A recent case of black bear gall bladder possession in northern Ontario prompted Mike Commito to investigate the transnational connections associated with bear hunting. Frequently black bears are harvested in one area but before or after processing their parts are destined for farther away locations, sometimes as part of an illegal black market trade. Through the course of his research on bear management in Ontario and New York State, Mike briefly takes us through a notable case of international black bear translocation that took place between Timmins, Ontario and the United Kingdom in 1959. The mayor of the gold mining town, Leo Del Villano, offered to organize a spring bear hunt in order to help refurbish the bearskin caps worn by the Queen’s Guards at Buckingham Palace. Consequently, sixty-two of northern Ontario’s black bears became unwitting actors in a broader campaign of maintaining the empire and civic boosterism. It was the last systematically organized spring bear hunt in Ontario and its worldwide publicity alerted many Ontarians to a form of hunting that would be highly contentious for another forty years until it was indefinitely repealed by the Conservative government.

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Sean Kheraj

Associate Professor at York University, Department of History

Sean Kheraj is the director of the Network in Canadian History and Environment. He's an associate professor in the Department of History and associate dean of programs in the Faculty of Liberal Arts and Professional Studies at York University. His research and teaching focuses on environmental and Canadian history. He is also the host and producer of Nature's Past, NiCHE's audio podcast series and he blogs at http://seankheraj.com.

Latest posts by Sean Kheraj (see all)

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• Nature’s Past Episode 67: Science, Technology, and the Modern - March 2, 2020
• 2020 Melville-Nelles-Hoffmann Lecture in Environmental History: Eve Buckley - March 2, 2020
• ASEH 2020: A Listener’s Guide to Canadian #EnvHist - January 20, 2020
• Top 5 Posts of 2019 - January 1, 2020
• Canada Has Never Had a Leak-Proof Oil Pipeline - December 16, 2019
• Nature’s Past Episode 66: Communicating Toxic Legacies - October 16, 2019