Hank Shell
Christmas Gift Ideas: The Northern Toboggan Company
There’s a lot I remember about the winters of my childhood. Whether it was making surrealist Santa ornaments out of oyster shells with Grandma or assembling for the family band’s annual Christmas concert (always entertaining), our yearly holiday traditions were always anticipated with glee. Each December became a pastiche of the last, blending familiar sights, sounds, tastes, smells and emotions into a singular yet inimitable experience. The repetitive nature of tradition breeds nostalgia, and for me, there’s no holiday tradition more nostalgic than heading to a good sledding hill with my brothers, cousins and friends.
For a child, sledding is one of the most exhilarating winter activities, right up there with family snowball fights and staying up to catch a glimpse of Santa.There’s nothing quite like careening down a steep, snowy hill with your three brothers in tow, yips and screams piercing the cold winter air and each other’s eardrums.It’s also one of the few traditions that translate across familial, religious and geographic lines.
In fact, it’s so widely shared that every December, there’s a consistent and conspicuous absence of food trays from my university’s dining hall. Students from all walks of like snatch up the plastic trays to make nostalgic descents of the hills around campus.
It was and still is pretty simple – if you have snow, you go sledding.
Sledding enjoys its own rich history and tradition, the inception of which predates the childhood thrill of descending snow-covered hills. The history of sledding is a history of utility and necessity, born of hard Northern living and human ingenuity. Perhaps no company knows that better than the Northern Toboggan Company, a purveyor of world-class toboggans.
Started in 1995 by master carpenter John Harren, the family-run Northern Toboggan Company is just as much a project of historical preservation as it is a business.
A History of Utility
The legacy of the Northern Toboggan Company hails from the cold winters of northern Manitoba, Canada. John’s son Gabriel explains that the toboggan had always been a traditional means of transportation for fur trappers in northern Manitoba and across Canada. Whether carrying pelts from the wilderness to the traders in town or hauling necessary supplies back to remote cabins, toboggans were one of the indispensable workhorses of life in the remote Canadian wilderness.
But social and economic pressures caused the fur trapping industry to shrink during the 1970s.“The fur trade took a huge hit and trended down nationally and globally. So what happened was toboggan makers just stopped making them,” Gabriel says.
When the fur market saw resurgence in the following decades, trappers and other denizens of the far north found there was a shortage of the toboggans so essential to their way of life. John’s uncle Raymond, a brother in a Winnipeg monastery that did service work in the remote communities of the North. Raymond first told John about the dearth of toboggan makers.
As such, using his experience as a finish carpenter, John traveled to northern Manitoba to learn the art of toboggan making.
From Work to Play
Today, John still handcrafts traditional toboggans for trappers throughout Canada and Alaska. Furthermore, Gabriel credits that market with creating the company as it is today. He recalls visiting clients in Canada’s Northwest Territories using John’s handmade toboggans to cart multiple Caribou across the frozen tundra.
“That’s really been the business that has kept us alive,” Gabriel says.
Around 60 percent of the company’s client base is its northern market. But, Gabriel says the company has long understood the importance of diversifying its client base. After all, there isn’t much caribou hunting or trapping going on in my home region of western North Carolina. For those of us in the lower 48, the toboggan is more often associated with the traditional downhill sleds of our parents and grandparents.
With that in mind, John began crafting downhill toboggans in the late ‘90s. “Everybody has toboggan stories, but nobody has a toboggan now,” Gabriel says. “So we’re trying to change that.”
Based on the time-tested design of the original Canadian toboggan, these sleds are designed to navigate steep snow-covered hills rather than flat, expansive wilderness. Today, John still manufactures a full line of “the best downhill toboggans on the market,” Gabriel says.
Quality vs. Quantity
Other toboggan manufacturers have switched to methods of mass manufacturing. However, the Northern Toboggan Company still makes sleds by hand in its workshop in Warroad, Minnesota. “We try to go head to head with our competition, but we’re not head to head.” Gabriel says. “Our pieces are pieces of craftsmanship.”
Of course, craftsmanship comes at a price.
John’s downhill toboggans start at $373 for the Classic Wood Toboggan, while the traditional workhouse toboggan, the Winter Essential, starts at $760. The company’s freight toboggans are pricier. But, a handmade toboggan from the Northern Toboggan Company is an inimitable, authentic and carefully crafted product.
After all, Toboggan making is a labor of love for the Harren family.
Gabriel and his brother Jackson grew up in the workshop watching and helping their father craft traditional toboggans for clients. Today, they both take breaks from their own professional careers to continue to help out with the family business. Gabriel, an account executive for a large corporation in Minneapolis, says it’s a lot like working on a family farm.
“On the family farm, you come back for harvest, and right now is harvest season.” Gabriel says. “You intrinsically care bout the legacy and the continuation of what is so important for your family.”
Northern Toboggan Company will be shipping orders for most toboggans until Dec. 18 for delivery by Christmas Eve.
For product inquiries or to place an order, visit northerntoboggan.com or call 218-386-3005.You Might Like:
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