In the spring of 2020, Jules Fournel arrived in Colville Lake, Canada, with $60,000 in cash. As a fur buyer with the government of the Northwest Territories (N.W.T.), Fournel had come to the Arctic hamlet, population 130, to pay advances on pelts of marten, muskrat, wolf, fox, and lynx.

But that winter, word reached the town that Queen Elizabeth II would no longer buy fur products. By the time the news made its way through the rumor mill, local trappers had come to believe that no one was buying fur, so most of them hung up their traps and sat out the season. When Fournel left for home, he still had $60,000 in his pocket. Two years later, the