Fantastic Mr. Fox

When Ryan Gosling wore a cream-and-russet zip-up cardigan featuring aggressively cute animal motifs in his latest movie, the sci-fi film Project Hail Mary, it sparked a minor knitting frenzy. Fans went feral trying to track down the pattern that caught the eye of the costume department, affectionately calling it the “fox sweater.”

Textile nerds, however, knew its roots traced back to Mary Maxim, the legendary Canadian mail-order craft company whose distinctive knitting patterns helped popularize colourful chunky sweaters across North America. The company’s roots go back to the 1930s, when Willard and Olive McPhedrain operated Sifton Products in Sifton, Man. They began by marketing raw wool fibre, blankets and work socks but eventually transitioned into selling chunky wool and mail-order supplies to create the sweaters, which were inspired by traditional Cowichan sweaters made by the Coast Salish Indigenous people of Vancouver Island and the Pacific Northwest.

In the early 1950s, a local knitter named Stella Sawchyn created a reindeer pattern for them that helped launch Mary Maxim’s celebrated line of Canadian-themed designs featuring animal motifs. (The name “Mary Maxim” was adapted from the McPhedrains’ housekeeper Mary Maximchuk to give their business a more homey vibe). As demand grew, Mary Maxim relocated to Paris, Ont., in 1954 to be closer to the eastern textile mills. Its lone retail store remains there today.

The cardigan at the centre of the Project Hail Mary craze was originally the Mary Maxim “wolf cardigan,” but for the film, the costume department adapted the pattern, replacing the wolves with foxes. Today, this unapologetically Canadian piece of knitting history has gone from vintage pattern-book favourite to interstellar cinematic icon, proof that some threads really are timeless — even when they’re headed for outer space.