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“We have been trying to hold the goose together for the last several years,” Wray says.

Research Casting International, a Trenton, Ont.-based company that specializes in mounting and preserving skeletons and dinosaur bones of all sorts for an array of clients, including the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto and the American Museum of Natural History in New York, has been commissioned to do the work.

The new goose will be an exact replica of its 8.5-metre-high, two-ton predecessor, and be displayed at the same location. It will have a stainless-steel interior, but a bronze finish — rendered in goose colours — to better protect it from the elements. The goose’s neck currently points north. The new goose may wind up pointing in a new direction.

Everybody has a hitchhiking story about the Wawa goose

And perhaps therein lies the true significance of the goose, for some Trans-Canada travellers. It is not just another Canadian roadside attraction, but a jumping off point on the road to someplace else.

“Everybody has a hitchhiking story about the Wawa goose,” Wray says, mentioning an old grade school teacher of his who would regale his Grade 5 class with stories about getting stuck at the goose for a week before a ride picked him up. I was stuck at the goose for about three hours in 1994, before a kindly motorist in a Honda Civic hatchback picked me and a girlfriend up, driving us all the way back to Toronto — almost 1,000 kilometres away — in one shot.

What is unclear is where the 53-year-old goose is headed to next. The town has some ideas, though. One involves carving up the bird into bits, stamping the pieces for authenticity and auctioning them off to interested parties as keepsakes.

“We think the goose has some value for folks,” Wray says. “But that plan hasn’t been finalized yet.”