Dan Skunk

Dan Skunk (born May 22, 1974) is a furry who lives in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Dan Skunk's hobbies include writing poetry.

Dan was a furry from a very young age. Since the age of three, he would daydream about being a skunk, and often felt different or wanted to be something else. He discovered furry fandom on Tuesday, August 19, 2003, at 10:21 PM, when he watched Animal Imitators on TLC and discovered there were others with similar feelings to himself.

Fandom involvement
Dan Skunk is active within the Toronto Furry group.

The original Toronto-furry website, which ran was 1998 to late 2005, was reopened by Dan on FurNation in May, 2006 and grew from 32 members to 400 before it was renamed to Ontario Furries in 2008. As of July 2010, it had over 1000 members, making it the most popular Canadian furry site.

Dan Skunk created the first chat room for Toronto furs, in 2005 as well, then  in 2006, and  in 2008, all on FurNet.

Dan Skunk was a volunteer at Anthrocon and Midwest Furfest in 2007, becoming staff from 2008 to present.

Dan Skunk was co-founder and organizer of the Toronto Furry Spaghetti Factory Dinner from 2007 to 2009, Co-Founder of the Islington Furmeet in 2008.

Helped bring some of the people together to organize Furnal Equinox, served as a founding member of the convention committee and an initial director of Anthropomorphic Events of Ontario.

Dan Skunk and Furnal Equinox
Dan Skunk has had an acrimonious relationship with the Toronto convention, Furnal Equinox, stemming from his removal from the board of directors after disagreements about convention planning and managment in addition to percieved rudeness and unfair treatment at the convention and slander on wikifur and ontariofurries.ca after the convention.

Dan conducted research for a possible convention in Toronto, Ontario in the summer of 2008. He helped find the venue, gather people willing to finance it, and on December 27th, 2008, created a message board on Ontario Furries for members of the Ontario furry community to discuss the convention and invited people to help organize and staff the project that eventually became known as Furnal Equinox.

He also helped choose the date for the convention after discussing it with Heather Bruton (March was decided to fit better with her busy schedule during the summer), and promoted the idea of having a small convention in 2010 instead of waiting 'till 2011 as was previously planned. An idea which was accepted.

Anthropomorphic Events of Ontario (AEO) was incorporated as a Ontario corporation without share capital on June 11, 2009. Dan's name was included in the application for incorporation as an initial director. At a meeting of the convention committee on July 20, 2009, when Dan Skunk was not present due to a planned vacation and where Dan Skunk claims quorum was not present, Dan was dismissed from Furnal Equinox's concom along with Sparrow and Danruk who were also had helped with the original research and finding a hotel for the convention.

FE claimed that even if quorum was not present, it still represented the wishes of the concom and later claimed Scani was present via Skype and that Sparrow was never a member of the concom due to not being of age. Furnal Equinox, a year later, claimed that Scani attended via skype.

Dan was also banned from being staff.

Following his dismissal, Dan Skunk continued to offer criticism to Furnal Equinox both privately and publicly.

Dan was mentioned and thanked by name in the conbook for the 2010 convention for his contributions to the convention though those contributions though what he contributed was disputed.

After attending Furnal Equinox 2010, Dan Skunk claims he made a private complaint to Furnal Equinox claiming that he was treated poorly by staff, being ignored and having security stop him from helping.

In April 2010 after he claims the private complaint was ignored and Furnal Equinox refused to take responsibility for their actions, Dan posted a public complaint about it to the Furnal Equinox subforum on Ontario Furries. The complaint was soon after deleted.

In response to this deletion, Dan Skunk removed the Furnal Equinox subforum from Ontario Furries and banned them from discussions on Ontario Furries.

In response to percieved insults and slander from Furnal Equinox committee members over this, Dan Skunk banned co-chair, Pakesh De and Shane from Ontario Furries. He later banned the other co-chair, blindsight for his support of Furnal Equinox.

On July 30th, 2010, In response to Furnal Equinox's denial of his contributions to the convention on wikifur, Dan posted a message to a thread on to Ontario Furries, asking users to boycot Furnal Equinox.

In response to insults from Furnal Equinox supporters, Dan Skunk locked the thread and asked members who supported Furnal Equinox to leave.


 * "Members may express their disagreement with this boycott by deleting their accounts.


 * If you want to support Furnal Equinox, you are not welcome on Ontario Furries."

A number of members deleted their accounts in response. All messages made by them announcing their departure or where they were going were deleted.

On the same day, Felinaeus, con chair of What The Fur, posted a message to Ontario Furries to explain that the convention would no longer be associating with Dan Skunk or Ontario Furries in light of Dan's acrimonious relationship with Furnal Equinox. This message was deleted shortly after. A copy of this message can be found on What The Fur's website forums.

On Tuesday August, 3, Dan Skunk revoked the request for people to leave on advice from other members of Ontario Furries.

The edit war on wikifur continued to become worse with Shane claiming Dan Skunk had never been a member of the real committee and calling Dan a liar for statements of his contributions to the convention and Dan harassing FE directors with emails they found threatening in response to their posts on the torfur mailing list, for which Dan Skunk has been banned by Potoroo, the owner, and for which FE banned Dan Skunk from attending FE.

Durring 2012, Shane and Dan Skunk took some initiative to resolve these issues. Dan Skunk is no longer having his contributions to FE's wikifur page deleted and the edit war is over. Both FE and Dan Skunk have been contibuting and adding to each other's contributions amicably. Shane has invited Dan Skunk to attend some events hosted by him and attended by some of FE's directors. Dan Skunk has invited Shane and Blindsight to attend the Islington Furmeet hosted by him. Most directors of FE have been unbanned from ontariofurries.ca though the convention remains a banned topic (The exception being Scani, for an unrelated reason). Shane has been participating in discussions on ontariofurries.ca. FE has told Dan they might let him attend and help with the convention in 2013 if things continue to be better and Dan Skunk has offered to remove the topic ban on ontariofurries.ca if he can help and not be treated rudely. Dan Skunk continues to be banned from FE and the torfur mailing list as of present.