IT IS THE ONLY known women’s pageant requiring finalists to milk a cow. Any contender for the title “Binder Twine Queen” must also saw a log in half, drive a nail into a beam, call a hog and flip a pancake adroitly into the air. “Personality,” popular historian Pierre Berton once wrote of a quality the judges especially look for, “the wackier the better.”

The contest is the highlight of the annual Binder Twine Festival in Kleinburg, Ont., northwest of Toronto. Perhaps best known as the location of the McMichael Canadian Art Collection, with its Group of Seven paintings, and as Berton’s home from 1950 until his death in 2004, the village previously thrived as a farming centre.

From the late 1800s, hired men arrived every September at Charlie Shaw’s hardware store to pick up twine for binding hay and wheat and Shaw organized a celebration of music and dancing. When Shaw died in 1931, the party died with him, but in 1967, villagers revived the event as “Ontario’s largest outdoor arts and crafts festival.” It is held the first Saturday after Labour Day and consistently draws some 2,500 people.

“One of the ideas we came up with was to have a contest that pioneer women might have enjoyed,” recalls 1967 committee member Bob Klein. Binder Twine Queen contestants must be female, from Kleinburg and “between the ages of 16 and eternity.”

In the first round, a dozen or so entrants dress as homespun characters, dance and introduce themselves. Four finalists then demonstrate their skills. Results are sometimes measured empirically, such as how much cow’s milk reaches the bowl, while others are completely subjective.

— John Goddard

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GOT YOUR DOUBTS that a 225-gram can of bear spray could stop several hundred kilograms of charging muscle and fur?

Until recently, renowned Canadian bear expert Steve Herrero shared those doubts. But then he and colleague Thomas Smith, a wildlife scientist at Utah’s Brigham Young University, took a hard look at bear encounters in Alaska from 1985 to 2006 in which pepper spray was used.

Bear spray stopped aggressive ursids in 92 percent of cases, says Herrero, professor emeritus of environmental science at the University of Calgary.

Preliminary results from an unpublished study by Smith and Herrero suggest that guns, on the other hand, were effective only about 67 percent of the time. Herrero cautions that variables such as gun type, ammunition and the shooter’s skill can all influence the outcome.

The problem with guns, says Herrero, is that when a bear is charging, it’s hard to think straight, much less shoot straight. “It’s infinitely easier to aim a can of bear spray,” he says. “It disperses into a cloud, and you can aim that cloud.”

It’s also infinitely better for the bear. “That’s very, very important,” says Herrero. “The effects, while totally immobilizing, are totally reversible.”