I'm sitting at the kitchen table with the Farm Manager. Our kitchen table used to be the table where the cashier at Gorbet's filled out the sales receipts.
Gorbet's was the number one fur emporium in Owen Sound back when furs were cool.
Furrier was a traditional old-world Jewish trade, and near as I can tell the first Gorbet reached the new world just after the WWI, when things were somewhat topsy-turvy in the old world.
Long story short, after building up a chain of fur stores over the better part of a century, the Gorbet clan came up against something nobody even imagined.
Animal rights.
The Gorbet Furs empire was in short order whittled down to the value of the real estate the stores sat on.
The fur business was dead.
It was over.
Instead, we've got the consumer going nuts for fake fur and synthetic fabrics. Where do you suppose that stuff comes from? And where do you suppose it goes?
Back in the fur coat era, you'd have your fur remodelled every few years, just to keep up with the style trends. You could keep the same fur coat looking trendy for fifty years or more.
The FM's father, Norm, would pick up your coat and put it in cold storage for the summer.
A fur coat pretty much lasted a lifetime.
Now, everybody needs a new winter coat every year. The old one goes to the landfill. Those synthetics will take thousands of years to break down, in the meantime giving off innumerable toxic substances as they deteriorate.
Ecologically speaking, how is this an improvement over fur?
Just one more example of how progress isn't everything it's cracked up to be.
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