Smokes Person

Addressing his colleagues on the Northwest Territories Legislative Council in July 1960, Robert “Bobby” Porritt of Hay River took aim at “an unwelcome immigrant to Canada” who went by the name Smokey Bear. “Is the forestry division so short of funds, or so lacking in initiative that it has to adopt an American fire prevention program and has to use posters that come straight from government departments from across the border?” Porritt, himself an immigrant, asked about the iconic mascot. “Surely we should be capable of ­producing our own posters when they concern our own resources.” He wasn’t alone in his jingoism. “The kind old gentleman in a scout hat and shovel can turn out to be a vicious killer,” an Alberta forestry official maintained. “A bear is not a conservationist but a scavenger and a killer,” said another.

Smokey Bear came to be on August 9, 1944, when the U.S. Forest...