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www.pgcitizen.ca | Thursday, June 25, 2009

news

Beavering out collectibles
Colin Hunter The Canadian Press
HEIDELBERG, Ont. -- Sherwood Hagey admires the beaver. "They're very determined," he says of the buck-toothed lumbermunchers. "They have a mission and they do it." Perhaps that admiration explains why Hagey has spent much of the past quarter-century amassing a collection of beaver-based knick-knackery. His collection is big. Dam big. "I have 1,700 beavers," Hagey says in the matter-of-fact way that one might say "I have 10 toes." He has beaver figurines, beaver stamps, beaver books, beaver mugs, beaver fridge magnets, beaver key fobs, beaver greeting cards and a beaver door knocker, among much other beaverobilia. Plus, his name is Sherwood. "Like a forest," he says. "A forest full of beavers." One thing he doesn't have is a real beaver, living or stuffed. "What would I do with a taxidermied beaver?" he asks rhetorically. He has a point, but it begs an even more fundamental question: what does he do with 1,700 beaver trinkets? The answer: nothing, really. Until now. The bulk of his collection is stored in a dozen boxes and trunks in the basement of his house, just outside Heidelberg, which is northwest of KitchenerWaterloo. For most of the past 25 years, nobody has been particularly interested in seeing his beavers. But he recently had a call from the people at Kitchener's Woodside Historic Site (the boyhood home of William Lyon Mackenzie King), who were planning a summerlong exhibition to celebrate the beaver's ubiquitous presence in Canadiana. Hagey was thrilled. "It's like I collected all this stuff for this moment," he says, while surveying the glass display case at Woodside in which several dozen of his nicest beaver whatnots are housed. Though it's not quite the Louvre, the basement room at Woodside will offer a rare showing of some beaver items that, quite literally, would not otherwise see the light of day. Hagey rarely browses through his collection. He still buys beaver thingies when he spots them (old habits die hard), but he claims no special affinity for the beaver itself. "I actually don't know very much about the beaver." His collecting began simply enough in 1984, when he and a friend decided to collect beaver stuff simply because no one else seemed to be doing it. "Everyone else was collecting cows or cats," he recalls. "You went into a store and there were cows everywhere." Hagey, who was then living in Chilliwack, had a soft spot for beavers partly because they adorned the logo of his favourite beer, Sleeman. He soon discovered that beavers adorn thousands of things, from Roots clothing to Beaver Brand canning jars to the former municipal logo for the city of Kitchener (which jived with the city's former slogan of "Busy Berlin"). "Everything connects to the beaver," he says. "It's a patriotic thing, the beaver. It's very Canadian, eh?" Trouble was, the beaver was so omnipresent that Hagey found himself buying souvenirs at practically every tourist shop he visited from coast to coast. That explains why he owns enough little beaver figurines - each the size of a thimble - "to fill a punch bowl." Though he had taken a hiatus from collecting in recent years, the exhibit at Woodside has given him a renewed case of beaver fever, prompting him to buy four more beavers. So it seems there will be no end to Hagey's beaver tale. "It will never be done," he says of the collection. "There are so many beavers out there."

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Sherwood Hagey has spent the last 25 years collecting all things related to beavers. He has thousands of beaver items from all across Canada. Here he holds a beaver stuffed animal toy and a beaver that came out of a tea box.
CP photo

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