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2009-2014
THE ORIGIN OF THE ASPEN GROVE "Aspen Grove is saturated with analogies for redemption," says co-founder J.R. Lucas, "we believe it's very important to convey this message one way or another. If a person is not open or receptive to the Gospel, they may be inspired by the story of the Aspen Grove." In September of 2009, a massive tornado touched down in the uninhabited woods to the southeast of Bancroft, Ontario, and swept clean an area twice the size of the town itself. Millions of trees blown over, what was once virgin forest was transformed into the province's largest Aspen Grove (covering over 62 square kilometers of area). But, as the forest ecosystem always does, it would start to grow again. |
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Lucas continues:"Whenever I look at the Aspen Grove I see God's hand at work, restoring and resurrecting the forest. It seems like it's happening very slowly, yet you can easily see the progress year to year. I used to wonder why God would've bothered destroying wilderness - seeing as how the wilderness is just his creation and it's unable to sin or displease him - but now I wonder if it's just so He can demonstrate his power and grace in a way that's very obvious for us. If it helps save one soul, it would obviously have been worth every fallen tree."
Within 3 years, the cleared area was being repopulated by pioneer species such as Trembling Aspen, White Pine, brambles, sweet ferns and other plant life. This created a massive abundance of foodstuffs for wildlife. As a result, populations soared, Bears and Moose became particularly common, while the Rocky Mountain Elk which had recently been released into the region disappeared into deeper woods... |
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2014-2016
FIRST COMPANY ... HIATUS Five years after the big wind, we arrived on the scene. It all started when we made some camouflage from scratch for a local fishing tackle manufacturer (that also passed onto us our future mascot - the mammoth, but more on that later) . We didn't know how to make camo back then, so we just kinda winged it. We gathered our materials from nearby the margin of the local Aspen Grove, and when we finished designing the camo and the time came to give it a name, we went with that: Aspen Grove.
Taking a nod to most of the other camouflage brands, our first pattern became the namesake of all the following patterns, and Aspen Grove transitioned from the name of our first pattern into the name of our brand. Soon 3 of us got together and started collaborating over our new company. J.R. Lucas, the camoufleur, created over 30 different patterns by year's end, and by the fall of 2015 we have over ten times that many under our belt. We had grown to 8 and began to distribute our camo patterns throughout the province. We didn't get very far with our setup at the time, and by the end of the year we were starting to drift apart. We officially disbanded in January 2016. (This is the part of the movie where a really sad song plays and it starts raining) Though the company would eventually come back, during this time Aspen Grove seemed to be left behind. |
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2016-2017
SECOND COMPANY Almost a year after the original company split, J.R. started making knives. He enjoyed it as a hobby for a little while and then decided to start selling the fruits of his labours. For lack of a better name, he re-claimed the Aspen Grove moniker for his knife-making endeavours, but he lacked rights to most of the brand identity of the original group, so he registered the name alone and created a new brand around it. He traced a new logo based on the blaze of white fur on his dog' chest, and set up a small catalog of new products the company would make. He recruited 3 friends to help promote the new company and off they went. By the end of the winter, the 2016 incarnation of Aspen Grove was taking off, selling products at 4 locations and filling all the custom orders that they could handle. The line-up of the company ebbed-and-flowed between 3 and 5 people throughout the summer, and reached peak success in the late fall of 2017.
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2018-PRESENT
RETURN TO FORM (THIRD COMPANY) By the beginning of 2018, a shift was starting. J.R., now assuming role of president in the company he assembled, wanted to expand the product lines that the Aspen Grove brand would produce. However, Aspen Grove was on thin ice; although the growing company had none of the political strife of the original company, brand dilution threatened to ruin Aspen Grove. Some members wanted to create an outdoors show; others wanted to branch out into agricultural products and firewood; others still wanted taxidermy and through all of this, the economic values of the knives that the brand relied on were beginning to fail. J.R. tried to accommodate all of this for a little while, and the nearly disastrous result was that the company was stretched in all directions, but finally the notion was brought up that the company might resume making camouflage. Four years of time had passed since the idea was first abandoned, and new resources existed which allowed the first new wave of Aspen Grove camouflage to be produced. Most of the other projects were abandoned, eventually even the knife catalog that had been the core of the company for almost 3 years. The second company was softly disbanded, as there was no longer a need for a large number of people, and new deals were struck with other companies. Aspen Grove finally took on it's current form over the remainder of the year, and this return to form was met with much enthusiasm from the outdoor community. Now, Aspen Grove is comfortably filling the niche it was always meant to fill - Canada has it's Camouflage.
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THE OLDE MAMMOTH FARM
Oh, right. Almost forgot about the mammoth. Our probiscidean mascot, seen to the right next to J.R., is a Woolly Mammoth skull. We had the mammoth mascot passed on to us from the now-defunct Dungannon Tackle Manufacturing Co., but we didn't use it as our mascot right away. We were considering making the mammoth our mascot when Aspen Grove first split up in 2016; and it wasn't until 2018 that we came back around to it. We settled on this for a number of reasons. We decided to name the skull Pinhead, because it's the biggest head we've ever seen, or ever will see (we hope). From the size and proportions, we estimate that the skull belonged to a mid-sized elderly female. The bone elements in the skull come from Siberia/Alaska, and the replica segments come from Mississauga and Bancroft (we did alot of the work ourselves actually).
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Lucas goes on to explain why we chose 'Pinhead' to be the mascot for Aspen Grove.
"Alot of people ask about the mammoth skull, the logo, all that - my usual short answer is I made the mammoth our mascot because I have a mammoth skull and it's the coolest thing I own, but there's a deeper reason. Numerous groups of scientists all over the world are doing their best to try to bring the Woolly Mammoth back from extinction. None of them are close yet, every year they say they're close, but it's just PR, they're not even close. It's never been done before. Taking something that's been extinct for who knows how long, and re-creating it? Sure it could happen. I believe it's going to happen one way or another, that's up to God. The Bible doesn't expressly say that God will re-create the mammoth, but it does say He will make the Earth new again - and scholars believe that includes wildlife - all creation. So at least God is going to bring back the mammoth. And mankind can do it too. Alot of people criticize the work of cloning as playing God, but that's just cheapening the omnipotence of God. You can take the most basic molecules needed for life and take them apart and put them back together in a test tube and it's still God's voice that speaks life into those molecules. No matter how deep into the process we can get, we can't just generate life, we're still using the 'ingredients' God's given us. Whether we give Him credit, well that's another part of the story, and I believe that'll be the main factor in whether man will be allowed to bring back the mammoth. So yes, there's alot more to it than just the 'oh cool you have a mammoth skull' factor."
The choice of the mammoth as a mascot is a little unusual since Woolly Mammoths never lived in our region. The closest thing that lived in the Bancroft area was the Mastodon, and Mastodons were boring.
"Alot of people ask about the mammoth skull, the logo, all that - my usual short answer is I made the mammoth our mascot because I have a mammoth skull and it's the coolest thing I own, but there's a deeper reason. Numerous groups of scientists all over the world are doing their best to try to bring the Woolly Mammoth back from extinction. None of them are close yet, every year they say they're close, but it's just PR, they're not even close. It's never been done before. Taking something that's been extinct for who knows how long, and re-creating it? Sure it could happen. I believe it's going to happen one way or another, that's up to God. The Bible doesn't expressly say that God will re-create the mammoth, but it does say He will make the Earth new again - and scholars believe that includes wildlife - all creation. So at least God is going to bring back the mammoth. And mankind can do it too. Alot of people criticize the work of cloning as playing God, but that's just cheapening the omnipotence of God. You can take the most basic molecules needed for life and take them apart and put them back together in a test tube and it's still God's voice that speaks life into those molecules. No matter how deep into the process we can get, we can't just generate life, we're still using the 'ingredients' God's given us. Whether we give Him credit, well that's another part of the story, and I believe that'll be the main factor in whether man will be allowed to bring back the mammoth. So yes, there's alot more to it than just the 'oh cool you have a mammoth skull' factor."
The choice of the mammoth as a mascot is a little unusual since Woolly Mammoths never lived in our region. The closest thing that lived in the Bancroft area was the Mastodon, and Mastodons were boring.
