A walk down the Wolverine Street

Live Mint , Wednesday, July 31, 2013
Correspondent : G. Sampath
The commitment of the natives of Banff to wildlife cannot be characterized in the necessary language of plain conservation

For a long time, well into my adult years, I actually believed that Wolverine was just a comic book hero, an invention of the human imagination. He was my favourite character from the X-Men series. And not just mine—in 2008, he was ranked No. 1 by Wizard magazine in its list of the top 200 comic book characters of all time.

And then, one summer a couple of years ago, I visited Banff, a small town in the Rocky Mountains in the Canadian province of Alberta. This was proper Wolverine territory—he was born in Alberta in the late 1880s, and probably still lives there when not busy in one of his adventures. The latest X-Men film, The Wolverine, has an action sequence set in this geography, with a grizzly thrown in for good measure.

Banff is situated inside a national park. You would expect the town folk to be conscious of animal rights, and they were. But their commitment to wildlife cannot be characterized in the necessary—and necessarily sterile—language of conservation. Respect for wildlife was so much a part of their culture and common sense that it was almost an emotional reflex.

I consider myself pro-animal rights, and fairly sensitive to wildlife issues. But the only time I’ve ever been told off for “invading the privacy” of a wild animal was in Banff. I was trying to photograph a deer, and had ventured too close to the animal. A peaceable-looking local who had been watching me from a distance suddenly erupted, yelling at me to “respect their space, mister.”

Banff is a compact town that you can cover on foot in half a day. The main thoroughfare is Banff Avenue, with streets branching off on either side of it. There is no better way to get a sense of the locals’ love for wildlife than a hike through the town. Others might name their streets after dead politicians or legendary warrior kings. Not Banff.

A few minutes’ walk down Banff Avenue will take you to a crossing, where you hit Wolf Street. Turning right from Wolf Street will land you in Beaver Street. From there, you have the option of turning left into Caribou Street, or proceeding straight to Buffalo Street. Buffalo Street runs along two blocks with crossings that lead to Muskrat Street and Otter Street. If you keep walking, you’ll run into Grizzly Street, Elk Street, Lynx Street, Cougar Street, Antelope Street, Fox Street, Moose Street, Marten Street, Hawk Avenue, Falcon Street, Bighorn Street, Rabbit Street, Squirrel Street, Eagle Crescent, Marmot Crescent, and the intriguing Porcupine Place.

Walking aimlessly around town, wondering which animal street was up next, I reached a T-junction of sorts where the sign board stopped me in my tracks: Wolverine Street. So, was this Banff’s tribute to their local superhero? Whoever had named this street had to be a major fan of the X-Men series. In my excitement, I walked up and down looking for a house with a board that said “Howlett”, for Wolverine was born as James Howlett, the son of John and Elizabeth Howlett. But I was being over-optimistic. I contended myself with some snapshots of the blue street sign, proud to have made it to the only street in the world named after a Marvel Comics character.

It did not strike me even then, having walked through a town whose streets were almost all named after animals, that the wolverine of Wolverine Street might not be the one famous for retractable claws made of adamantium. That knowledge came to me later, in the course of a conversation in the evening with a Banff resident I met in one of the bars in town.

I had said to him, “Naming a street after Wolverine—what a nifty trick to attract tourists. The promotional possibilities are endless. You can have events and special tours targeting all the Wolverine fans, all the Hugh Jackman fans, and all the X-Men fans. I wish we Indians were half as smart in promoting tourism.”

“I’m sorry,” said my interlocutor. “I don’t understand what you mean.”

Then I explained to him how I was a huge Wolverine fan, and what a rapturous moment it was for me to find myself on Wolverine Street.

His face broke into a broad smile, which soon became a guffaw. Had we been chatting online, he would have been ROFL. When he finally regained his composure, he said: “Let me show you what our Wolverine looks like.” He took out his smart phone, fiddled around a bit, and held it up for me to see. “This is the real Wolverine.”

That’s when I learnt that a Wolverine was a bear-like, muscular carnivore belonging to the weasel family, with a “reputation for ferocity and strength out of proportion to its size, with the documented ability to kill prey many times larger than itself.”

According to Wikipedia, Marvel editor-in-chief Roy Thomas had thought up the name Wolverine first, and then asked writer Len Wein to devise a character to fit it—someone “who is Canadian and of small stature and with a Wolverine’s fierce temper”.

Meanwhile, even as Wolverine is rapidly expanding his fan base worldwide, there is a proposal to give endangered species status to the Wolverine because “climate change is whittling away its wintry habitat in the northern Rockies”.

The plight of wildlife being what it is today, you cannot help wondering if humans aren’t the quintessential dangerous mutants. Had there been an animal panchayat back when humans first came along, it would doubtless have declared us an abomination that spelt disaster for the planet. Maybe all the other species would have banded together and finished off the mutant primates when they first appeared on earth 200,000 years ago. There’s surely an X-Men prequel there somewhere.

In a sense, the proto-human mutants were the original X-Men. Just like X-Men vis-à-vis humans, they had special powers over and beyond what was possessed by other members of the animal community. But then—and this is the beauty of the X-Men series—without exception, every special power that makes a mutant a super-human also has its downside.

However, unlike Wolverine, humans are so intoxicated by their special powers that they cannot see its downside. In their hubris, they believe that their special powers of language and thought are a sign that they are superior to all other species, and they are therefore entitled to a far greater a share of nature’s bounties than any other species. No wonder the Wolverine has a fierce temper—for all its fears about the mutant primates have come true.

 
SOURCE : http://www.livemint.com/Opinion/hoIjHu1illpllE8QuZj3hN/A-walk-down-the-Wolverine-Street.html
 


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