Canada wants to be in charge of its own beavers, thank you very much.

COLUMN: Industrious beaver has long been a source of Canadian pride

In January 1975, a senator for New York introduced a bill to acknowledge the beaver as its state’s official animal. Well, harrumph, this did not go over well with Canadians, who had, for a couple of centuries, ‘claimed’ the beaver to be representative of all things Canadian: an industrious engineer and the base of our economy ever since the first European explorers tripped over this area.

In quick response to this threat of an American brazenly stealing our nation’s pride and joy, in March 1975, a private member’s bill was presented by MP Sean O’Sullivan to rightfully claim and protect the beaver icon to be our nation’s representative. On March 24, 1975, the Canadian Parliament made it so. Take that, ya upstart Americans! Elbows up, eh?

Ok, but I honestly don’t know why beavers are uniquely Canadian. Everyone who had them killed them. And they were a boom for every nations economy at one time.

The beaver had been inserted into many company logos well before 1975: the Hudson’s Bay Company since way back when; Roots clothing, which outfitted the 1998 Canadian Winter Olympic teams with its beaver-branded clothing; and Parks Canada, which long had the beaver as its mascot. And many others, probably more so than even the Canada goose.

What surprised me a bit was that the beaver had shown up on Canadian nickels since 1937, well before the aforementioned American/Canadian beaver debacle of 1975. As a young collector of coins in the 1960s, I assumed that to be engraved on a coin, the subject must have already received royal assent. The things you learn later in life.

Honestly Canada has a lot to be pissed about right now so we should just give them the beaver. Okay?