The Rest Is History - 285: Canada: Beaver Wars

Episode Date: December 17, 2022

Canada: Beaver Wars Join Tom and Dominic as they discuss the illustrious history of the beaver. This story intertwines these small bundles of fur with tribal wars, the monopoly of the Hudson's Bay Company, and Grey Owl - the original beaver conservationist. Join The Rest Is History Club (www.restishistorypod.com) for ad-free listening to the full archive, weekly bonus episodes, live streamed shows and access to an exclusive chatroom community. *The Rest Is History Live Tour 2023*: Tom and Dominic are back on tour this autumn! See them live in London, New Zealand, and Australia! Buy your tickets here: restishistorypod.com Twitter:  @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com. Hello and welcome to The Rest is History. Now, as many of you will know, we have embarked on a colossal marathon taking in every single one of the 32 countries that has qualified for the FIFA World Cup in Qatar. And we are talking about aspects of those countries' histories. Now, today we alight on the shores of the great North American country of Canada. Now, you might think Canada is an odd place to have qualified for the World Cup because it doesn't

have a terribly distinguished footballing history. But Tom, it does have an amazing sporting claim to fame, doesn't it? Because am i not right in thinking that canada took part in the world's first ever international sporting fixture of any kind it was against the united states and um the sport was amazingly cricket so not ice hockey so that's our subject for today is it the canadian cricket no i was i i was very very tempted to do the history of canadian cricket but i decided not to um and instead i i thought that i would focus on something else that is very very close to my heart a truly admirable mammal dominic yes and a mammal that in many ways is i guess the uh the stanley baldwin of of the animal world and it's the beaver and i describe it as the stanley baldwin of the animal world because it's it's kind of the in a way the embodiment of the kind

of conservatism that stanley baldwin embodied so it's a proud homeowner so it makes you know these wonderful kind of homes yeah very monogamous uh so lifelong married relationship like stanley and what was her name? And Lucy. And Lucy. Yeah. Or later the Empress Theodora, if you listen to our episode about Love Island. You know, cares for its young, all that kind of thing. Very hardworking, obviously busy chopping down trees and all that kind of stuff. So in a way, the kind of the embodiment of a kind of conservative ideal, if you like.

And it's kind of served as an emblem, if not for Canada, then certainly for Canadian history. So Canadians have always had a slightly ambivalent relationship to the beaver. So it has served them as a symbol of their country. So 1851, its very first postage stamp, do you know what it was called, Dominic? The beaver stamp tom it was called the threepence beaver dominic so it uh depicted a beaver crouching on a bank uh behind beside a stream um obviously cost 3p but when in 1921 canada wanted a coat of arms and there was a lot of discussion about what animal should be on it they didn't go for the beaver they go for the moose they went for the moose and the reason that that they didn't

want the beaver was because uh the guy responsible for it said they didn't want a rat oh what which was harsh well because because the beaver is a rodent but it's not actually a rat so it was it was robbed so that's harsh isn't it it's harsh's harsh. But I mean, I think the fact that the beaver was in the running kind of illustrates how significant an animal it is. But it's not just that it's an emblem of Canada itself. As I said, it's an emblem of Canadian history. Yes. Because it goes back to the very beginnings of human habitation in what becomes Canada. And it runs right through the history of the native peoples in Canada, the coming of the Europeans, the war between the British and French, industrialization, ecological collapse, and then ecological recovery.

Crikey. There's a lot going on there, Tom. It's a great, great window onto the vast sweep of Canadian history. Okay. Great. Let's go for it so there've been various species of beaver that have existed in canada of which the most extraordinary is castoriodes uh which is uh aka the giant beaver dominic so it was a giant beaver that's very much very much what it says on thanks for. Thanks for that, Tom. That's your capacitors, David. Top paleontological information there. So that was kind of roaming Canada about one and a half million years ago.

And we say giant, how big? About the size of a black bear. Ooh, that is big. So it wasn't going around chopping down trees and building dams and things. Yeah. It was more like, I think the ecological niche that it inhabited, It wasn't going around chopping down trees and building dams and things. It was more like, I think, the ecological niche that it inhabited. It's been compared to a hippo.

So it was kind of like a little hippo. Tom, it's just a stupid question. Yeah. Because you know I know nothing about zoology, science, or the natural world. Are there not beavers in Europe? We'll come to that. Okay. All right. We will come to that. It's a cliffhanger. Europe? We'll come to that. Okay. All right. We will come to that.

It's a cliffhanger. Yeah, we will come to that. So the giant beaver was not in Europe. So this was specific to North America and the north of North America. And it was large, very large. And it was alive and roaming the wilds of North America until about 10,000 years ago. And so the inevitable question is the question that we asked. I don't even remember we did an episode.

Of course you remember because you did it. But we did an episode on Australia before Columbus. Where there were, again, huge indigenous animals that basically went extinct around the time that humans arrived in Australia. And there is the same issue around the arrival of humans arriving across the Bering Straits, coming to North America. And it's kind of around this time that the giant beaver is going extinct. And its remains have been found with human artefacts in a cave in Ohio. And there are stories that are told by Native American peoples that seem to describe perhaps folk memories of these

giant animals. There's a brilliant book by Adrienne Meyer, who's actually a kind of classicist stroke paleontologist. And she has argued that a lot of the stories that are told by Native American peoples are derived from their coming across fossils of ancient creatures. And so one of the theories that she advances is that perhaps they don't reflect kind of enduring folk memories from 10,000 years ago, but coming across clearly the fossils of giant beavers and that this is where the stories come from. We don't know. We don't know. But anyway, the giant beaver very sadly went extinct.

I mean, who wouldn't want to see a giant beaver? I'd love to see a giant beaver, Tom. Roaming the lands of the frozen Canadian North. Pin my collars to the mast on that. Yes. But that left the beaver that we're more familiar with, so this kind of smaller beaver. And North America, and particularly Canada, Dominic,

it was full of beaver. There was so much beaver. There was so much beaver. There were so many beavers. And it's been estimated that maybe 60 million, maybe 100 million, maybe 300 million, maybe 400 million. So that is a lot of beavers. Yes. That's Adam.

Yeah. Why so many? Because they didn't have, there wasn't a predator. There wasn't a predator going for them. And they basically in terms of kind of river in riverine environments they were the apex mammal okay and and because they you know they chop down trees with their big teeth and they build dams and all that kind of stuff yeah they completely sculpt the landscapes so they reroute rivers um you know they can flood valleys basically they create in

entire ecosystems that other animals other plants then depend on and so in in a sense if you had been roaming canada me personally 500 years ago yeah the landscape would look completely different because of the impact on it of beavers yeah okay interesting this is that there are lots of beavers and so therefore they are very useful to the native peoples who who come in and who settle across canada yeah because it's not like there aren't people there in this period yeah obviously they're not on the scale of of populations that will come from europe but and these are peoples who who need say fur you know it's very cold in canada that's the one thing everyone knows about canada yes it's winters are very very cold uh and these the the beaver furs are tremendously um you know that they provide you excellent, excellent insulation. So there's no question that native peoples are hunting beaver for fur.

They're also hunting them for meat. It's very calorific. In fact, much more calorific than most other game that they could have hunted. They use the sinew for cord. They use the jawbones for snowshoes, intriguingly. They seem to have used the claws for necklaces. And Dominic, you asked me, were there beaver in Europe? Slightly different species, but basically the same. And it's interesting, Anglo-Saxon women seem to have been obsessed with beaver necklaces. So the teeth, and they would cap them with gold and they've been found in about, do they, about 20 graves. So that's a kind of interesting parallel between Anglo-Saxon England and prehistoric Canada.

And there is absolute, you know, we have absolute archaeological evidence. We have, you know, bones of beavers bearing the marks of knives. There was a burial found near Lake Huron, which had a copper axe with fragments of beaver pelt wrapped around it. So that was about 2,500 years ago. So beavers are very, very important to the subsistence of the native peoples.

So they're hunting them, but they're not hunting them at all to the point of extermination humans and these millions and millions of beavers are are coexisting well because the human numbers are so small i mean presumably by comparison with today and then of course europeans arrive yes the late 1400s um you're starting to get fishermen going to Newfoundland from France, from Portugal, from Spain, and perhaps particularly from England. So they're hunting cod, they're hunting whales, and they start to land. And when they land, they come into contact with native peoples and they start to exchange stuff, knives, whatever. And what the native peoples can provide in exchange is beaver pelts.

So to begin with, this trade in beaver fur is a sideline. Yeah. But then the traders start going inland. So rather than just kind of fishing the waters off the canadian coast they start to to sail up the rivers and the first person to leave a record of of what he finds when he starts sailing up the rivers is a french explorer called jacques cartier um and he sells up the saint lawrence river and saint lawrence river will become the kind of the great center of french culture in north america yes the great, the great artery of Quebec, basically.

And so in 1535, he describes visiting a place that will become the site of Montreal in due course. And he's told by the peoples who live there, the Iroquois, that this is a place called Hocelaga, which means in their language, the place of the beaver dam. And so that's, I gather, still a region of Montreal to this day. Okay. So it's a trace element of the uh lining the the the the various tributaries that run off the the saint lawrence river more and more fur trappers start to sail

up it and to settle it and to uh capture the uh the various beavers and the native people start getting sucked into it so they get sucked into the uh get sucked into the great vortex of the be lawrence river and you know southwards into what will become the united states and long canada so they they all start fighting over it as well and by the 17th century you you were getting what are known as the beaver wars beaver wars and essentially what is happening is that the iroquois you know this great tribal grouping that cartier had dealings with to begin with, they're carving out, they're trying to carve out essentially the equivalent of an enormous kingdom and monopolize the fur trade with the Europeans. And this seems to have been an almost literally genocidal campaign. So they are aiming to literally destroy as many of the kind of rival tribes as

they possibly can. So this is, you know, the last of the Mohicans, the famous novel. The Iroquois wipe out the Mohicans. I mean, that's why there's,

so that's why he's the last of the Mohicans. Yes. And they, their main targets are the Hurons who obviously give their name to late Huron. We've already mentioned that. And the Algonquins, as in the famous club. Yes. So the Algonquins and Hurons are trading with the French.

So the French back them. And the Iroquois inevitably, therefore, are backed by the English and the Dutch. And so it's a kind of horrific snarl of colonial and Native American hatreds and rivalries. And by the end of the 17th century, the effect of this on the Native tribes is so devastating. And the influx of European traders is so large that Europeans are starting to be able to cut out the Native American middlemen and seize control of the trade themselves. The French have a model where they sponsor kind of independent traders, coureurs du bois, they're called. So woodrunners, basically.

Yeah, basically. And it reflects the fact that they are the ones who are going very, very deep into the hearts of the vitals of Canada and kind of exploring it, mapping it, all that kind of thing. Because the beavers are starting to vanish from the more readily accessible locations. So the more they vanish from there, the further you have to go and search for them. The Spanish are doing the same as well. So for the French, the beaver same as well um so for for the french the beaver is le castor and for the spanish is il castor and so that's why you get a lot of places in in north america that kind of bear witness to this so you have castorville bayou castor

lac du castor solitaire prairie du castor castor point castor plunge lots of others like that and lots of kind of beaver creeks and stuff like that yes across canada absolutely because of course the english are also getting involved and in 1670 that you know there are individual trappers of course that who are english too but they go for the kind of they they set up a large company in 1670 from charles ii they get a charter for what is officially called the Governor and Company of Adventurers of England trading into Hudson's Bay, which is better known as the Hudson's Bay Company. And what the Hudson's Bay Charter does is that it gives those who've been given the

charter exclusive rights to a vast, vast swathe of territory. So it's basically all the lands about Hudson's Bay, which is in the north of Canada. It's a huge expanse of water. And all the rivers that are kind of draining into it, all of this is given over to English traders. And it's a region that is called Rupert's Land after friend of the show, Prince Rupert. Oh, crikey. Charles II's uncle. Prince Rupert's a pitch up in a beaver themed podcast.

Yes, he absolutely has. I mean, so it's about, I mean, it's almost half of Canada. It's about 40% of modern day Canada. So it's a huge amount of territory. My Canadian geography is not brilliant. So I just Googled a mapday Canada. So it's a huge amount of territory. I'm just looking at – my Canadian geography is not brilliant, so I just Googled a map of Canada. I mean, Hudson Bay, Tom, is pretty much the size of Western Europe. I mean, gigantic.

It's an enormous, enormous expanse. And basically it's free. So all they have to do in return for this charter is that should the king or any of his heirs or successors enter Rupert's land, then the company has to hand over two black beavers and two elk. But obviously, you know, the likelihood that Charles II or... Slimo. Absolutely slim. And in fact, the first time that this kicked in was when the future Edward VIII, so he was Prince of Wales,

in 1927, he went on a tour of Canada and he stopped in Winnipeg or en route to Alberta where he had a cattle ranch. And so they had to hand over two black beavers and a pair of elk elk i'm sure every eighth would love that yeah but also you may remember in we did um an episode on uh animals in the tower of london yeah menagerie and they and they the hudson's bay company gave a bear a very grumpy bear i do um to uh george the third which and he was disappointed

because he'd been hoping for a fur code well that raises a question i wanted to ask about the uses of the beaver well we'll come to that dominic okay oh am i jumping ahead no we will come to that but i just wanted to say that obviously this land is not really charles seconds to give it already belongs to native peoples, already there. But also, why should the French acknowledge an English king giving away all this land? The issuing of the charter, the Hudson's Bay Company, does not end the conflict between French and English trappers, quite the opposite. And over the course of the 18th century, it massively fuels colonial rivalries between England and France. And during the Seven Years' War, Canada is absolutely at the heart of the

kind of international dimension of it. So with India, Canada is one of the great territories that is up for grabs in the Seven Years' War. This is the war that sees probably the most famous battle in Canadian history when General Wolfe captures Quebec. Oh, that's a great, one of the greatest battles in British history, let alone Canadian history. I mean, it's such a dramatic story. Yes, and it inspires the famous painting by Benjamin West. Yes, that Nelson admired. And Nelson said, why don't you paint pictures like that? Yeah. And so as a result of that, there is now unitary control, not just of Canada, but therefore of the trade in beaver furs in Canada. Britain monopolizes the beaver.

On that note, Tom, we should take a quick break. And when we come back, you can tell us about the modern story of the beaver. And if you like beavers, this is definitely the podcast for you. See you in a minute. Bye bye. I'm Marina Hy hyde and i'm richard osmond and together we host the rest is entertainment it's your weekly fix of entertainment news reviews splash of showbiz gossip and on our q a we pull back the curtain on entertainment and we tell you how it all works we have just launched our members club if you want ad-free listening bonus episodes and early access to live tickets, head to therestersentertainment.com. That's therestersentertainment.com. Hello and welcome back to The Rest Is History. Now, before we start the second half of today's

episode, I just wanted to read out an email from Ari in Canada. Dear Tom and Dominic, I'm an 11-year-old kid from Canada and my mom and I listen to your podcast. Your podcast, says Ari, is very good, except you barely ever mention Canada in your episode about the USA and England. In that episode, you talked about the War of 1812 and you mentioned Canada once. Why don't you mention Canada more? Thank you for your time, Ari. Well, Ari, I hope that today's episode has lived up to your expectations. And if it hasn't, of course, you know who to blame. And that person is Tom Holland. So Tom, we are talking beaver. We have reached the Treaty of Paris, which I think is something

of a landmark in the history of the Canadian beaver. And Britain is now in control of this enormously lucrative trade. So where are you taking us next? Well, when you take possession of a kind of vast new world full of creeks and forests and mountains and prairie, you want to know what you've got. And so the decades that follow the Seven Years' War, which, of course, also sees the American War of Independence, when the English colonies in what becomes the United States cease to be British. And so Canada, therefore, becomes ever more important to the British crown. People want to know what's out there. And so end of the 18th century, beginning of the 19th century, you see a systematic attempt to map Canada. And the great name associated with this is a guy called David Thompson, who goes out and he maps Canada basically first for the Hudson's Bay Company, then for a rival company, also very much interested in dealing with beaver pelts. And Thompson has been described as the great mapper, the great geographer

in Canadian history. In 1814, he publishes this incredible map that's so accurate that even a century later, the Canadian government are using it as the basis for the maps that they're publishing. Because he's been out there and seen the vastness and the scale and the basis for the maps that they're publishing. And because he's been out there and seen the vastness and the scale and the majesty of the Canadian landscape, and he's seen the animals that inhabit it. So he's kind of getting there in advance of the settlers who are moving across. And he writes about Canada in the age before Europeans arrived, that this continent from the latitude of 40 degrees north to the Arctic Circle and from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean may be said to have been in possession of two distinct races of beings, man, so the

native peoples, and the beaver. And he says that all the lowlands were in possession of the beaver and all the hollows of the higher grounds. And he witnessed for himself dams that were a mile long a mile long a mile long and this is still something that can be seen by people going out into into the wilds people are still capable of being stupefied by the scale of what beavers are capable of creating. The dams, all that kind of stuff. And there's still so many pelts capable of being skinned from a beaver that Thompson says that they serve people across the expanse of Canada and basically as the currency.

You know, that's the basis of the entire entire economy across canada yeah but he's already aware that that this is under threat and that there's a possibility that you know all of this will vanish so in 1797 he meets um an old cree man and the cree man says that we are now killing the beaver without any labor we are now rich rich. So that's great. Everyone can make a huge profit from it. Everyone's quids in. But we shall soon be poor for when the beaver are destroyed, we have nothing to depend on to purchase what we want for our families. Strangers now overrun our country with the iron traps and we,

and they will soon be poor. And this is a very, very accurate prophecy because the demand for beaver pelts, it's not just the furs in themselves provide coats or whatever. It's because beaver pelts make for the best hats in the world. There's a particular quality to the fur. They have barbs on them, and so they interlock. And these barbs on the fur make it

ideally suited to felting and then when you've made the felt into kind of hats absolutely waterproof so you can go out in this hat in the rain and it won't just kind of collapse and we talked about this with um with alice and matthews david in our episode on on lethal fashion yes and so basically all you know if you imagine a hat in the 18th century, so it could be a top hat or a tricorn hat or a bicorn hat or a shako or any of those things, it will have been made from a beaver pelt. Oh, so I've completely misread this.

So I'd kind of imagine when you said beaver pelt hats, I'd sort of... So it's not like Davy Crockett? Right,ussian star hats or something you're basically saying even if i'm wearing you know a tricorn hat my squire's hat that we talked about in a previous podcast when i'm a fat and corrupt squire yes that would have beaver in it because if it's not made from beaver fur if it's not made you know if the felt is not made from beaver fur, if you go out in the rain to evict your peasants or whatever. Yeah, which I would. Of course you would.

Yes. Then it would just disintegrate and kind of melt into a furry sludge down your face, which would inhibit your dignity. You wouldn't want that at all, would you? It would indeed. It would ruin. Oh, yeah. If I'm throwing poor people out in the cold, I want to have a dignified hat while I'm doing it. Absolutely.

I want to have an eco dignified hat while i'm doing it i would have an eco unfriendly hat exactly so not only not at dominic not only can you evict peasants but you can have the consolation of knowing that you're also destroying one of the most remarkable creatures in the north american continent this is the kind of stuff i'm all about some you're killing two birds with one stone yeah two beavers with one stone so the thing is it stays stiff in wet weather that's that's the key okay that's the great thing about beaver that's what i look for in a hat stays Two beavers with one stone. So the thing is, it stays stiff in wet weather. That's the key. That's the great thing about beaver.

That's what I look for in a hat. It stays stiff. That's the wonderful thing. Right. And so there are huge, huge fortunes to be made. And these fortunes are not just European fortunes. The original, the archetype, the trendsetter of the New York plutocrat is John Jacob Astor. Oh, yes, of course. So originally he's German, he's come to England, and then he goes to America, to New York.

And he makes his fortune trading in beaver pelts. He imports them from Canada to Manhattan, and then he exports them to Europe. And then he diversifies into opium dealing and Manhattan real estate and all these fail-proof ways for making money in New York. And by the time of his death, this beaver pelt trading has made him the richest man in the US. So he's worth $20 million, which it's been calculated as equivalent to the wealth of Jeff Bezos today. So it's about 1% of the entire GDP of the United States in his lifetime. And he is always very, very aware of what he owes his fortune to. So he has a ship called the Beaver.

And if you go to Astor Place in Manhattan today, you'll still see Beaver emblems all over it. Crikey. So kind of memorial to... Tom, I am learning stuff in this podcast. That's what this is all about, isn't it? Yeah, it's... Well, it is. Yeah.

You see, you were worried. You don't like zoology or nature or any of that kind of stuff. I wasn't worried. I was intrigued. I was intrigued to see where you were going with this beaver business. But it's turned out to be much more colourful and much richer than I had ever imagined. That's beaver for you. Yeah. So talk to me more about beavers, Tom.

Okay. So over the 18th century into the 19th century, the pace of trapping just intensifies, intensifies, and intensifies. And iron traps have been introduced in the 17th century. So that helped to fuel the beaver wars of that century. But then what happens in the 18th century is a technique for trapping beaver that is very, very distinctive to the beavers. Okay. Because it reflects something that right the way back to classical antiquity in Europe had always kind of fascinated

people about the beavers so their teeth no it's not it's a substance called castoreum which is a kind of yellow gunge that they secrete so so when they they dig at you know they they build a dam or whatever or a house yeah they will excrete this yellow gunge and then they will urinate over the yellow gunge to create a kind urinate over the yellow gunge to create a kind of mixture paste that will that serves to mark their territory really yeah so this castoreum people weren't sure where it came from so the greeks thought it came from their testicles it's not from testicles that it's actually from i gather what biology is called specialist sacks when you said you wanted to do a podcast on beaver tom, I have to admit, I feared that it would involve specialist sacks. And so it has proved.

So it has proved. And so the Greeks thought that these were testicles. And they had this whole weird thing about how if beavers were menaced, they would gnaw the testicles off. And it was even said that if they'd done that, and they were being hunted a second time, they would kind of bare their arses at the hunter to show that they didn't have testicles, that they'd already removed them. This is reflection of the degree to which in the classical world, and indeed later, castoreum was very, very prized. So the Romans used it as a kind of aspirin. It was, you know, if you had a headache or anything. Oh, for God's sake. You take a dose of castoreum.

What? It was also used by abortionists. so it was believed to induce abortion. But it was also used as the basis of perfumes. And it was throughout early modern into the modern period. Castoreum, if it's refined, apparently the scent is absolutely delicious. And Dominic, again, right the way into the present day, it has been used as a vanilla substitute in ice cream. I mean, for goodness sake, Tom is this is implausibly multi-purpose i mean what if yes you have a headache you're

pregnant and you want an ice cream yeah you want an ice cream and you're going out for dinner and you want to smell good yes exactly so beavers are you know kind of very nutritious right they have fur that will enable you to wear a tricorn hat. Yeah. And they have this kind of excretion. This sort of magic stub. It's the basis for furniture and ice cream flavouring. So in every way, you can see why people are after them. But the kind of awful thing from the point of view of the beaver that is discovered in the 18th century is that if you take castoreum and you wipe it over a cage, beavers will go

straight for it. They kind of go, brilliant, let's go for that. And they plunge in and the cage closes or grabs their leg or whatever, and they can be got. And so this massively, massively intensifies the ease of trapping beaver. And what then happens in the 1820s is that you have a teenager in New York who develops a kind of very lightweight trap. And he's a guy called Sewell Newhouse. And these traps are called Newhouse traps. And they are sold in huge, huge numbers to the Hudson's Bay Company. So they've got the bait and now they've got the lightweight traps. They can just take them out. It doesn't matter how remote the creeks may be you can now go out with your castoreum with your your new house trap and that basically there is nowhere that is so remote

that uh you can't trap a beaver gosh this is a very this is taking a very sad turn tom well but but you know this is one we've talked about before on the podcast. We've talked about what happened to the buffalo on the plains of the United States. We've talked about the passenger pigeon in our episode on the pigeons. They went extinct. This process of industrial level slaughter is a feature of the Europeanization of both the United States and, I'm sad to say, Canada. But in Canada, there is a consciousness that, in a way, it's because beavers are so, they provide so much that they are a resource that needs conserving.

And there are government officials. So the Cree guy who said we're going to lose our income. It's not just the native peoples who realize this. There are colonial administrators who appreciate it as well. And they try to start to introduce conservation measures, much to the hostility of the trappers. There is no tradition of conserving animals at this point, but it's a kind of groundbreaking program where over the course of the 19th century and into the 20th century, there are attempts, but they're feeble because it doesn't have mass support. There isn't a kind of sense among most

people living in Canada and the broader world that they have an emotional investment in conserving these extraordinary creatures. And what happens in the 20th century is that the beaver gets a very, very charismatic spokesman who becomes a global figure, a global spokesman for the process of conservation. And he is a man called Grey Owl. And he speaks with the authority of this tradition among the native peoples of Canada that you have to, you can, of course, trap animals and use them, but you have to show them respect. And that kind of wiping them out on a vast industrial scale is not the done thing. And it helps when Grail gives this message to white Canadians, it helps that he looks, I mean, he looks brilliantly wise. So he's the absolute kind of embodiment of how people would imagine a kind of a very wise in the words, in the phrase of the

time, a red Indian. This is not the kind of red Indian who will't this is not a the kind of red indian who will scalp you this is the kind of red indian who will speak with the wisdom of many many thousands of years of living with oh gosh he does look very wise i've i've just googled him he does so he had so he has black hair he has an aquiline nose he has and he he dresses like a kind of stereotype of a native american so here actually like an apache he claims to be the um that his mother is an apache he has a buckskin vest uh he wears moccasins um and he has the uh the woodsman skills of the uh the ojibwe people of northern ontario among which he he lives so looking at a photo of him, Tom, he looks to me like a man who absolutely is the embodiment of a kind of Native American, what do they call them in Canada, First Nations, kind of

authenticity and dignity and spirituality and all these. And what gives a kind of real heft to his message is that he himself had originally been a beaver trapper. Right. his message is that he himself had originally been a beaver trapper. And he had then kind of had a Damascene conversion and he'd become this great enthusiast, this great for conserving the beaver. He becomes the protector of the beaver, the father of the beaver,

if you like. And he starts writing articles about it. He starts writing books about it. And then in 1930, the head of this kind of what this, this, this national park, so Riding Mountain National Park in Manitoba,

sends in a film crew to film him hanging out with his beaver friends. And they make a nine-minute film. And this is the first professional film ever made of beavers in the wild. And so people in New York or London can see what beavers in the wild actually look like and how they behave. And they have this guy who looks the embodiment of First Nations. Absolutely embodiment of the dignity, the wisdom, all that kind of stuff. And as a result of that, he gets an official role in riding Mounted National Park.

He's basically beaver guardian. It's his job to look after them and to boost their population and this wins him kind of international fame and so he goes on a tour of britain he goes on a tour of the united states and his message is always the same we have to conserve the beaver and in 1938 he dies of pneumonia and his his legacy, particularly in Canada, is this sense that it's not just about economic self-interest. There is a kind of moral duty to conserve this extraordinary creature. And he's at the head of what over the course of the 20th century will become a kind of mountain campaign to conserve wildlife populations that are under huge threat. What an amazing story, Tom. What an amazing guy i mean i mean it's extraordinary that he's not better known in britain well and all the more amazing

because in fact he is from britain oh no oh he's he's he's actually um he's not a native american oh no he's from hastings and his real name was was archibald stansfeld bellini archibald bellini archibald bellini oh my word what a twist at school he was a huge fan of cowboy and indian stories and he became obsessed by them so he's basically role-playing as a Native American. Well, so that's what his critics say. But I think people who are kinder to him would say that he goes out to Canada. He has an unbelievably complicated love life that involves him falling in love with and then dumping a succession of Native American women. Okay. Well, that doesn't necessarily paint him in a good light, Tom. No, but I think, I mean, he adored the culture.

And he does become absolutely passionate about the need to conserve the beavers. But he's also becomes, you know, he identifies so strongly with Native American culture as opposed to, you know, white Canadian culture that he just wants to become a part of them. And, you know, and he does, you know and he does you know he does great work and the legacy one of the measures of his legacy not just his legacy but i mean he's he's the most famous spokesman for beaver conservation is that today in north america there are about 10 to 15 million beaver so that's you know that's a huge huge recovery because at one point they were down to about half a million, maybe even lower. So they could easily have gone extinct.

And are they still being trapped? Yes, but under very tight control. I mean, it's very, very carefully regulated and they are recovering. I mean, so much so that actually in 2007, a beaver was, a wild beaver was seen in the bronx um so you know that first time and i think about over two centuries that a wild beaver had been seen in you know the new york area um and and the other good news story so you asked about about europe let's let's focus on britain yeah i know this is about canada but but it's this is this is quite touching dominic because it actually relates to you and me so So beavers were in Britain.

We already talked about how Anglo-Saxon women loved to wear necklaces made from their incisors. But they had basically gone extinct in England and Wales probably by the 14th century. So was the Normansans isn't it although bizarrely i read in uh the missing links um by ross barnett which is a fabulous book about um mammals in britain that have gone extinct uh and he says that in 1789 apparently a bounty was paid on a beaver in bolton percy in yorkshire but that's so aberrant that people think it maybe it was an otter or something nobody's quite sure but anyway so probably beaver was snipped by the 14th century in England Wales by 16th century in Scotland and since then they haven't existed however you may remember

that when Dominion came out you very kindly interviewed me as part of the um Budley Salterton Literary Festival Tom I remember it well i remember it very well you were gutted because i interviewed you in budley salterton on the day that the times compared me with thucydides yeah and you were absolutely you're put you're in a foul mood yeah it's very downcast but i then cheered up because I suddenly realised that Budley Salterton is on the River Otter, which confusingly is the site of the release of beavers into the wild. So the beavers of the River Otter. Oh, right. And that they were then further beavers released into the Forest of Dean.

There had already been beavers released into the into north of Scotland. And these are Canadian beavers being released, are they? No, this is the Eurasian beaver. So this is the kind of beaver that originally lived in Britain. I know lots of people may not be keen on the current government, but one thing that is a splendid achievement that the government did, and I particularly praise Michael Gove, there was a wonderful picture of him gazing lovingly at these beavers

being released into the wild. Yes. One of the great achievements of Michael Gove's political career, he, as agriculture secretary, was responsible for reintroducing beaver into the wild. In Ross Barnett's book, you know, he says he's got all these kinds of other animals that have gone extinct. So, you know, woolly mamm mammoths cave lions uh aurochs bears lynx all these other creatures uh but the beaver is the only one that's been restored that's that's come back right and so you know britain is following in the wake of canada and i i like to think that grey owl would be very pleased to know that it's not only in canada but in his native

his native england what was his real name again? Adrian or something. No, Archibald. Archibald Bellini. So Michael Gove, friend of, friend of Beaver. I mean, that's a, that's something to have on your tombstone, isn't it? Yes. Yes. It's a, it's wonderful. So there it is. Canada, of course, Canada, of course, the home of Leslie Nielsen. Yeah. And I think it's wonderful that we've done an episode on the beaver as Canada's contribution to this ongoing series of episodes that we're doing.

It's a wonderful story. And I think you've done it justice. I think we can safely say that was a tour de force. A tour de force and a tour de beaver. You're too kind. And thank you very much. I hope our Canadian listeners will consider that we've done justice to the richness and sophistication of their history

and we'll be back next time for more World Cup related shenanigans goodbye bye-bye Thanks for listening to The Rest Is History. For bonus episodes, early access, ad-free listening, and access to our chat community, please sign up at restishistorypod.com. That's restishtertainment.com