Toronto<\/a> over the course of three weeks, Posner said the Beaver hunt is intended as an enjoyable diversion and will encourage tourists to get to know the neighborhood and its businesses.<\/p>\n\u201cThe goal was to draw people to this area, to come and experience what it\u2019s like being in Old Town and to meet up with some like-minded people,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Forty-nine of the nearly 4-feet-high (1.2-meter-high) resin fiberglass beavers represent the nations competing in the World Cup \u2014 including a pair for Canada \u2014 and the remaining two represent FIFA and all the nations combined. Each has been hand-painted by a different local artist. <\/p>\n
One of the Canadian beavers is Doug, who sports a Canada-influenced soccer uniform layered beneath a red flannel shirt.<\/p>\n
The other 50 beavers have been placed throughout the neighborhood, in parks, along sidewalks and even indoors. Norway\u2019s beaver stares through a window from inside an office building lobby.<\/p>\n
Each beaver is accompanied by a QR code that takes participants to a free digital scavenger hunt. Weekly prizes will be awarded to the competitors with the highest scores as well as the winner of a random drawing.<\/p>\n
The contest runs until Aug. 16, and then the beavers will be auctioned off for charity. It officially went live June 1 and, as of Tuesday, 4,500 people had participated.<\/p>\n
Still, why exactly did Old Town Toronto officials decide to center their contest around the dam-building rodents?<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause it\u2019s Canada\u2019s national animal, and we thought they were super cute,\u201d Posner said. \u201cAnd they\u2019re small enough. And so, we went with the beaver.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TORONTO (AP) \u2014 Berczy Park is home to a much-loved fountain featuring canine sculptures that shoot water out…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":526769,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[267],"tags":[365,362,363,364,366,18,117,3334,19,17,3521,41901,4335,132,15935,173397,66],"class_list":["post-526768","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-artsdesign","tag-design","tag-eire","tag-entertainment","tag-general-news","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-lifestyle","tag-oddities","tag-soccer","tag-sports","tag-toronto","tag-toronto-fc","tag-world-news"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116721844437622164","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/526768","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=526768"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/526768\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/526769"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=526768"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=526768"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=526768"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}