Lynn Lau
Northern News Services

Inuvik (Sep 25/02) - Three thousand stuffed bears originally slated for a career in jam marketing have found a new, more meaningful purpose in life -- helping to fund dreams for a new animal shelter.

Linda Eccles and her partner Greg Stromgren, with two of the 3,000 Berry Bears donated to the SPCA and one of the homeless dogs they're currently caring for, Chloe. Eccles and Stromgren together run the SPCA out of their rented trailer home. Eccles is planning to sell stuffed bears to raise money for an animal shelter in Inuvik. - Lynn Lau/NNSL photo

Entrepreneur Don Patterson had purchased the plush toys about eight years ago to promote jam, but when the jam market went bust, the bears were left in the lurch. When he retired and moved to Alberta last month, he offered the last of his supply to the SPCA.

Linda Eccles, who runs the local SPCA out of her rented two-bedroom trailer on Kugmallit Road, took a look at the bears and saw dollar signs.

"If we sell them for about $20 each, we'd raise about $60,000, if we can sell them all," Eccles says. "I didn't want to miss out on the opportunity to raise that kind of money."

Eccles is hoping to outfit the bears with SPCA and Town of Inuvik pins to make them more attractive for tourists and animal lovers alike. Her plan is to start distributing them to vendors around town by the time the tourist season starts next June.

But Eccles's first task was to find a place for all those bears.

Patterson had been storing the bears in a building he had already sold and Eccles had just a couple weeks to find the bears a new home.

Eccles did some quick phoning around and within the week tracked down Inuvik Drugs owner Gene Nikiforuk, who happened to be leaving town for a month the very next day. He had some warehouse space, but Eccles would have to move the bears that day.

Juggling the move between her part-time job at the community greenhouse, and a dog abuse case that day, Eccles recruited Northwind Industries to donate a truck and driver, and Inuvik Works to donate additional labour. Within a couple of hours, they moved 3,000 bears.

They can stay for another month or so, but Eccles will soon have to find another home for the bears.

She's asking anyone with room for some well-behaved Berry Bears to phone her at 777-5417.