Fur Coats

The Fur Harvesters are holding their annual meeting later this week according to the note under the picture of a lady in a sable coat in the local printed press. Hopefully all the animal rights people will still be down East harassing the seal hunters and not show up here to disrupt the meeting. Making fur coats has been with us through the ages, and seems like a sensible way to shield ourselves from winter’s blasts.

How difficult can it be, I thought, to change the hide of a beaver into a beautiful warm coat which would sell for thousands of dollars instead of the miserable sum the trapper gets for a few beaver pelts? Not only could a person make some serious money, but you could create a few local jobs.

Having tramped around the woods of northern Ontario and fished in a few of our lakes, I know there are lots of beavers and muskrats out there. In fact, whenever a broken beaver dam washes out a road or railway, some think there are too many of the toothy rodents. There are many other animals in the northern forests as well whose hides can be turned into fashionable furs, but supposing one wanted to get into the industry in a modest way before getting into exotic pelts like martin and fisher, one could start with beaver.

One source of raw fur is the Fur Harvester’s auctions where millions of dollars trade hands every year, but why compete with buyers from Italy and China when you could catch and skin our own critters? All you have to do is buy a few traps, find a beaver pond or two and catch the big rodents. There is an old fellow down at the Fraser House who says he used to trap, so for a beer or two he could teach you how to set a Conibear trap. I discovered that these steel springy things can be tricky, leaving you with a badly bruised wrist, so I recommend the lessons.

You need a snowmobile to get around your trap lines, but these can be purchased second hand from the finance companies. If you do not have a half ton truck, you could check the Auto Trader for a good deal. All you need is an old beater to get you from your home to the drop off point in the bush.

You will have to get a trapping permit from the Ministry unless you prefer poaching, but a permit is recommended so you do not end up on some other trapper’s line. The stories about mad trappers are true, by the way. I met one last month who had snow shoed twenty five miles to get a new battery for his radio because he was not picking up the Saturday night NHL hockey games. He was some mad, let me tell you!

After you spend six months catching beavers and muskrats, you are ready to make the coats. Did I forget to mention that you had to skin the hides off the animals? Well, that is work that takes a fairly steady hand and a sharp knife. You have to carefully cut the fur-bearing skin away from the carcass without making any little nicks in the hide – the button holes are added afterwards. Then you have to stretch and scrape the hide before it dries. Just look it up on the internet before you head out to your trapper’s cabin and you can see how the native people used an easily constructed willow hoop for this procedure. If you do not know the difference between willow and alder it probably won’t matter.

By the way, if you are married and have children you might want to trek the 30 miles from your cabin out to a telephone at Elk Lake and call your family every couple of weeks. Sorry, the cell phone will not work out there on your trap line. If the family does not hear from you they might try to cash in your life insurance policy. Do not be alarmed if a stranger answers your phone – it is probably just the babysitter. On second thought, maybe we should just buy our beaver pelts at the fur auction.

There is any number of housewives / househusbands you can hire who know how to operate a Singer and make their own clothes. All you have to do is find a skilled scissors person to cut the furs into patterns that can be sewn together in different sizes. Oh, you might want to have the skin side of the fur treated so it smells nice, like a pair of good leather shoes. That guy down at the Fraser can tell you everything you need to know about tanning the hide so the fur does not fall out.

You may want to shear some of the beaver fur with a barber’s electric hair trimmer, as some people prefer the sheared look as opposed to the natural longer beaver hair. By the way, do not throw out any scraps or small pieces of leather and fur as these can be made into little moccasins or key fobs as long as you put a label on them saying Made in China. The leather requires some chewing to soften it but you can do this while watching Desperate Housewives. The people from the Toronto love these knickknacks.

You are now ready to add the finishing touches to the fur coats. You have to put a nice silky lining in the coat and some of your sewers will know how to do this, although even after carefully inspecting my sports coat, it remains a complete mystery to me how this is done. Now comes the labeling part, perhaps the most important part of making and selling a fur coat.

You hire a few aspiring models from West Ferris to try on the coats, promising them you will employ them when you do your fashion show. You find out what size they normally wear and deduct 2 from it. So if they are a size 10, you label the coat a size 8. This is quite legitimate as the high-fashion houses do this all the time. Now you add your brand name to the coat with “Not for Export” in several languages right underneath the part about not washing the coat in hot water.

Your brand name should be something unpronounceable that looks like French or Italian. Shoppers like these catchy brand names. Under the name you print Made in Canada as some rich people are a bit snooty about buying furs made in the Far East.

Now you add the fancy cardboard piece, attached with a silk tassel, which describes the making of this fine fur coat, leaving out any part about killing and skinning the animal. The secret marketing tool is emphasizing that these coats are ‘not for export’ because they are only for the very cold climate of Canada! This is called snob appeal, something buyers of fine furs will not admit to. You might want to add a small Canadian flag as our name is still pretty good in the world.

When you have your first show you may have to hire some models from southern Ontario even though you made promises to the local high school girls. The top requirement of the models, right after being too skinny, is that when they walk up and down the runway that they look haughty, bored and never, ever smile. Our North Bay girls tend to smile too much, it having something to do with being happy and growing up here.

Find a vacant building downtown on Main Street to rent for the show. You will incur some additional costs for wining and dining the buyers from New York, London, Paris, Rome and Moscow. These costs are of course tax deductible, but you will have already added that into your 1,000% markup. This markup allows you to make backroom deals with the buyers that along with the ‘special export’ permit, will give you a solid niche in the industry.

If you get rich following these astute business instructions, you might drop me off a size 7 ½ sheared beaver top hat. I promise to tell everyone where I ‘bought’ it.