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From: Russ Kerr
Date: 11 Nov 2005
Time: 19:28:51
This big wolf thing is starting to bother me. Whether it happened or not doesn't change the way I feel about the book or Jim Vanderbeck. I can't tell you for sure weather it happened or not. Here's what I can tell you. When Jim and Helen came to visit in 1981 I know i asked a lot of questions. Jim told me they trapped the otter and beaver. he told me Miranda ( The fisher ) never excaped. Remember that hot spring he found and carved his name on the tree? Well he said he tried setting traps in the water but the water had something in it that ate steel. ( This can happen as I work in the oil patch and I know things in water can eat steel ) He talked about being at Joe leaks cabin and seeing an eye ball in the pot of boiling goods on the fire. Now it was 24 years ago that I spent 2 weeks with Jim and I must have asked him about the wolf!! For the life of me I can't remember what he said but i know that if he told me it never happened I would have remembered that for sure. I seem to remember him telling me he and Lindsay never made the trip to Toronto to see it. As far as Brian theory that Steaphen meaders son said he saw pictures of the wolf I would agree with Brian on that one. I would doubt if anyone would have had a camera with hem back then. When Jim was visiting he had a couple of shoe boxes full of black and white photoes from the trapline and there wasn't any big wolf in those either. Know what happened to that wolf skin? My guess is it never made it to any museum. Maybe it wasn't skinned right, maybe it wasn't cured and spolled in shipment or just maybe it adorned the den floor of some Consrvation officer. I know I 've been on the web trying to find out without any luck. Maybe some newspaper article from 1932 or 1933 might be the answer. I also tried to find ( Without any luck ) a list of RCMP officers in Ontario in 1933.If infact his real name was Mcleash. Here is a whole bunch of fuel for the fire. Good luck and by the way I'm really enyoying this web site.