According to this hypothesis, wolves that were not aggressive enough to compete in their pack may have approached human settlements, attracted by bones and other food that humans discarded. Because the most docile animals were more likely to be tolerated, there was a “natural selection” for non-aggressive animals that accepted a subordinate role in their new human “packs”. The wild coyote is a very different beast. As one trapper told me about a coyote he found in his trap: “When I looked into his eyes, I was chilled by the cold, evil stare; this was nothing like a dog!” Only people who have had no close contact with wolves, coyotes or other wild canines can believe that they are “dogs”.

3. Dogs and coyotes occupy different spheres of moral concern

While, theoretically, all humans should enjoy equal consideration, we are generally more concerned about our own children than about the neighbour’s children. And more about our neighbours than about people in another city or half-way around the globe. Without such “degrees of moral concern” we would not be able to function at all, knowing that children are suffering hunger and abuse in many parts of the world while we sip our lattes. Similarly (whatever PETA would have us believe) we are more likely to swerve to avoid hitting a child – even on a tree-lined road; even if it means risking our lives – than we would for a dog in our path. Again: rats, bees and other social animals live harmoniously in large groups, but will tear to shreds any stranger that wanders into their midst. It seems to be consistent with natural law to treat those closest to us differently.

4. If we kill coyotes, we should use them

Coyotes are highly abundant and have expanded their range across most of North America. They are now the number one predator problem for ranchers and, when fur prices do not provide sufficient incentive to keep populations in check, state and provincial governments may offer bounties to encourage hunting and trapping. If we have to cull coyotes, surely it is more respectful – more ethical – to use them. Of course, domesticated dogs and cats can also over-populate, and they too are culled. In modern, Western societies we collect and put down millions of unwanted pets in “humane shelters” rather than leave them hungry, sick and abused in the streets as is done in many parts of the world. That we choose not to use the fur or other parts of so many unwanted pets probably reflects our wealth (we can afford to waste these resources) and the special relationship we have with dogs and cats, more than any moral imperative.

5. Dogs, like their human protectors, have been removed – or at least insulated – from nature

In nature, most plants and animals produce more young each year than their habitat can support to maturity; those that don’t survive provide food for the others. This is the great cycle of life. And like it or not, people are part of this cycle. We too need resources from our natural environment to survive, and we too will feed the worms in the end (unless we attempt to shirk our debt with cremation, but even then our basic chemical components will be recycled). In ecological terms, there is nothing unusual about using coyote fur on parkas. What is unusual is the abhorrence we feel in Western society about making mitts with Rover or Prince – or Maggie. Traditionally, dogs had to earn their keep: pulling sleds, herding sheep, killing rats and other “vermin”, protecting property. When they died, their fur and leather were valuable in societies too poor to waste useful resources. But, as mentioned in our first point, dogs have become part of our families, and in that sense have been removed from nature. We found Maggie at the Montreal SPCA when she was one year old; she had been there a month and came close to being put down. Happily, the number of dogs euthanized in North American shelters has been greatly reduced, thanks to spay-neuter programs and “Adopt, Don’t Shop” campaigns. But we cannot manage wildlife populations with spay-neuter programs. And we cannot live without using the resources that nature provides. The status of “honorary humans” that we have applied to our dogs in wealthy Western societies, cannot be extended to all of creation.

SEE ALSO: DON'T FEEL BAD ABOUT THE COYOTE FUR ON YOUR CANADA GOOSE JACKET

When I mentioned that I was writing this article, a friend suggested a sixth point: she said that we can’t use our dogs for clothing or meat because “they love us”. Unfortunately, as much as I love my dog, I am not at all sure that this sentiment is really reciprocated. I suspect that Maggie’s interest in me is directly proportional to the quantity of kibble, table scraps, ear scratching and interesting walks that I provide. But then, perhaps the love that humans share is not all that different?

So what can we conclude? Animal activists argue that it is an arbitrary distinction to pamper some animals while “exploiting” others. But this short analysis suggests that such distinctions are not so much “arbitrary” as they are culturally determined; they are based on wealth, urbanization, the changing nature of the family, and other socio-cultural factors. Aboriginal people in North America – and traditional societies everywhere – used dog fur and leather, as many still do. Most dogs used to live and work outside; we have brought them into our homes and families. But that doesn’t mean we don’t need to use plants and animals and other resources that nature provides.

So the "moral inconsistency" raised by pampering some animals while exploiting others is more apparent than real. And Maggie would almost surely agree, if she were capable of this sort of rational thought; she certainly appreciates the meat, bones and other animal products we offer.

Ironically, animal-rights purists (including PETA) now also oppose the keeping of pets, which they denounce as a form of paternalistic slavery. I am not sure that Maggie would agree.

***

RECOMMENDED READ: Animals deserve respect, but they are property – not people. By Andrew Lawton, Global News, May 26, 2017.

COOL FACT #1: Fur may have saved the human race

New research suggests humans (Homo sapiens) survived the last Ice Age and Neanderthals didn’t because humans were serious about fur clothing. Animal remains around Neanderthal sites lack evidence of furbearers, while human sites have fox, rabbit, mink and notably wolverine - the same fur still preferred today by Canadian First Nations for hood liners.

COOL FACT #2: Everyone's heard of the California Gold Rush, but how about the California Fur Rush?

In the early 19th century, trappers came from far and wide to the US west coast to harvest huge populations of furbearers. It was these trappers, not the gold prospectors who followed, who opened up the west and put San Francisco Bay on the trade map. But no one remembers because no one named a football team after them. Go 49ers!

COOL FACT # 3: Beaver butts are used in food flavouring

Next time you see the words "natural flavouring" on a food package, it might be referring to Castoreum, secreted from the castor sacs of beavers located between the tail and the anus. Usually it's used to simulate vanilla, but it can also pass as raspberry or strawberry.

COOL FACT #4: The fur trade determined much of the Canada-US border

The search for fur drove Europe's exploration and settlement of North America, and many of today's towns and cities began as fur-trading posts. In fact, much of the border between Canada and the US traces the territories once controlled by Jacob Astor’s American Fur Company and the Montreal-based North West Company.

COOL FACT #5: Mink farming plays a key role in our food chain

Have you ever wondered where all the animal leftovers from human food production go? Fish heads, chicken feet, expired eggs, spoiled cheeses? If you live in fur-farming country, chances are they go to make nutritious mink food. And the mink manure, soiled straw bedding and carcasses are composted to produce organic fertiliser to enrich the soil, completing the nutrient cycle to produce more food.

COOL FACT #6: Mink wastes provide biofuel

In Nova Scotia, Canada, pilot projects are transforming mink wastes into methane for bio-energy production. In Aarhus, Denmark – the country that produces the largest number of farmed mink – the public transit buses already run on mink oil.

COOL FACT #7: Mink carcasses make great crab bait

Crabs will eat just about any seafood you offer them, but so will seals and sea lions, and they'll trash your crab pots to get at it. Enter mink bait! Crabs find their food by smell, and apparently the smellier the better because they love mink musk. But seals and sea lions can't stand it and will give your pots a wide berth!

COOL FACT #8: Canada's beaver population has never been bigger

The national animal of Canada has been prized for its luxuriant fur for hundreds of years, yet wildlife biologists believe there are as many today as there were before Europeans arrived. They also believe coyotes, foxes and raccoons are more populous now than ever. Truly modern trapping, regulated to allow only the removal of nature's surplus, is a perfect example of the sustainable use of renewable natural resources!

SEE ALSO: Abundant furbearers: An environmental success story.

COOL FACT #9: Farmed mink enjoy company so farmers house them in pairs

After being weaned from their mothers, farmed mink are often raised in pairs, preferably a brother and sister, and sometimes even threes. Farmers have learned that keeping siblings together results in calmer and healthier mink.

COOL FACT #10: Fur garments are very labour-intensive

Fur garments are created individually, with all the cutting and sewing done by hand. Not counting all the work involved in producing the pelts, an “average” mink coat might take 35-40 hours of hand work, while an intarsia sheared beaver by Zuki could take 100 hours. That's longer than it now takes to assemble a car!

BONUS FACT: Animal activists have no sense of proportion

Each year, North Americans use about 7 million animals for fur. That's one sixteenth of one percent of the 12 billion animals they use for food. Yet animal activists focus more attention on the fur trade than on all other livestock industries combined. Go figure!