Day: March 26, 2015
The beaver has long been associated with Canada because of the fur trade. The Hudson’s Bay Company shield consists of four beavers separated by a St. George’s Cross, and a coin was struck that was equal to the value of one male beaver pelt. It was known as a buck, after the buck-toothed beaver. Canada’s first postage stamp issued in 1851 was the “Three Penny Beaver”.
Despite all the early recognition, the beaver didn’t get the official status as an emblem of Canada until An Act to provide for the recognition of the beaver (castor canadensis) as a symbol of the sovereignty of Canada received royal assent on March 24, 1975.
Thirty-one years later, Ontario Senator Nicole Eaton proposed that the beaver has had its day and the polar bear, noble and rugged, should replace the “dentally defective rat” as our national symbol.
Picture: National Post (http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/07/13/hey-america-thats-no-way-to-treat-canadas-national-emblem/)
Reuters Canada (http://ca.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idCATRE79R50120111028)
Maclean’s Magazine (http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/beaver-be-dammed/)
Case Mail volume 17, no. 6 (Mar. 15) is now available on the Law Society website. Produced by the Law Society Library, Case Mail is a free semi-monthly electronic newsletter of digests of Saskatchewan cases with links to fulltext decisions on CanLII. Numerous areas of law are covered including this family law case dealing with a foreign jurisdiction: Theriault v Theriault, 2014 SKQB 373.