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Canada’s fur trade is booming again — thanks to demand from China’s new capitalists
National Post ^ | June 25, 2013 | Joe O'Connor

Posted on 06/29/2013 6:00:22 PM PDT by Squawk 8888

“I am happy,” Eugen announces, in an Austrian accent betraying his Vancouver-by-way-of-Vienna roots. “I have a plate of chops. Now, go ahead, ask me anything you want to know about the fur business.”

What I want to know, what every fur buyer at Grannittis restaurant wants to know is: how much? How much will the top polar bear skin fetch at the following day’s wild fur auction at Fur Harvesters Auction house in North Bay, Ont., one of the few places, anywhere on the planet, where an interested party can shop for a Canadian polar bear pelt?

Eugen is a master taxidermist. He and Edith, his sweet-voiced, red rouge and lipstick-wearing wife of 54 years, own Capilano Furs & Taxidermy Studios in North Vancouver. They have been in business since 1956.

“I have a Chinese client looking for two mounted bears,” Eugen says. (Translation: He has a Chinese client looking for two polar bear skins to be stuffed, stitched back together and posed, presumably fiercely, on pedestals for display.)

“I think we could see a skin sell for $12,000, maybe $14,000, but no more than that.”

Bob Desbiens, a trapper and retired North Bay elementary school principal seated to Edith’s left, offers his prediction: $20,000.

“$20,000?” Eugen scoffs. “That’s crazy.”

It is crazy. But China is crazy, crazy for Canadian polar bear furs — the rarest gems in a booming international fur trade — and crazier still for wild northern fur of every description: marten, mink, otter, lynx, silver fox, red fox, Arctic fox, beaver — even the wily raccoon.

(Excerpt) Read more at nationalpost.com ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Canada; Culture/Society
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To: twister881

Porar Bear

Grizzery Bear

Chinkchirra

Sirver Fox

Brack Bear
___________________________

You are twisted. Funny but twisted.


21 posted on 06/29/2013 6:30:21 PM PDT by Chickensoup (200 million unarmed " people killed in the 20th century by Leftist Totalitarian Fascists)
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To: MacMattico

They’re the same way with precious hardwoods like ebony and rosewood. Rapacious and totally unconcerned with considerations like sustainability, and I say this as a fellow non tree hugger. They buy huge quantities, mainly for furniture, from unscrupulous suppliers in places like Madagascar who think nothing of clearcutting in order to make a buck. They know full well who they’re dealing with, but it’s like they don’t have a conscience.


22 posted on 06/29/2013 6:34:36 PM PDT by Yardstick
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To: Squawk 8888
There's got to be some ingenious U.S. or Canadian citizen that can make some fake looking polar bear fur and convince the Chinese it's real and we can give them a taste of their own medicine— rip them off the way they do us now.

And they use poor dogs and cats for fur and sell it in other countries as other types of fur. How many Americans don't realize they're wearing a coat with a dog fur lined hood? They'd freak if they knew that!

23 posted on 06/29/2013 6:37:22 PM PDT by MacMattico
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To: MacMattico
the Chinese will decimate entire populations if allowed to

I think we should take up a collection to export ALL of the PETA people over to China to protest this. Wouldn't that be fun to watch?!!

24 posted on 06/29/2013 7:05:50 PM PDT by Right Wing Assault (Dick Obama is more inexperienced now than he was before he was elected.)
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To: tet68

They say they have the softest pelts.


25 posted on 06/29/2013 7:06:25 PM PDT by ExpatGator (I hate Illinois Nazis!)
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To: tet68

LOL!


26 posted on 06/29/2013 7:08:37 PM PDT by Carriage Hill (Guns kill people, pencils misspell words, cars drive drunk & spoons make you fat.)
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To: Vince Ferrer; tet68

“Surely, you can be serious?”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0A5t5_O8hdA


27 posted on 06/29/2013 7:11:45 PM PDT by Carriage Hill (Guns kill people, pencils misspell words, cars drive drunk & spoons make you fat.)
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To: Squawk 8888
marten, mink, otter, lynx, silver fox, red fox, Arctic fox, beaver — even the wily raccoon

How 'bout groundhogs? You need groundhogs? We got plenty! Plenty prairie dog, too! Squirrel (sqwuddle in Russian) to go along with moose? Plenty squirrel! And chipmunk! Kids love stuffed chipmunk and little chipmunk fur coats for their dolls! You give me 15 minute, I get you dozen chipmunk. Only 500 dollah each! Pickup or delivery?

28 posted on 06/29/2013 7:12:35 PM PDT by Right Wing Assault (Dick Obama is more inexperienced now than he was before he was elected.)
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To: Falcon4.0

China is a fresh market of People that have not been wimpified by liberalism.


So to be “macho” we have to mindlessly slaughter wildlife like they do?


29 posted on 06/29/2013 7:12:48 PM PDT by chessplayer
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To: Yardstick

They’re the same way with precious hardwoods like ebony and rosewood. Rapacious and totally unconcerned with considerations like sustainability, and I say this as a fellow non tree hugger. They buy huge quantities, mainly for furniture, from unscrupulous suppliers in places like Madagascar who think nothing of clearcutting in order to make a buck. They know full well who they’re dealing with, but it’s like they don’t have a conscience.


Chinese capitalism is capitalism gone berserk.


30 posted on 06/29/2013 7:17:36 PM PDT by chessplayer
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To: MacMattico

And they use poor dogs and cats for fur and sell it in other countries as other types of fur.


And they don’t even bother to kill them first. They just rip the hides off them and let them die in excruciating pain and shock. The Chinese peoples reputation for cruelty to animals is legendary. And it’s the entire population. Think of a sick, disturbed kid in the U.S. that likes to torture animals and multiply that kid by a billion.


31 posted on 06/29/2013 7:22:53 PM PDT by chessplayer
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To: chessplayer

Time to get out the traps for some good old animal conservation.
That’s right, sportsman do more good for wildlife then any animal rights group. In fact, more than all of them put together.


32 posted on 06/29/2013 7:41:15 PM PDT by GranTorino (Bloody Lips Save Ships.)
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To: Squawk 8888
I have hats that are made of beaver.

Curiously enough, beaver is waterproof and the more beaver in the hat, the more expensive it is.

20 years ago, I paid a craftsman named George Davis to produce what he called a "300 beaver" cowboy hat for me. That would be something in excess of a 30X for you novices.

He started with a piece of felt about the size of a kitchen table, formed it, lined it, sized it, took the lining and band out of it, smashed it flat and started over on it 3 times.

I still have it, still wear it and it is still waterproof.

He had pictures of a lot of very famous people on the wall of his shop (which is very hard to find) getting the same treatment.

33 posted on 06/29/2013 7:45:57 PM PDT by elkfersupper ( Member of the Original Defiant Class)
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To: bigredkitty1

True, but if the animals are being culled legally or one gets killed for being aggressive, why waste the fur?


34 posted on 06/29/2013 10:34:10 PM PDT by Amberdawn
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To: cripplecreek

Apparently muskrat is passed off as rabbit most of the time.


Not to a fly tyer!


35 posted on 06/30/2013 12:47:44 AM PDT by S.O.S121.500 (Any law repugnant to the Constitutuon is null and void.....ENFORCE THE BILL OF RIGHTS! It's the Law.)
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To: Right Wing Assault
That would end up being a win-win!
36 posted on 06/30/2013 2:29:02 AM PDT by MacMattico
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To: GranTorino

Sportsmen do more good for the wildlife population then animal rights groups, this is true. Just take a look at upstate NY and we’d be over run with starving deer if hunting were outlawed.

But that’s not what we’re talking about with the Chinese. They’d kill every freaking Polar Bear for a coat if they could. That’s not good old American conservative conservation!


37 posted on 06/30/2013 2:42:19 AM PDT by MacMattico
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To: Yardstick
You're right, a neighbor of mine plays a Grenadilla wood oboe and owns a Rosewood one. I don't know much about wood or oboes but he prefers to play his oboes from the 1970’s because he says newer ones are made with wood from younger, less seasoned trees which makes the wood thinner and crack more easily. The sound isn't as beautiful. All because countries like China are using up all the good, old stock and they have to use younger trees with less then mature wood for instruments. (Or so this is how I understand what he said!)
38 posted on 06/30/2013 2:52:34 AM PDT by MacMattico
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To: Chickensoup; twister881
You are twisted. Funny but twisted.

Definitely NOT funny.

39 posted on 06/30/2013 3:05:52 AM PDT by wai-ming
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To: Squawk 8888
Canada’s fur trade is booming again

Is this a euphamism for prostitution?

40 posted on 06/30/2013 3:08:29 AM PDT by Lazamataz (If illegal aliens voted (R), then the Dems would create the tightest border security in the world.)
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