Beauty and the beasts

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 04/01/2025 (371 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

In 2022 Terry Doerksen and his wife Patty took an ox and Red River cart from downtown Winnipeg to downtown St. Paul, Minn., along the Red River Trail. In 2023, they dusted off their oxcart for a rumble down the Old Dawson Road. Readers of the Free Press followed along on these journeys. But it seems there are still a few unwritten stories begging to be told.

Under different circumstances my younger sister might have welcomed the offer of a midnight snack. Even if it did consist of the greasy meat of a large rodent. The year was 1997 and Beth, with her husband Colin, had been visiting us in Arhangai, Mongolia, where we were living at the time. We had a great adventure but the time had come for what would normally be a 12-hour off-road journey back to the capital.

We hired a guy with an old Russian Furgon van to do the honours. Our family of five, along with Beth and Colin, squeezed into the middle part of the van, already occupied by three sheep and a 45-gallon plastic barrel. We figured out very quickly the barrel contained airag — fermented horse milk. Whenever the pressure built up from the jarring drive, “Old Faithful” would eject a geyser of mist from its blowhole which would settle on us with its distinctive “essence of baby-puke.”

This was the final journey for our three ovine companions. Each one was immobilized in their own gunny sack tied at the neck, leaving the woolly head exposed to observe the ride. One sheep was positioned perfectly to rest its head on Beth’s knee, which provided the poor thing with a bit of solace. The sacks were effective at containing the droppings. Not so much the liquid waste. Over the kilometres, sheep pee began to pool on the van floor, right where Beth had placed her borrowed travel pack.

This old Furgon and had lost its ability to start by normal means. Whenever it stalled, and this was frequently, it fell on Colin and I to get out and push-start it, while the driver repeatedly popped the clutch. This didn’t get any easier as the hours dragged on and the night got cold.

It was already long past our ETA and Colin and I were once again outside, pushing for all we were worth, when we heard Patty yelling at us from inside the van. “The driver is asleep! I guess you can stop pushing.”

It was many kilometres after that when the driver inexplicably stopped and voluntarily turned off a perfectly running Furgon. With a glint in his eye, he reached under the seat and pulled out a wrapped package. He unfurled the newspaper and with great pomp asked, “Would anyone like to try some marmot meat?” I translated the proposal and that’s when Beth lost it. “No! I don’t want any stinking marmot meat! I want to get to our hotel!”

Beth and Manitoba’s Big 5

I woke up on the morning of May 24, 2022, from where I slept underneath my Red River Cart, just like they had done back in the day. The air was cool and the pasture grass was soaked in dew but I was warm and cosy between two buffalo robes with my head resting on a beaver pelt. I counted my limbs. Four — good. I had been a little nervous going to bed because a black bear with triplet cubs had been seen in that pasture a couple days earlier and I was quite aware I resembled a succulent buffalo burrito.

May 24 was Beth’s birthday. I would have loved to share this oxcart adventure with her. Including Mongolia in Asia, the two of us had explored five continents together.

The last of the five, Africa, was in 2006 when we visited her family where they lived on the slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro. The highlight of that trip was a homemade safari to Ngorongoro Crater in Tanzania — a great big bowl full of living animal crackers. We saw a lot of wildlife including four of the “Big 5.” We had close encounters with elephant, cape buffalo, lions and rhinos, but we never did find leopards.

The Big 5 are the animals most visitors hope to see on an African safari. On getting back to Canada, I began to wonder which animals might make up Manitoba’s Big 5. Here’s what I came up with:

5) Garter snakes:

There must be a few people who would come a long way to see the biggest concentration of reptiles on Earth. The first time we went to the snake pits at Narcisse, it was with Beth and her then-fiancé, Colin. It was a hazy spring day and we did our share of gaping at mating balls and dodging sated snakes slithering away on paths.

A few weeks later, at Beth and Colin’s wedding reception, I read the following verse from Proverbs: “There are three things that are too amazing for me, four that I do not understand: the way of an eagle in the sky, the way of a snake on a rock, the way of a ship on the high sea, and the way of a man with a maiden.”

4) North American beaver (Castor canadensis):

Is there any animal that has brought more people specifically to Manitoba — for better or worse — than the beaver? Of course traders came for their fur, but the trappers got to enjoy the other gifts of Canada’s largest rodent. A 19th century submission to the gossip column of the Free Press read: “Roast beaver was served at the Sunday School tea meeting last Wednesday. The youngsters went home replete and happy.” Local Catholics conveniently classified beaver as fish, which allowed them to eat a little red meat on a Friday. Smoked beaver tail was a delicacy that might be served at a Red River wedding reception. For their reception, Beth and Colin went simple and served those cute little sandwiches.

3) Buffalo (Bison):

The plains First Nations. The voyageurs. The Métis. The settlers. None of these early arrivals to this province could have survived without this majestic animal. When the herds became scarce, it was the warden of Manitoba Penitentiary (renamed Stony Mountain Institution in 1972) who obtained some of the few remaining buffalo and enabled the species to survive. Buffalo robes kept me warm on the eve of Beth’s birthday, and buffalo steaks and pemmican sustained us on the way.

2) Beluga whale:

Beth and Colin moved from Africa to Manitoba in 2011 to take on the battle of breast cancer. In August of 2015 we planned a trip to Churchill with the whole family, but we didn’t know if Beth would still be able to make it. We offered to fly her while the rest of us took the train, but she wouldn’t hear of not adventuring alongside us. Out on the water, she didn’t have much strength to help Colin paddle the kayak, but he didn’t mind. Her delight at belugas surfacing all around and nibbling at their paddles was worth it all.

1) Polar bear:

Obviously. We rented a couple pickups in Churchill and the kids piled in the back. We had been watching a mother bear and cub walking along the Hudson Bay shore but lost them behind a ridge. We were just ready to drive off when the bears slowly crested the rock and stopped beside the road right in front of our trucks. Beth realized how extremely cool this was and was trying hard to stay calm in the cab beside me. But her mother-bear instincts couldn’t be suppressed for long. “Ter, you’re way too close! Those kids in the back are gonna get eaten! Terry, back up! Now!” I reluctantly put the truck into reverse and allowed both mother bears to breathe a little easier.

Beth’s adventures on this Earth ended six months later. On Moosenose Hill near Oakbank there is a precious plot of land with a granite stone that reads: “Beth Beveridge: At 40 she climbed Mount Kilimanjaro with friends in Africa. Now she is summiting Mount Zion with Jesus in heaven.”

Rodent on the menu (again)

I have eaten beaver meat. I agree with the writer who said beaver is what grass-fed beef should taste like. But I had never tried beaver tail.

In the fall, I was talking to Germaine Vermette — a friend I made along the Dawson Road. When he told me he sometimes traps nuisance beavers, I asked if he could get me a tail. I hadn’t heard anything promising on the subject by the time Patty and I brought some KFC out to the Vermettes’ place a few months ago. When we arrived at their cabin where the Dawson Road meets the Whitemouth River, there was Germaine outside to greet us with bloody hands. Just that morning he had snagged a beaver and had just finished skinning it. I was so happy! Besides the tail, he said I could have all the rest of it: the pelt, the meat and the castor glands.

Loaded with beaver loot, I began to wonder with whom I could share this culinary adventure. I thought of Beth. If she were still here, would she be game to give rodent another go? I guess I’d never know. Or would I? I might not have my sister, but I had the next-Beth thing. Mercedes.

Mercedes inherited her mother’s edgy sense of humour. She filled in for Beth by showing up in Minnesota with her then-fiancé Marcus to ride for a while on my Red River cart. And being a baker, she’d surely be willing to make us the other kind of beavertail — the pastry version.

Without knowing what was on the menu, Mercedes unhesitatingly accepted my invitation to an “adventurous meal.” That was promising. I greeted her at the door with the floppy beaver tail and she didn’t recoil.

As Mercedes prepared her dough, Marcus and I smoked, skinned and sliced the pièce de résistance. Was this the first time in history both forms of beaver tail were simultaneously fried on a stove?

When the rodent feast was ready, Mercedes tucked right into Patty’s beaver roast with gravy. I was worried about the tail which is essentially a slab of fat, so I crisped it up into something akin to pork rinds. Mercedes even took a second slice. Encouraging, but I knew the toughest test was still to come.

Beth used to take delight in mentioning that “beaver butt juice” from the castor glands was used as flavouring in foods. Castoreum apparently lends notes of vanilla or raspberry to expensive whiskies. I figured I could make my own “castoreum cocktail” with the pride of Manitoba — Crown Royal from Gimli.

There were grimaces on every face as I squeezed some yellow goo into a shot glass. I was honourable and did the poison test before passing the glass to Mercedes. It took three or four false starts, but she finally forced the mixture to her lips and got a sip down. She bravely remarked she could taste a hint of raspberry. Incredible! The daughter may just have Beth-ted her own mother. The beavertail pastries easily took care of any unpleasant aftertastes.

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