by P.J. Harston
Northern News Services

NNSL (Jan 27/97) - Many readers were surprised to read about Cyndi Foster, her Grade 4 and 5 students in Cambridge Bay and their invention: muskox poopaper.

Cambridge Bay News/North columnist Helen Tologanak broke the story earlier this year, which led to a lot of people around here saying things like "they make paper out of what?"

In brief, the paper is made from wet, pulped scraps of paper rescued from the recycling bin and mixed with boiled, pressed and rehydrated muskox pies, picked fresh from the grazing fields surrounding the community of about 1,200.

It seems that only two animals in the North have the right stuff for making the "write" stuff -- muskox and wood bison.

Evelyn David, who helped Foster develop her paper, is a professional paper-maker in Edmonton and holds a masters degree in fine printing and book arts from Arizona State University.

She says that the poop -- because of its strong, woody plant fibre and the way it is digested and excreted -- are what gives poopaper the strength that divides good paper from bad.

"It makes a really lovely sheet. I import paper from all over the world, and I can honestly say that Cyndi's paper is one of the nicest and sells really well."

Other exotic papers David deals with at her store, Indigo Print and Paper Works, are made from sugar cane, manilla hemp and ginger. And she has personally experimented with flax, hemp and wheat straw paper.

"But you couldn't, for instance, use cow poop because it doesn't have the same woody fibre content as muskox poop," says David.

Of course, elephant poop -- which is one of the premiere poopapers in the world -- isn't an option here because there aren't many elephants wandering around eating plants that contain woody fibres (or any other plants for that matter).

While elephant poopaper is available in Nairobi and muskox poop paper is available in Edmonton and Cambridge Bay, David says that no one she knows of is producing bison poopaper.

"We had one sheet that a translator from Elk Island National Park made, and it sold for $5. That was the only sheet, though, and it wasn't very big," said David.

David's goal, much like Foster's, is to make a quality, environmentally friendly paper product that doesn't employ new wood pulp in its manufacture.

"We used to make paper without using trees, and I want people to understand and know that we still can."