Talk:Ratline

Beaver Line

There's one link to Beaver Line from SS Mount Temple, but too little info there to support a Dab entry like

* Rat Lines, Beaver Line steamship company, owners of SS Mount Temple

A source says

As William Dawson noted, artistic renditions of the beaver often included it incongruously sitting on a branch of maple. One such representation, upon a flag, contributed significantly to the beaver's discomfiture. For a quarter of a century, the Beaver Line, a shipping company out of Montréal, used a house flag which proudly displayed a beaver upon a log. What transpired is explained by Thomas Mulvey, K.C., Canada's Under-Secretary of State and member of the committee established to advise on the design of the national arms. When the editor of the Rod and Gun magazine objected to the omission of the beaver from Canada's arms in 1921, Mulvey countered with:

It was decided that as a member of the Rat Family, a Beaver was not appropriate.... The Canadian Merchant Marine [sic for the Beaver Line] displayed a Beaver on their House-Flag and they have ever since been colloquially known as "The Rat Line."

Apparently some Canadian mariners of the time were sensitive to the teasing of other sailors. Although the Beaver Line had been purchased by the Canadian Pacific Railway in 1903, the influence of its flag lived on.

(The sic in the passage appears in the linked source's version, presumably indicating error by the Thomas Mulvey mentioned in A Mari Usque Ad Mare.)
--Jerzy•t 06:34, 16 February 2010 (UTC)