What does the beavertail (pastry) represent?

The BeaverTail is a fried, flat-shaped pastry sold by the Ottawa-based franchise BeaverTails Canada Inc., founded in 1978 by Grant and Pam Hooker in Killaloe, Ontario. The pastry is shaped to resemble the broad flat tail of a beaver and is served hot with toppings ranging from cinnamon sugar to chocolate hazelnut spread, lemon, maple butter, and apple cinnamon. The BeaverTails Pastry Inc. trademark, registered in 1980, has been carefully defended by the company.

The pastry first reached national attention through a stand at Winterlude, Ottawa's annual winter festival on the Rideau Canal. By the early 1980s the franchise had expanded to permanent stands at Toronto's Harbourfront Centre, Whistler village, the Calgary Stampede, and the Quebec City Winter Carnival. Today there are about 150 outlets in Canada, the United States, France, the United Kingdom, and the United Arab Emirates.

The treat became the unofficial pastry of the Vancouver 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games, where stands operated at the Athletes' Village and at LiveCity sites. United States President Barack Obama bought a BeaverTail from the original Rideau Canal stand on his first state visit to Ottawa in February 2009, naming it the 'Obama Tail' (cinnamon sugar with chocolate). The cost of a BeaverTail is sometimes tracked by Statistics Canada-style observers as a casual price index for Canadian winter outings.

The BeaverTail is one of several pastries that signal Canadian regional identity. Quebec's queue de castor is the same pastry under its French name. Other Canadian snack icons include the Nanaimo bar from British Columbia (named after the city), the butter tart from Ontario, ployes from Acadian New Brunswick, and Saskatoon berry pie from the prairies.