In Spring 1956, The Beaver published an article by Thomas Dunbabin, described as an “author, and Australian press representative in Canada” who had “made a study of Canadian historical byways.” In it, Dunbabin referred to the narwhal tusk as “Canada’s horn of the unicorn.”

In the article, Dunbabin sets out clearly, and with a collector’s eye for historical afterlives, to show that the “unicorn horn” so prized in Europe was often not the relic of a mythological creature at all, but the tusk of the narwhal. He begins with Martin Frobisher’s 1577 voyage to Baffin Land, recounting the report of a “sea unicorne” tusk carried into English royal possession and received as a treasure fit for Elizabeth I, while also noting that narwhal tusks likely entered European culture before this voyage through earlier northern trade. From there, he traces how the tusk’s form itself sustained the misunderstanding. Long, straight, spiralled, and unlike other familiar animal horns, the narwhal tusk readily conformed to European expectations of the unicorn horn, especially in a period that credited such objects with anti-poison and curative powers. As older beliefs gave way to scientific knowledge, the tusk lost its medicinal prestige, but not its hold as an object of wonder, commerce, and historical curiosity.

By the mid-twentieth century, the narwhal tusk’s popularity had shifted from the early modern “unicorn horn” trade to a narrower market of historical, maritime, and natural history collecting. By the late twentieth century, that market was increasingly shaped by conservation regulation, and today it remains active but highly compliance-dependent.