Friday, February 4, 2011

Canada Goose jackets


About three months ago I noticed a colleague with a beautiful winter jacket. I asked her where she had bought this jacket and she stated it was very expensive. I thought this was a rather strange answer as I wasn’t interested in how much the jacket had cost, merely where she had bought it.
She stated it was a Canada Goose jacket and only select stores carried it.

Back home I did some research on the Net and found the Canada Goose website, where a little more research revealed that these jackets were made with real feathers of geese and the material around the hoot was real coyote fur.
Suddenly this beautiful jacket wasn’t so beautiful anymore. Real feathers and real fur ... had the Canada Goose company not heard of animal rights?
My admiration for the Canada Goose jacket was instantly dead. More so, I wouldn’t have wanted a jacket if the company gave me one for free.

From that moment on the sighting of those jackets really irritated me. They irritated me to the point that I wanted to grab the wearer of the jacket and point out that an animal had died for him to parade around in this jacket. I saw the jackets as a slap in the face of every animal lover and animal rights activist.

For weeks I brooded, wondering what I could do. Whenever I passed a Canada Goose jacket wearer I would accuse him of being an animal killer, but did the ‘killer’ hear me? I wanted to do something, but what?
Then one day it came to me ... labels, I would put labels on the sleeves and back of my jacket that stated:

This is not a Canada Goose jacket
For i am not an animal killer
Say ‘no’ to fur

Finally I had found my voice. The voice of protest. Wherever I saw the young fashion slaves flaunt their Canada Goose jacket, I would flaunt my badges.
The label was read and I got some wonderful responses. Colleagues and strangers came up to me, stating “Good for you” or “I didn’t know about this” or just giving me the thumbs up.

Then today I got the ultimate revenge.
I was in a full elevator where a woman read my badge and asked “Do they really use real fur?”
“They sure do,” I replied. “The Canada Goose company traps coyotes for their fur and slaughters thousands of geese for their feathers.”
Now it so happened that a young Chinese man stood in the center of the elevator wearing one of those Canada Goose jackets. So I made him a target.
“See that fur around the hood of his jacket?” I said. “That’s real coyote fur.”
Stone faced the guy stood staring at the elevator door, not looking left or right.
I guess at that moment he didn’t feel like flaunting his apparel. From the looks of it he wanted to shrink to the size of a leprechaun and disappear through the floor of the elevator. Can you imagine, some twelve people looking at you like you with accusing eyes of being an animal killer?
Upon reaching the ground floor he shot out of the elevator like an elastic and moved like he was on skates.
Ah, revenge is sweet.

You will have to admit though, in a time where PeTA activists have made huge progress in creating awareness for animal cruelty, animal rights and have created a stigma around wearing real fur, it is rather insensitive, if not downright stupid of the Canada Goose company to use real fur for their jackets.

Of course this had to happen in Canada. Not only does Canada have this black mark on their name because of their continued seal hunt, now they are killing geese and coyotes as well. What will be next?

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