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The Furry Gold of Canada: The Beaver’s 50-Year Legacy

Season 4/Episode 7 – English Transcript

Fifty years ago, Canada made the beaver an official national symbol. But long before that, this little animal was shaping rivers, driving trade, and quietly transforming the land.

Wildlife ecologist Dr. Glynnis Hood and Jan Kingshott, director of animal welfare at Aspen Valley Wildlife Sanctuary, take us inside the beaver’s world—from its role in the fur trade to its work as an ecosystem engineer today—and show why it remains one of Canada’s most remarkable and resilient symbols.

Listen to the episode:

Angela Misri: Canada has plenty of national symbols. We’ve got the maple leaf, the mountains, the moose, but few are as unlikely or as influential as the beaver. For more than 400 years, this small, industrious rodent has powered the early fur trade, fuelled international commerce, and helped lay the economic groundwork for what would become Canada. And yes, we Canadians know beavers are famous for a little extra industriousness too. Let’s just say their reputation isn’t confined to the forest.

Welcome to Canadian Time Machine, a podcast that explores key milestones in our country’s history. I’m Angela Misri. 2025 marks the 50th anniversary of the beaver being officially recognized as Canada’s national symbol. It’s a milestone that gives us a chance to look beyond the symbolism and to reflect on our relationship with nature and the animals that have shaped these lands long before Confederation, because when a beaver moves into an area, everything changes. They build dams and create wetlands which are rich habitats that support plants, fish, birds, insects and even help buffer us from droughts and floods. They’re ecosystem engineers, one of the few species on Earth capable of transforming a landscape on such a massive scale.

So in this episode, we’re not just celebrating an icon. We’re exploring what the beaver has meant to Canada, culturally, historically and ecologically, and what it means to live alongside them today and to begin we’re heading to Muskoka to a sanctuary that specializes in caring for injured and orphaned beavers.

Jan Kingshott: My name is Jan Kingshott, and I am the director of animal welfare here at Aspen Valley Wildlife Sanctuary in Muskoka, Ontario.

Angela Misri: Jan’s decades working with horses gave her a deep understanding of animal behavior, a skill she now applies to caring for Ontario’s native species, which include more than 200 mammals, birds, reptiles and amphibians, and of course, the industrious beaver.

Jan Kingshott: We take in about 1000 animals a year for rehabilitation, and we actually specialize in beavers.

Angela Misri: Beavers may be a symbol of Canada, but at Aspen Valley, they’re living, breathing personalities. They’re playful, persistent, sometimes stubborn, and always teaching Jan and her team something new.

Jan Kingshott: We’re probably one of the largest facilities in North America for beaver rehabilitation, and in Ontario, probably just one of few that can actually rehabilitate a beaver from infancy to release, which is two years. Typically, we have about 10 or 12 in the facility at one time, and the reason is, is because they have to stay with us for a long time in the wild. They wouldn’t be dispersing from their family unit until they’re two years old. And so of course, we want to replicate that. We don’t want to put beavers out into the wild sooner than they should be. We want to make sure that they are going to go out there and thrive. So we’ve had beavers that have come to us, that have been shot with arrows or been hit by cars and have broken limbs, and not all cases we can save them, but when we can, it’s just amazing what they can some some of them can overcome. So those are the ones that kind of always stick out, I think.

Angela Misri: And after all that drama, arrows, cars and broken limbs, these little survivors get to start the next chapter of their lives somewhere a bit more spa, like the beaver nursery.

Jan Kingshott: So as babies, because they require a lot of care and attention, they actually go into a nursery that is in the staff house, which is a separate section, and that way the staff can spend more time with that animal. And so that nursery has a bathtub for frequent swims, and they’re just kind of set up, kind of in a home environment.

Angela Misri: Almost that first winter is spent indoors, where they get constant care and plenty of swim time. But once the snow melts, the young beavers move to larger outdoor enclosures where they can explore more like they would in the wild.

Jan Kingshott: I think we average about three to five beavers kits in us in a spring season. So they’ll kind of name them like a theme, and then, yeah, the the adults that come in, whatever their personality is, kind of what they get named. So we’ve had like Mad Max…

Angela Misri: With a name like Mad Max, you can imagine the attitude.

Jan Kingshott: So they’re all different. They’re a lot of fun that way. So you can have the ones that come in injured, which are adults, and they’re not happy, right? This is not where. They want to be. So they can be a little grumpy, and they can, you know, bluff, charge us and and make it difficult sometimes to work with them. But the younger ones, the orphans, when they come in at a very young age, they’re quite needy, so we have to actually spend a lot of time with them, caring for them and nurturing them.

Angela Misri: The main beaver character in my zombie books is Mrs. King, who runs a household or a damn world, however you want to define it, of baby beavers. So she has a serious personality. She has some serious attitude, and she knows what she knows. So I encourage you to read about my personality rich beaver as well. But as Jan says, behavior is instinctive, especially when it comes to dam building that drive is baked into a beaver’s DNA.

Jan Kingshott: It’s absolutely amazing, and thank God for their instincts, because it’s not like something that we could ever teach them as rehabilitators, we can’t teach a beaver how to build a dam or a bear to hibernate. Luckily, those instincts are there, thank God. And our job is really to let them hone those and practice those instincts. So when they come in, even as young babies, like 500 grams, they already are moving around and picking up sticks and moving them around their enclosure like they’re just, it’s so young. The instincts start so young. It’s crazy, but it’s it’s fun to watch, that’s for sure. And then as they grow, how much more they do that, and some are really intense about it, like they really, really like to just continually to build.

Angela Misri: And all that hands-on care isn’t just about keeping them alive. It’s about helping those family focused little critters stay wild while still learning to trust the humans who raise them.

Jan Kingshott: This is a very family oriented species, so they’re always with family. So when they come into our facility, we have to rehabilitate them. We have to spend a lot of time with them. And if we don’t, they don’t they don’t do well, they don’t thrive. So they actually need that connection and that bonding with us. So what we do is we really limit the amount of people that are handling them and that are raising them, and we limit it to two people, and therefore the the babies can bond to their caregivers, but not actually become habituated to people. They’re a lot of work because they are so needy, they swim very early in life. So it’s just like, like swimming constantly throughout the day, swim times, feed times.

Angela Misri: But getting to know beavers isn’t just about feeding or swimming lessons. It’s about seeing how they fit into the bigger picture of life........

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