Every time I drive by the gun store on Fraser Street off Kingsway I marvel at how much of an anomaly it is in this neighbourhood that's home to Les Faux Bourgeois, Matchstick Coffee and Sal Y Limon. In fact they're all about a block away. I often think back to 2012 when Steve Burgess wrote this must-read feature for BC Business about the store and about gun laws in Canada in general.
In business since 1950, Reliable Gun is family owned and operated, passed down through 3 generations. They don't have to offer free gun specials to stay in business but it certainly sets them apart from the 2 other gun shops operating in Vancouver, and this Instagram post of theirs below has given me an opportunity to frame a story that I want to tell. I want to give you some insight on something people in the city rarely think or talk about, and which is an entirely foreign concept to most: hunting for food.
At the time that Steve wrote the feature I linked to above there were 30.8 guns for every 100 people in Canada. 26% of homes here have at least one gun in them. Compared to the USA at 88.8 for every 100 people it doesn't seem like much but the thought of 1 in 4 homes having a gun locked up in them? That's kinda crazy. And while it's likely skewed by higher percentages of people in rural areas owning them there are still enough people buying guns and ammunition in Vancouver to support three gun shops. Since you're not allowed to market guns for personal protection in this country the people buying them are using them for hunting and target practice exclusively.
To get a license to own a non-restricted firearm (basically anything but a handgun) you have to get your PAL (Possession and Acquisition Licence). Courses for this certification are about 10 hours in total but with all the background checks etc it's at least a 6 week window from when you start the process to being able to own a gun. Compare this to the USA where you don't need to take any sort of course but simply get a background check and wait to buy your first gun, and it makes you appreciate how safe our gun laws keep us. In some states the wait is only 3 days - what they call a "cooling off period" to attempt to curb impulsive violence. Canada had gun laws almost as lax as these as recent as 1991, when a bill was introduced to make safety courses mandatory (again, I learned this from the Burgess feature, which you should read).
Now, to get a hunting license in BC you first have to complete a course called CORE, which stands for Conservation Outdoor Recreation Education Program, then buy an actual hunting permit every year that you want to hunt. A local organization called EatWild runs them regularly out of the Mount Pleasant Neighbourhood House and they consist of a few days of classes, totalling 14 hours (fun fact: back in the day this program was actually a part of some high school curriculum in BC).
So who are these people buying firearms on Fraser Street? In 2013 The Vancouver Sun published Ethical killing: Hipsters, hippies and women are taking up hunting. It's about a recent surge in urbanites going out and hunting their own sustainable food, so that makes up for some of them. A larger portion are likely people who moved here from the interior of BC, Alberta and other rural parts of Canada where hunting is more "normal" than in the city. I imagine most of our urban readers don't know anyone who hunts but many of them walk among you. I'm (kinda) one of them.
The above photo was shot recently on a Galiano Island hunting trip that I took with my friend, Chad Brealey, co-producer and host of the TV series Salt, Fresh & Field which I've shared here before. In this episode below, Chad takes Tinhork Creek's chef Jeff Van Geest out to hunt for whitetail deer. He's never been hunting before and the journey goes from the hunt to the kitchen where he prepares a feast for his friends and family with his catch. It's all very respectful and successfully brings the viewer closer to the source of their food. It's one of my favourite TV projects in a long time.
So Chad and I have been talking about going hunting since we first met a few years back. I don't personally have my CORE or PAL, but thanks to something called an Initiation Hunting Licence that the provincial government launched in 2013 I'm able to join Chad who can act as my mentor and show me the ropes. He has both certifications and is a seasoned hunter, and under the annual initiation license I've bought I can carry a firearm and shoot game as long as I'm by his side (or anyone else I know who has their CORE and PAL certifications).
We didn't shoot anything on our first outing pictured above and below but I hope to go out with him again and bring home a duck or two before my license expires, then I'll take the leap and get my own CORE certification by taking the course. Logically I'll also get my PAL so I can own a shotgun and source some of the animal protein that my family enjoys. We eat meat almost every day, I enjoy the outdoors immensely, and the camaraderie of going out with a friend in search of food is something I didn't know I was missing in my life.
