Canada

50s .... I was very young in the late 70s when I saw my dad make his last deliveries to the HBC store in Moosonee in James Bay. But our family keeps several photos of mounds of furs that my parents processed in the 60s and 70s ... piles! with a hundred or more furs all processed by hand ... this means weeks of a trapper walking and wandering in the wilderness and covering hundreds of miles on foot, snowshoes and dog team ... then returning all the animals to be processed (we ate most of the meat by the way because it was a way to feed the family at the same time) ... days of skinning animals ... I remember our kitchen reeking of fox, beaver, mink and even wolf with racks drying nearby while mom cooked the meat in a stew. I have fond memories of watching dad deflesh furs on stretcher boards he carved by hand, then tearing pieces of cardboard to stretch the insides of the limbs of the fur. I know it sounds disgusting and even inhumane in this day in age but for us back then it was all a normal part of our lives. And then finally delivering everything to the store for a few hundred bucks ... for work, time, effort and skill that would have cost thousands!