MATTHEW BILLINGTON
IT STARTED, IRONICALLY, WITH AN AMERICAN. In January 1975, New York State senator Bernard Smith, a noted environmental champion, introduced a bill to officially recognize a new state animal: the beaver.
Prompted by a local newspaper columnist asking if Canada had a more deserving claim, Sean O’Sullivan, a 23-year-old Conservative member of Parliament from Hamilton sprang into action. O’Sullivan, the youngest-ever MP when first elected in 1972, drafted a one-sentence private member’s bill — “An Act to provide for the recognition of the Beaver (Castor canadensis) as a symbol of the sovereignty of the Dominion of Canada” — that had its first reading in Parliament that same month.